Issue #231
Happy Friday! It's October 18 and we're covering the leaks coming out of Automattic, WordPress contributors stepping back or getting banned, ACF's takeover, plugins developers leaving WordPress.org, WordPress Engine's official ban from WordCamps, and more.

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This week's headlines

1. Automattic under fire: Leaks, ultimatums, and drama continue to shake WordPress


Wowee. As if things couldn't get worse, this week's news is wild. On X, 404 Media's Samantha Cole posted yesterday, "Automattic's CEO upped the ante with yet another ultimatum: take a new buyout and stop speaking to the press, or get fired and/or sued 'tomorrow'."

Cole spoke to several Automatticians for her latest piece about the environment of paranoia and fear inside Automattic over the WordPress chaos. As well as detailing the latest buyout offer—this time nine months severance and a loss of access to WordPress.org—Cole reveals how Mullenweg's been tracking employees who sign up for Blind, an app where employees can talk anonymously about their workplace.

The story follows an earlier leak to TechCrunch's Ivan Mehta, who reported that Automattic started planning its trademark crackdown in January and planned to follow up violations through direct negotiations with companies and via legal action from "nice and not nice lawyers and trademark enforcers."

In a video posted on YouTube, Kellie Peterson, the former Head of Domain Names at Automattic, pointed out that employees had only recently started leaking to the press despite the company's long history of being "insanely open" with its workforce. Peterson accused Mullenweg of making unethical decisions, including the hostile takeover of ACF.

"The whole situation is just very depressing," is how John Gruber at Daring Fireball sums up the WordPress drama.

Also, today, WordPress.org is promoting hosting companies that offer migrations off WP Engine.

Mullenweg has also traded barbs with Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson after the latter claimed Automattic is doing open source dirty. Hansson followed up with another post imploring Mullenweg not to "turn into a mad king," prompting Mullenweg to hit back in a scathing post that, oddly, compared lines of code and criticized Hansson's lack of riches. Mullenweg later replaced his post with another apologizing and highlighting that the "actual villain in this story: it's WP Engine and Silver Lake."

In related news, Fast Company's Chris Stokel-Walker wrote the WordPress drama could have major implications for the internet, and 164 WordPress contributors and business owners have signed a petition calling for a WordPress Foundation v2.

2. WordPress contributors step back or face bans amid WP Engine dispute


Several long-time contributors to the WordPress project are stepping back or have been forced to stop contributing altogether as tensions rise over Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg's conflict with WP Engine. While some contributors have voluntarily paused their involvement due to concerns about Mullenweg's interactions with the WordPress community, others have been banned from WordPress.org, leaving them no choice but to quit.

Read more at The Repository: WordPress contributors step back or face bans amid WP Engine dispute

Core committers Colin Stewart and Tonya Mork have paused their contributions indefinitely. Stewart has even urged unsponsored contributors to consider whether their "goodwill and generosity" are being taken for granted to sustain what he described as a harmful environment. Scott Kingsley Clark, a GoDaddy-sponsored contributor, quit contributing to the Fields API last weekend and was subsequently banned from WordPress.org yesterday. Their departures follow the shock ban of WP REST API creator Ryan McCue last week.

Meanwhile, the WordPress Accessibility Team's meetings were suspended after reps Nazmul Hasan Robin and Rishi Mehta were unable to log in to WordPress.org due to the new checkbox. Mullenweg suggested new reps should be found to replace them.

Despite some core contributors stepping back, WordPress 6.7 remains on track for release on November 12. Automattic-sponsored contributor Dave Smith has stepped in to replace Robert Anderson as an Editor Tech Lead after Anderson chose to take the company's initial buyout offer.

3. Backlash follows WordPress.org's takeover of Advanced Custom Fields


The fact that this story comes in third just goes to show how quickly things are happening right now. Earlier this week, The Repository reported that WordPress.org took over the free version of WP Engine's popular Advanced Custom Fields plugin last Saturday in a move WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg justified for security reasons. The move prompted widespread backlash from the WordPress community, open source advocates, and tech founders. It's understood Mullenweg didn't inform the wider WordPress Security Team, including team rep John Blackbourn, before the announcement.

Other WP Engine plugins have been caught in the company's ban from accessing WordPress.org, including Better Search Replace, which has over 1 million active installs. The newly acquired NitroPack has also been impacted. Users are being urged to update to a new version of the performance plugin that provides a workaround to ensure users get updates.

Meanwhile, Product Manager Iain Poulson has reflected on the past two years since ACF joined WP Engine as part of the Delicious Brains' acquisition, writing "WP Engine 'gets' ACF" and has taken up the role of stewards of the plugin with "seriousness and commitment."

4. Developers pulling plugins from WordPress.org as tensions with WordPress co-founder escalate


In the wake of WordPress.org's controversial takeover of WP Engine's Advanced Custom Fields plugin, developers are opting to take control of their plugin distribution amid growing concerns that the official repository is no longer a secure place to host products.

Read more at The Repository: Developers pulling plugins from WordPress.org as tensions with WordPress co-founder escalate.

The team behind Paid Memberships Pro closed their plugin on WordPress.org this week and so did Jake Jackson, creator of Gravity PDF. In another act of resistance against Matt Mullenweg, who owns WordPress.org and has accused WP Engine of violating WordPress trademarks, Very Good Plugins founder Jack Arturo has filed a cease and desist letter against Automattic for unauthorized use of the WP Fusion trademark.

For some developers, the decision to leave the repository has been made for them as bans continue to be handed out to long-time contributors. Scott Kingsley Clark, the lead developer of Pods, was banned from WordPress.org yesterday, leaving the future of the framework in doubt.

The feud between Automattic and WP Engine has also spurred the creation of new tools and mirrors, including some with interesting names, like Morpheus, Wormhole, and RepoMan.

5. WP Engine officially banned from WordCamps


It only took three weeks, but WP Engine has been officially banned from sponsoring WordCamps and WordPress events, with WordCamp Sydney 2024 the first event to be affected.

WordCamp Sydney is scheduled for November 2-3, and WP Engine had paid $5,000 AUD to be a Platinum sponsor. Lead organizer Wil Brown told The Repository the organizing team had considered options to cover the shortfall in their budget—with WordCamp Community Support offering to reimburse—but the more difficult task was telling Ricky Blacker and Kimberly Pater, who were scheduled to speak, and fellow organizer Sam Toohey, that they could no longer be involved.

"WP Engine has been a long-time supporter of the Australian WordPress community, financially and otherwise, maybe five or six years," Brown said. "Most of their Aussie employees are known and friends with the local communities. This ban affects Aussie WordCamps and WordPress chapter meetups financially, and many WP Engine employees help organize these events. It's very stressful."

Meanwhile, WordCamp Delhi 2024's ticket sales have slumped since the introduction of the checkbox at WordPress.org requiring users to confirm they are not affiliated with WP Engine.
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In other news

WordPress project

> WordPress 6.7 Beta 3 is now ready for testing. The final release is still on track to drop on November 12 (WordPress.org News)

> Core contributors want to make the new WordPress.org login checkbox translatable (Trac)

> The WordPress Training Team's next Learn WordPress course cohort will introduce participants to plugin development (Make WordPress Training)

> Automattic's Nicholas Garofalo has published a brief history of the WordPress YouTube channel going back to 2014, when it was first created (nicholasgarofalo.com)

> The Photo Directory and Test teams have new reps (Make Photos | Make WordPress Test)

WordPress community

> The WordPress Foundation has donated $100,000 to the Internet Archive following last week’s data breach and denial of service attack. The donation has raised eyebrows after Automattic-employed financial wrangler published the announcement and because the foundation only brought in $26,438 in 2023 (WordPress Foundation)

> Samuel 'Otto' Wood is the lone moderator at r/Wordpress Reddit after fellow mods Summer Childe and Bluesix quit this week and deleted their accounts. Last week, the Audrey Capital-sponsored WordPress contributor was accused of threatening a Redditer (Reddit)

> The WP Community Collective has published a list of plugin repository mirrors, tools, forks, and ideas created by the community in response to the recent events (WPCC)

> Tor-Björn Fjellner is the latest Yoast Care fund recipient for his contributions as a polyglot and helping to launch the WordPress Mentorship Program (Yoast)

> Entrepreneur Kevin Geary and YouTuber Mark Szymanski have launched WP Townhall, a new interactive podcast where listeners can voice their opinions (X)

Business, enterprise & acquisitions

> Pantheon co-founder Josh Koenig talks up the growing appeal of WordPress as a composable Digital Experience Platform (DXP) for enterprises, citing a study the hosting commissioned that found 80% of respondents felt WordPress was now "enterprise-ready" and able to deliver on security and versatility (Forbes)

> Videos from the Showcase Day at WordCamp US are starting to surface, including Human Made's talk about optimizing RecipeTin Eats, one of the most popular cooking websites in the world, to 45 million monthly views, up from 25 million (WordPress.tv)

> Rocket.net's new agency partner program was four years in the making and a step on the hosting company's roadmap toward "massive scale" (WP BizDev)

> Automattic has given 200 A12 shares to its entire workforce, making every employee a co-owner. The stock grant is a "thank you" to those who declined the company's recent buyout offer and aims to encourage an owner mentality (Automattic | ma.tt)

> Designer Christy Nyiri and engineer Mike Straw pull the curtain back on Automattic's Special Projects team and their work supporting nonprofits and contributing to the WordPress community (WP Tavern Jukebox)

Security

> Jetpack 13.9.1 was released this week following the discovery of a security vulnerability in the Contact Form feature going back to version 3.9.9, released in 2016 (Jetpack)

> To celebrate Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Patchstack is hosting a security clean-up event focused on WordPress plugins and themes. So far, over 550 valid reports have been filed (Patchstack)

> Patchstack is urging Ultimate Membership Pro users to update to the latest version after disclosing two critical vulnerabilities patched in version 12.8 (Patchstack)

Conferences & events

> InstaWP is currently hosting AnyoneCanWP, an online hackathon, with a total cash prize pool of $10,000 (AnyoneCanWP)

> Nominations are open for this year's Seshies. The annual award celebrates the best-of-the-best throughout the WooCommerce ecosystem. Winners will be announced during WooSesh, scheduled for October 29-30 (WooSesh) | WooSesh 2024 organizer Brian Richards joined Do the Woo this week to talk about the event (Do the Woo)

> The Italian WordPress community is hosting Core Days, a next-gen event aimed at core developers, on November 8-9, 2024, in Rome (Core Days)

> Voting is open for the fourth annual Monster's Award 2024, celebrating the best products and services for WordPress across 25 categories (TemplateMonster)

> The Department of Information and Communications Technology in the Philippines has officially endorsed WordCamp Asia 2025, set to take place in Manila from February 20-22 (WordCamp Asia)

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Meanwhile...

👻 The "benevolent dictator for life" is outdated, says Ghost creator John O'Nolan (The WP Minute+)

💫 Training team contributor Margherita Pelonara says receiving the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship was "life-changing" (Make WordPress Training)

❤️ Michelle Frechette says it's important to remember that each of us has a life outside of WordPress (Post Status)
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