Controversy over WP Engine and WordPress.org

Please reference this article in TC for full details: https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/10/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/

Basically WP Engine is not affiliated with Wordpress.org, but a lot of people believe WP Engine is an official partner / act under the same supervision and leadership as Wordpress.org.

Wordpress.org has complained about this and tried to work a licensing deal with WP Engine, but WP Engine has been generally flakey.

Things eventually hit a climx when Wordpress.org blocked WP Engine's access to Wordpress.org, disrupting their services to the point that WP Engine sued them for "misuse of power." 

Whether misuse or not, it is a good point that WP Engine has made billions of dollars off of Wordpress.org, an open source project and simply never contributed much to the Wordpress Foundation Fund to support the community.

The backlash of all this drama are small business websites that rely on Wordpress.org and/or WP Engine becoming affected, non-functional, etc.

I have warned in a separate article to stay away from Wordpress in general, but my main criticism is that the tech industry is still an industry that relies on cash-flow to operate. While open-source is great and allowing end-users to build websites at a lower cost is awesome, those projects also need support and development to maintain themselves and stay alive.

Your actions matter —support and donate to open-source projects if you love them. It's better than giving money to people who ride off the back of open-source and try to monetize the technology by building layers on top of it.