[Mathew Ingram]

Mathew Ingram's overview of the WordPress drama continues to be updated with new information. The hole just seems to be getting deeper and deeper. As he says: it's a mess.

"It's pretty clear that Matt sees what he is doing as protecting WordPress, and forcing a no-good corporation to cough up some dough after years of taking advantage of the community (he says he has been trying to negotiate with WP Engine for more than a year now, while WP Engine says it gives back to WordPress in a number of ways.) To some observers like me, however — and to some other longtime members of the WordPress ecosystem — it looks like Matt has dragged the WordPress community into a legal mess with a variety of unforeseen and potentially serious consequences."

I still don't fully understand what prompted this sea change in how Matt has addressed the wider community, including WP Engine. I have this ongoing sense that there's another shoe left to drop, whether it's relating to stalling revenue at Automattic and pressure from its board (pure conjecture on my part, to be clear), or something else entirely. Without some strong motivating factor this just seems to be self-sabotage.

At this point I'm really curious to see what's next. All this drama has also made it clear that for the kind of CMS WordPress is - more of a framework than an out-of-the-box solution at this point, but with a strong ready-made editing and administration experience - there aren't many alternatives. That's not to denegrate other projects like Drupal, etc, because I think they're different kinds of CMSes. Ghost is much more narrowly focused, too. I think if WordPress had a real competitor in its space, this might all be playing out differently.

(If I was WP Engine and had run out of options to de-escalate, I'd be going ahead and forking WordPress right now. And what a mess that would be.)

#Technology

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