WordPress drama latest: Leader Matt Mullenweg exiles five contributors

WordPress co-founder Matthew Mullenweg on Saturday deactivated the WordPress.org accounts of five members of the WordPress community, and justified his actions by saying it will encourage them to fork the open source content management system.

”Forking” a project refers to the practice of copying code – as is allowed under many open source licenses – and using it as the basis for a new development effort that’s usually run by a different team that aims to take a project in a different direction.

The idea of a WordPress fork has gained currency in recent months amid the lengthy and acrimonious spat between WordPress.org (which is personally owned by Mullenweg and hosts resources for the WordPress community) and WordPress hosting service WP Engine.

The dispute centers on Mullenweg’s belief that WP Engine profits from the open source WordPress project without making appropriate contributions to its development and operations, and his attempts to have WP Engine change its ways by paying to use the “WordPress” trademark. Crucially, Mullenweg is CEO of the for-profit Automattic, which owns WordPress.com, develops WordPress, and like WP Engine, hosts websites using the blog publishing software, among other services. More on that later.

Some in the WordPress community feel Mullenweg’s actions are inappropriate and have pondered a fork of the project so they can evolve it without the co-founder’s involvement.

On Saturday, Mullenweg named WordPress.org account holders Joost de Valk and Karim Marucchi as considering a fork and decided that closing their accounts – and those of three others – would help them to do so.

"To make this easy and hopefully give this project the push it needs to get off the ground, I’m deactivating the .org accounts,” he wrote in a WordPress.org article. "I strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join up with their new effort."

Having opened his post by musing about how "incredibly hard" it is to create great software, Mullenweg opined he doesn't expect a fork will succeed.

De Valk responded with a social media post that states: "Let’s be clear: Karim and I asked for and proposed change inside the #WordPress project."

That proposal came in December 2024 when De Valk published a blog post calling for a change of leadership at the WordPress project.

The post came a few days before Mullenweg trolled Reddit with a post titled, "What drama should I create in 2025?"

De Valk’s call for Mullenweg to resign is not unique. Similar suggestions have circulated since at least 2010.

Adding to the controversy, tech pundit Kara Swisher on Saturday published a Threads post that featured a screenshot of a discussion in the WordPress community Slack workspace in which WordPress sustainability team member Thijs Buijs announced he was stepping down from his role. Mullenweg's apparent response was to remark, "Today I learned that we have a sustainability team," punctuated by a smiley face, and then an announcement the team was being summarily dissolved.

Swisher sighed: "[W]hat a pathetic turn for him into a stone cold asshole. I take no pleasure in saying this, but it's true and I am so sorry for the staff there."

• The Automattic vs WP Engine WordPress wars are getting really annoying
• Judge hands WP Engine a win in legal fight with Automattic
• WP Engine revs Automattic lawsuit with antitrust claim
• WordPress's Automattic openly tracks websites bailing from rival WP Engine

The staff working with Mullenweg is presumably somewhat smaller than it was a few months ago, as in October he invited employees who disagreed with his leadership to leave his affiliated set of companies. 159 people accepted his offer, and we’ve not seen evidence of fresh hiring since.

The my-way-or-the-highway offer came a month after Mullenweg began publicly disparaging WP Engine, claiming the biz had refused to pay tens of millions annually to use the WordPress trademark.

The trademark dispute turned into a lawsuit in California that in December resulted in a preliminary injunction – the judge overseeing the case ordered Mullenweg and Automattic to stop interfering with WP Engine's business and to reverse the technical measures put in place to prevent WP Engine-hosted websites from connecting to WordPress.org for updates.

Community at a crossroads

Mullenweg's behavior led software developer Gavin Anderegg to opine in a blog post over the weekend that the WordPress community is in trouble.

"It’s hard to see how to move forward from here," he wrote. "I think the best bet would be for people to rally around a new community-driven infrastructure. This would likely require a fork of WordPress, though, and that’s going to be messy."

At the same time, he acknowledged no one has put forward a credible plan to create a WordPress fork, and that anyone who does so would be unable to submit themes, plugins, or core code to the WordPress project without a WordPress.org account.

"These recent events really make it seem like you’re no longer welcome to contribute to WordPress if you question Matt Mullenweg," he said.

Earlier Monday, Mullenweg conceded "the lawsuits will go years and could potentially bankrupt me or force the closure of WordPress.org." ®