Update, November 3, 2024: WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg says he would like to discuss “misunderstandings” over his apparent threat to takeover over Paid Memberships Pro with its CEO, Jason Coleman.
Responding to questions from The Repository, Mullenweg said: “I’d love to talk to Jason directly but he hasn’t responded to me. I think there are some misunderstandings.”
Matt Mullenweg has threatened to take over Paid Memberships Pro (PMPro) in the WordPress.org plugin repository, according to private messages between the WordPress co-founder and PMPro CEO Jason Coleman.
Mullenweg messaged Coleman in Making WordPress Slack on October 18, writing that he wanted to “check in” with Coleman about his announcement two days earlier that from version 3.3 onward, PMPro would be hosted on the company’s own license server instead of WordPress.org.
Mullenweg warned Coleman: “because [sic] if you go down that path, next step is for us to take over your listing and make it a community plugin like we did to ACF.
“is [sic] that what you want? you [sic] can’t have it both ways, you’re violating the directory guidelines right now.”
Coleman, who showed the messages to The Repository during a video call, said he sought legal advice before deciding not to respond to Mullenweg’s messages. Mullenweg later emailed Coleman to check that he had seen the Slack messages, but Coleman also chose not to reply.
Mullenweg’s threat to takeover PMPro follows WordPress.org’s recent controversial takeover of WP Engine’s popular Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin. It also comes amid ongoing conflict between WP Engine and Automattic, with WP Engine filing legal action against Mullenweg and Automattic earlier this month, alleging abuse of power, attempted extortion, and anti-competitive practices.
In his announcement on October 16, Coleman said Paid Membership Pro’s premium plugins, and several free ones, had been served from his company’s own license server for many years. Downloads and updates for the company’s free, core version of Paid Membership Pro would be available from the server from version 3.3 onwards, he said.
PMPro was permanently closed in the repository on October 17. Coleman said he had contacted the WordPress Plugin Review Team to have the plugin removed, and the team had quickly responded and complied with his request.
PMPro, which launched on WordPress.org in July 2011, had an average rating of 4.3 out of five stars at the time of its removal.
In a follow-up post published yesterday, Coleman revealed Mullenweg’s threat and shared more about the company’s decision to pull PMPro from WordPress.org, citing concerns over potential user disruptions.
“We began seriously thinking about these issues in early 2023 and decided that PMPro would have to move off the .org site eventually. We planned on a longer transition, but when Matt started blocking long time .org contributors for petty reasons and took over the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, we decided that it was best for our users to start updating PMPro from our own server while we still had the most control over how that would happen,” Coleman said.
He hoped that Mullenweg would let PMPro “leave the repository without further disruption.”
“Taking over the ‘paid-memberships-pro’ slug and hosting a forked version would only create confusion,” he said. “There’s no good reason for Matt and his team to attempt this takeover.”
Paid Memberships Pro powers 60,000-90,000 sites, most of which are small businesses or nonprofits, Coleman said, and any “tampering with the PMPro listing [on WordPress.org] could cause confusion and damage.”
Coleman addressed concerns about potential retaliation from Mullenweg, writing, “The fact that we even have to consider this possibility is why we had to make this move.”
Speaking to The Repository, he speculated that Mullenweg may not have been aware that PMPro had already been removed from the repository the day before he issued his threat on Slack.
“Hopefully, he’ll realize there’s no point in pursuing it further,” Coleman said. “But if he does, we’re ready, we’re able to continue serving PMPro without disruption to our customers.”
PMPro is among several plugins that have been pulled from the WordPress.org plugin repository in recent weeks amid growing concerns that WordPress.org is no longer a secure place to host plugins.
Mullenweg was contacted for comment.
