In this post, I’m sharing my personal thoughts on the Automattic vs. WP Engine trademark dispute. These views are my own and may not reflect those of my employer or anyone else on my team. Additionally, this should not be seen as a comprehensive retelling of the events from the past few weeks. Much has happened even during the period I’ve spent writing and rewriting this post.
I wrote this post for me. Writing is how I think.
The last few weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster as I’ve tried to determine what this trademark dispute means for the WordPress ecosystem, the community, the software, and, of course, my livelihood.
Automattic’s dispute seems fairly straightforward to me. But I am no lawyer. While I think I understand the rights and ownership each person and entity has in this case – I could be wrong. And each side could be misrepresenting their own rights to win in the court of public opinion.
Even ardent supporters of WP Engine would likely agree that their prolific use of the term WordPress could be confusing to some. Ardent supporters of Automattic, also, would likely agree that the communication of this dispute to the public could not have gone worse for the community.
I was in Portland for WordCamp but didn’t attend the closing Q&A session with Matt Mullenweg in person. After a few days of what was an exciting event, I was feeling pretty socially drained and returned to my nearby hotel room. Of course, I’m always excited to hear what Matt has to say so I did open my laptop and watch the livestream as it happened.
The confusion and unrest in the community have been palpable ever since.
People want the leaders of their communities to be reliable, stalwart, reasoned individuals. No matter what is happening, they do not want to see community leaders lash out, react quickly, and make sweeping changes. That is, until they have had the time to fully understand why those changes are being made. The reason we all feel this way is that we immediately get worried that we could be the next target of that leader’s ire next.
Perhaps that is precisely why the public rollout of this dispute was handled in this way. To shake things up. To bring any would-be or even unwitting offenders back in line. Maybe it will work out that way. But when there is talk of forks, mirrors, or leaving a community altogether it is sad to see.
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It’s easy to sit back and say how I would have handled the situation differently with more public outreach, warnings, ultimatums. Giving the community time to catch up to what Matt already feels he knows. And I don’t think I would have used WordCamp as my platform. It was disheartening to see so many very excited attendees deflate so quickly. For most of the week we were talking about new features like Playgrounds, Interactivity API, and other things — to only be talking about this ever since. But hindsight is always clearer. My guess is Matt either expected WP Engine to back down much sooner or was prepared for exactly this fight. We may never know.
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Communities and momentum are fragile, and it’s always unfortunate when something disrupts and causes people to question their place in it. I really like WordPress (yes, I like Gutenberg a lot) and the community of people that are in it. I personally plan to try to be an even greater supporter of the ecosystem than I’ve been. And I sincerely hope morale will rebound once the dust settles and we can get back to talking about exciting new features.