A hot potato: Things are heating up in the world of WordPress, the open-source platform that powers over 40 percent of websites globally. Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress, took a hard stance against WP Engine during his WordCamp US 2024 talk in Portland. He later reinforced his position in a blog post, further escalating the tension.

WP Engine is a major WordPress hosting provider that has been commercializing the open-source WordPress project since 2010. Over their 14-year history, they've raised nearly $300 million, with most of that – $250 million – coming from private equity firm Silver Lake in 2018.

Mullenweg didn't hold back, outright calling WP Engine a "cancer to WordPress," and accusing them of profiting from user confusion about the open-source project while disabling core functionality that protects user content.

He reinforced his criticism by comparing the "Five for the Future" investment pledges from Automattic and WP Engine to support WordPress' growth, which he discussed earlier on his personal blog. According to Mullenweg, Automattic pledges a substantial 3,900 hours per week, while WP Engine contributes just 40 hours.

Mullenweg also took aim at WP Engine's main investor, Silver Lake, stating that the $102 billion private equity firm "doesn't give a dang about your open source ideals" and is solely focused on returns from its capital investment.

He urged the WordPress community to vote with their wallets, implying they should switch to hosting providers like Hostinger, Bluehost Cloud, or Pressable when their contracts with WP Engine expire.

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"It has to be said and repeated: WP Engine is not WordPress. My own mother was confused and thought WP Engine was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they're giving you WordPress, but they're not. And they're profiting off of the confusion," he wrote on his blog.

Mullenweg also pointed out that WP Engine disables WordPress' revision history functionality, which allows users to revert content changes.

WP Engine only allows a maximum of three revisions, which are automatically deleted after 60 days. Mullenweg claims they do this solely to save on database storage costs, compromising a core WordPress feature that protects user content.

Clearly, the Automattic CEO has a significant bone to pick with WP Engine's practices. In fact, this campaign doesn't come as a surprise, as Mullenweg previously called out GoDaddy for allegedly profiting off WordPress without giving back.

For its part, WP Engine has sent Automattic a cease-and-desist letter refuting Mullenweg's allegations and requesting a retraction. The company stated that the attacks are "clearly designed to harm our business," but emphasized that they "will not slow us down."