Dear Matt,
This is an appeal to temporarily reconsider your recent decision to ban WP Engine from WordPress.org.
As an agency owner, developer and WordPress contributor, I am uniquely positioned to see and feel the impact of your dispute with the WP Engine leadership team. The best way to describe it is collateral damage to your “nuclear” approach.
TL;DR – Please temporarily remove the ban on WP Engine from WordPress.org. Make a post providing a timeline for the trademark dispute to reach a deal. If an agreement isn’t reached by the deadline, reinstate the ban. This gives the community time to “speak with their wallets” rather than being forced into support situations. Our clients don’t see this as a WPE problem; it’s a WordPress problem.
While I’m not privy to all the details of the current situation, I do understand your position on the trademark infringement issue with WP Engine. They have a substantial market share and invest heavily in marketing and ads surrounding WordPress-related topics and terms. This gives them a lot of visibility for individuals searching for WordPress.
My agency started building sites using WordPress in 2008 and began hosting websites with WP Engine in 2016. Our clients understand that WP Engine is a hosting company. They also know that we can host with other services like SpinupWP, Cloudways or WordPress VIP. The only brand confusion we’ve encountered is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. In both situations, we’ve been able to educate our clients, but I see how someone trying to use WordPress for the first time may be confused about where to start.
Note: A Google search for “WordPress” in an incognito window returns ads for WP Engine and GoDaddy, with WordPress.com as the first organic result, followed by WordPress.org.
Regarding the ban specifically, it is a powerful way to influence the swift resolution of the dispute. It’s much like licensing disputes with cable and satellite providers. However, in those cases, they warn customers that the channel or program will be removed should a deal not be reached. Without the public appeal, your approach feels very stronghanded, making WP Engine employees and its customers a victim.
Please lift the ban temporarily and provide a deadline for resolving the dispute before reinstating the ban. This “warning” will allow WPE customers to express their concerns to WP Engine leadership and agency owners like myself to prepare a game plan to address our clients’ concerns and migrate to other providers if needed. This more community-friendly approach is just as impactful while not making you appear as the aggressor.
While I find the ban troubling for WordPress’s image and future, my biggest concern was raised by your response to a user in the Make WordPress Slack. They asked, “As someone from an agency that hosts hundreds of sites on WPE, what are we supposed to tell our customers that need updates? It will likely take WP Engine a while to set up any kind of mirror, especially since you decided to do this after hours.”
You responded with:
Please tell them to contact WP Engine support, that’s who they’re paying for service.
Be mad at the person you’re paying
Now you’ll see what you’re paying for. How good are their engineers? Their sysops? Can they run a copy of the plugin repository? They’re welcome to. They can fork WordPress, too, and publish their own version. I’d love that.
what they can’t do is continue to use all of .org’s resources for free while giving nothing back
This statement isn’t about WP Engine’s leadership. You called out members of OUR community—people who contribute to WordPress and support WordPress end users. I ask that you reflect on this and rethink your position on speaking about those caught in the middle. You didn’t sound like a leader here.
I find your position misleading regarding WP Engine’s contributions. While I agree that WPE should sponsor more full-time people for the .org project, I strongly believe they are contributing many resources back to the community through other methods. As an agency partner, I have incredible access to their team in their Agency Community Slack. They provide tons of resources and webinars, helping users and developers adopt and implement new WordPress features and functionality. They contribute plugins, sponsor community events and have multiple employees who contribute directly to WordPress.org resources.
While this may not be accurately defined in a Five for the Future pledge, your portrayal of their team members’ contributions feels disingenuous and unprofessional.
Please reconsider your position on this ban and its impact on the WordPress community.
Sincerely,
crw