Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, announced that it is scaling back its contribution to WordPress Core.
Automattic-CEO and co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, has been at odds with WP Engine since last September over the issue of contributions to WordPress as an open source and community project.
In a blog post, the company said it will scale back the number of hours it commits to the Five For the Future program . This is to align with its competing hosting provider WP Engine’s contribution, measured in weekly hours, reports TechCrunch.
Auttomatic makes this fact abundantly clear. As part of this revision, Automattic will directly align its volunteer contribution with that of WP Engine and other players in the ecosystem. This amounts to about 45 hours per week that will fall under the Five For the Future program and benefit the entire community, not just one company. These hours will likely be spent on security and critical updates.
The company added that it will reallocate resources to the ongoing legal battle against WP Engine.
At an event last year, Mullenweg called WP Engine “a cancer” for WordPress, pointing to private equity firm Silver Lake’s significant stake in the company and the hosting provider’s lack of contributions to support sustainable growth. In the new blog post, Automattic made this point again.
He argued that WP Engine’s historically limited contributions highlight the inequity we must address for WordPress’s health. He believes in fairness and shared responsibility and hopes this move [by Automattic] encourages more participation from all organizations that benefit from WordPress.
Automattic contributes about 2,560 hours per week. The Five For the Future dashboard would show that. This number is significantly lower than the 3,900 hours per week the company contributed in September. It is unclear whether this reduction is due to a shrinking workforce or a general change in strategy.
The new blog post also included a sarcastic comment that community members consider working on commercial products such as WordPress.com, Pressable, WPVIP, Jetpack and WooCommerce as contributions to WordPress. Engineers will, therefore, focus on developing these products rather than contributing to WordPress Core.
Automattic, incidentally, is also under pressure to perform better financially. In December, BlackRock marked down its investment in Automattic by 10%. That was not the first write-down. Overall, the investment firm devalued its investment by more than 50%.
The new directive regarding contributions to the community project was not the only decision regarding WordPress.org. Earlier this week, Thijs Buijs, a WordPress Core contributor and leader of the sustainability team, decided to step down as a representative. The sustainability team focused on WordPress sustainability through social, economic and environmental aspects.
According to a Slack screenshot posted on Reddit, Buijs disagreed with Mullenweg’s approach to moving WordPress forward. In response, Mullenweg disbanded the sustainability channel.
Plea for a federated approach
Mullenweg’s approach in the legal battle with WP Engine, which succeeded, calls out for a different kind of leadership within the WordPress world. Last month, Yoast creator Joost de Valk outlined a plan for a federated approach to the WordPress repository. This will allow decentralized access to resources such as plug-ins and themes.
