WordPress is the platform that powers roughly 43% of all websites around the world. By that statistic alone, it is clear that WordPress, the software, is not going anywhere anytime soon. But there have been concerns, in light of recent lawsuits among some of the largest corporations that have built their businesses around WordPress, that the platform or its community may be in trouble. This is not the case.
WordPress is an open source project started by Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg. It developed into the most popular CMS and platform for thousands of plugins that offer virtually unlimited variations in how a website functions. From small personal blogs to massive corporate or government websites, WordPress is able to handle just about anything. Several months ago, Matt Mullenweg and his company, Automattic, were sued by a competitor, WP Engine, for improper business practices. This was after Automattic sent WP Engine a cease-and-desist letter accusing them of unauthorized use of trademarks, and Matt publicly accused the company of not supporting the community. As a result, something of a rift has developed in the larger WordPress community, with many taking sides with one or the other of these large corporate players.
However, a large portion of the community is not interested in aligning itself with either of these corporations. In the spirit of open source, many believe that WordPress should not be controlled by any for-profit enterprise or by any single person. With this in mind, a number of prominent individuals in the WordPress community have been motivated to build community-based governance models and new infrastructure to support WordPress websites without relying on Automattic or any other large for-profit business.
Indeed, Matt Mullenweg took some steps toward such an ideal in 2010 when he formed the WordPress Foundation, a nonprofit group that holds some of the assets and establishes some of the direction for the open-source project. Unfortunately, the WordPress Foundation is still largely directed by Matt Mullenweg (who is one of three board members). Their ability to provide community input into the project is further limited by the fact that Matt Mullenweg still retains unilateral control of WordPress.org, a major piece of infrastructure for finding WordPress resources and updating WordPress software.
Several newer community-based initiatives are gaining attention. First, there is The WP Community Collective. This organization helps fund developers to work on open-source projects, and they are actively promoting a few promising projects within the WordPress community. The WP Community Collective was in the news recently after they were pledged a $520,000 donation from another large company that works with WordPress.
One of those projects is called AspirePress. I am particularly excited about this one because they are working on a set of protocols and an infrastructure to support community developers being able to receive updates for WordPress and related resources without relying on WordPress.org. As someone who manages WordPress websites, I’m excited at the possibility of having a local update server, and being able to operate independently of a central repository is even better.
There are plenty of other promising projects, too. And with such a large community of people using and contributing to the software, we can look forward to a fruitful future building on the robust foundation that has already been established.
Correction, January 23, 2025: Thanks to Colin Stewart and chuck for pointing out an error. This article previously stated that Automattic sued WP Engine; they did not. Rather, they issued a cease-and-desist letter regarding alleged copyright violations.
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