Automattic, the company that oversees the open source WordPress platform and the official WordPress.org plugin directory, has decided to reduce its involvement in WordPress development to about 45 hours per week, which will equalize its contribution to development with WP Engine and other third-party participants. It is noted that the resources provided will most likely only be enough to prepare corrective updates to eliminate security issues and critical errors.
Automattic previously estimated its contribution to WordPress development at 3915 hours per week and expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that it has to pull the entire project alone, while WP Engine parasitizes WordPress, investing approximately 40 hours per week in development with revenue from using the platform of $500 million.
Automattic's actions are explained by the desire to achieve fairness and correct the imbalance of contribution of ecosystem participants. The decrease in participation in development is also connected with the redistribution of resources in connection with lawsuits from WP Engine, the defense of which takes a lot of time, money and energy. It is noted that if WP Engine stops its legal attacks, Automattic is ready to return to active participation in the development of WordPress, Gutenberg, Playground, Openverse and WordPress.org projects. Until then, Automattic will focus on its commercial products such as WordPress.com, Pressable, WPVIP, Jetpack and WooCommerce.
Automattic's actions are part of a growing dispute between Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress and owner of Automattic, and WP Engine, the company that runs the alternative WP Engine directory and provides WordPress hosting. In October, WP Engine filed a lawsuit against Automattic in response to the WordPress admin interface linking to an article that defamated WP Engine, demanding that the company purchase a WordPress trademark license, blocking access to WordPress.org resources, and replacing the ACF plugin in the WordPress.org directory, which has 2 million installs, with a fork maintained by Automattic.
On December 10, the court issued a preliminary injunction against WP Engine's business harm. Automattic was ordered to unblock WP Engine employees' accounts on WordPress.org and retake control of the ACF add-on. The lawsuit is still pending, and the preliminary injunction is intended to stop harm to WP Engine's business until a final ruling is made.
Automattic's position is that WP Engine harmed itself by building its business around WordPress.org. There was no contractual relationship between WP Engine and Automattic that guaranteed access to WordPress.org and the ability to download updates from that site. The court found this argument unconvincing because access was restricted only to WP Engine, and Automattic's actions constituted unfair competition by selectively denying a competitor access to publicly available data.
Source: opennet.ru
