‘The Community Is In Chaos:’ WordPress.org Now Requires You Denounce Affiliation With WP Engine To Log In

WordPress.org users are now required to agree that they are not affiliated with website hosting platform WP Engine before logging in. It’s the latest shot fired by WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg in his crusade against the website hosting platform.

The checkbox on the login page for WordPress.org asks users to confirm, “I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.” Users who don’t check that box can’t log in or register a new account. As of Tuesday, that checkbox didn’t exist. 

Since last month, Mullenweg has been publicly accusing WP Engine of misusing the WordPress brand and not contributing enough to the open-source community. WP Engine sent him a cease and desist, and he and his company, Automattic, sent one back. He’s banned WP Engine from using WordPress’ resources, and as of today, some contributors are reporting being kicked out of the community Slack they use for WordPress open-source projects. 

Among WordPress community contributors, who keep the open-source project running, this checkbox added to the organization’s site is an inflection point in the story of a legal battle that they’ve been mostly isolated from until today. 

“Right now the WordPress community is in chaos. People don’t know where they stand legally, they are being banned from participating for speaking up, and Matt is promising more ‘surprises’ all week,” one WordPress open-source community member who has contributed to the project for more than 10 years told me. They requested to speak anonymously because they fear retribution from Mullenweg. “The saddest part is that while WordPress is a tool we use in our work, for many of us it is much more than a software. It is a true global community, made up of long-time friends and coworkers who share a love for the open-source project and its ideals. We are all having that very abruptly ripped away from us.” 

In a Slack channel for WordPress community contributors, Mullenweg said on Wednesday that the checkbox is part of a ban on WP Engine from using WordPress.org’s resources.

Mullenweg explained the ban in a blog post published on the WordPress.org site in September, saying it’s "because of their legal claims and litigation against WordPress.org.” (WP Engine named Automattic and Mullenweg as defendants in its lawsuit, which we'll get to in a moment, but not WordPress.org or the WordPress Foundation.)

“WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it, with them getting all of the profits and providing all of the services,” Mullenweg wrote in the blog. “If you want to experience WordPress, use any other host in the world besides WP Engine.” 

WP Engine is an independent company and platform that hosts sites built on WordPress. WordPress.org is an open-source project, while WordPress.com is the commercial entity owned by Automattic, and which funds development of, and contributes to, the WordPress codebase. Last month, Mullenweg—who also co-founded Automattic—wrote a post on the organization’s blog, calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress” and accusing WP Engine of “strip-mining the WordPress ecosystem, giving our users a crappier experience so they can make more money” because the platform disables revision history tracking.

Mullenweg also criticized WP Engine for not contributing enough to the WordPress open source project, and its use of “WP” in its branding. “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. “WP Engine needs a trademark license to continue their business.” He also devoted most of a WordCamp conference talk to his qualms with WP Engine and its investor Silver Lake.

WP Engine sent Automattic and Mullenweg a cease and desist letter demanding that he “stop making and retract false, harmful and disparaging statements against WP Engine,” the platform posted in September. 

The letter claimed that Mullenweg “threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic—his for-profit entity—a very large sum of money before his September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, he was going to embark on a self-described ‘scorched earth nuclear approach’ toward WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond.”

Automattic lobbed its own cease and desist back. “Your unauthorized use of our Client’s trademarks infringes on their rights and dilutes their famous and well-known marks. Negative reviews and comments regarding WP Engine and its offerings are imputed to our Client, thereby tarnishing our Client’s brands, harming their reputation, and damaging the goodwill our Client has established in its marks,” the letter states. “Your unauthorized use of our Client’s intellectual property has enabled WP Engine to compete with our Client unfairly, and has led to unjust enrichment and undue profits.” 

The WordPress Foundation’s Trademark Policy page was also changed in late September to specifically name WP Engine. “The abbreviation ‘WP’ is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people,” it now says. “For example, many people think WP Engine is ‘WordPress Engine’ and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.”

WP Engine filed a lawsuit against Automattic and Mullenweg earlier this month, accusing them of extortion and abuse of power, Techcrunch reported.

Last week, Mullenweg announced that he’d given Automattic employees a buyout package, and 159 employees, or roughly 8.4 percent of staff, took the offer. “I feel much lighter,” he wrote.

According to screenshots posted by WordPress project contributors, there’s a heated debate happening in the WordPress community Slack at the moment—between contributors and Mullenweg himself—about the checkbox.

One contributor wrote that they have a day job as an agency developer, which involves working on sites that might be hosted by WP Engine. “That's as far as my association goes. However, ‘financially or otherwise’ is quite vague and therefore confusing,” they wrote. “For example, people form relationships at events, are former employees, collaborate on a project, contribute to a plugin, or have some other connection that could be considered impactful to whether that checkbox is checked. What's the base level of interaction/association that would mean not checking that box?” 

Mullenweg replied: “It’s up to you whether to check the box or not. I can’t answer that for you.” 

At least two WordPress open-source project contributors—Javier Casares and Andrew Hutchings—posted on X that they’ve been kicked out of the WordPress community Slack after questioning Mullenweg’s actions.

“A few of us asked Matt questions on Slack about the new checkbox on the .org login,” Hutchings posted. “I guess we shouldn't have done that.”

“In today's case, somebody changed the login and disconnected everybody, so, without explanation on the check, if you need to contribute to WordPress and access the website, you need to activate it,” Casares told me in an email. “In my case, this morning, I had to publish a post about a Hosting Team meeting this afternoon.” He had to check the box, he said, because without it he couldn’t access the platform to post it, but the vagueness of the statement concerned him.

He said the people banned this morning included contributors who have been contributing to the WordPress project for more than 10 years, or people related to other source-code projects.

“Why? Only Matt knows why he is doing everything he is doing. I really don't know,” Casares said. 

“Matt’s war against WP Engine has been polarizing and upsetting for everyone in WordPress, but most of the WP community has been relatively insulated from any real effects. Putting a loyalty test in the form of a checkmark on the WordPress.org login page has brought the conflict directly to every community member and contributor. Matt is not just forcing everyone to take sides, he is actively telling people to consult attorneys to determine whether or not they should check the box,” the anonymous contributor I spoke to told me. “It is also more than just whether or not you agree to a legally dubious statement to log in. A growing number of active, dedicated community members, many who have no connection with WP Engine, have had their WordPress.org accounts completely disabled with no notice or explanation as to why. No one knows who will be banned next or for what... Whatever Matt’s end goal is, his ‘tactics,’ especially this legally and ethically ambiguous checkbox, are causing a lot of confusion and mental anguish to people around the world.”

Based on entries to his personal blog and social media posts, Mullenweg has been on safari in Africa this week. Mullenweg did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

About the author

Sam Cole is writing from the far reaches of the internet, about sexuality, the adult industry, online culture, and AI. She's the author of How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex.

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