Matt Mullenweg
Co-founder of WordPress, which runs a large share of the web, and chief executive of Automattic. Writes at ma.tt. In September 2024 he began a public campaign against WP Engine, the private-equity-owned WordPress host, over trademarks and what he says is its failure to contribute back to the project.
Matt Mullenweg did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsI am so sorry. I shouldn’t let this stuff get to me, but it clearly did, and I took it out on DHH, who, while I disagree with him on several points, isn’t the actual villain in this story: it’s WP Engine and Silver Lake.
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Their wordsTrademarks must be protected, as evidenced by Rails trademark policy.
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Their wordsIf WP Engine didn’t want this to happen, they should not have published their code under the GPL or distributed it through WordPress.org’s directory.
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Their wordsI think it’s fantastic when businesses are built on open source, the WordPress ecosystem is at least 10B+ a year; Automattic and WP Engine are less than 5% of that.
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsThis isn’t a money grab: it’s an expectation that any business making hundreds of millions of dollars off of an open source project ought to give back, and if they don’t, then they can’t use its trademarks.
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Their wordsWordPress is licensed under the GPL; respect for copyright and IP like trademarks is core to the GPL and our conception of what open source means.
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Their wordsIf WP Engine wants to find another open source project with a more permissive license and no trademarks, they are free to do so; if they want to benefit from the WordPress community, then they need to respect WordPress trademark and IP.
- 9 days earlier
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Their wordsI believe Meta should have the right to set their terms—they’re smart business, and an amazing deal for users of Llama—but don’t pretend Llama is Open Source when it doesn’t actually increase humanity’s freedom.
↗WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinkingma.tt 1st of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsWhen corporations disingenuously claim to be “open source” for marketing purposes, it’s a clear sign that Open Source is winning.
↗WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinkingma.tt 2nd of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsBut what makes Open Source work isn’t the law, it’s the ethos. It’s the social mores.
↗WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinkingma.tt 3rd of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsThis openness and generosity will attract parasitic entities that just want to feed off the host without giving anything back.
↗WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinkingma.tt 4th of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsSo it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet.
↗WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinkingma.tt 5th of 5 in this piece