The WPdrama appears far from over. In yet another twist—detailed in an article by Matt Mullenweg himself, owner of Automattic and one of the creators of WordPress—several prominent figures who threatened to fork WordPress (i.e., create a new product by branching off the open-source code) have been urged to follow through on their plan.
To this end, Mullenweg has deactivated the WordPress.org accounts of several people, including Joost de Valk, known for the popular Yoast SEO plugin. He also revoked access for others: Karim, Se Reed, Heather Burns, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen.
All of them had announced their intention to build a new version of WordPress—naturally, under a different name—based on the latest open-source release, and WP Engine even offered its support. In Mullenweg’s view, anyone not aligned with him is effectively in opposition.
With a touch of irony and cynicism, he maintains that he loves forks, considers them an intrinsic aspect of open-source and is excited to see how the “new WordPress” ultimately performs. Disabling the group’s accounts was, in his words, a way to “help them” get to work and he looks forward to reconvening in a year to share progress and innovations.
In a side note, Mullenweg reveals that Joost de Valk once tried to sell him one of his investments, Post Status and that Mullenweg declined. He speculates this may be the root of their current disputes. He also recalls that he entrusted de Valk with leading the marketing efforts, but the latter resigned after five months with minimal results.
All of this comes on the heels of Mullenweg’s decision to significantly reduce his financial and developmental contributions to the open-source project during his lawsuit with WP Engine, bringing his involvement down to WP Engine’s level. At that point, Joost publicly offered on Twitter to lead the upcoming releases; in response, Mullenweg simply encouraged him to create his own version of WordPress—something de Valk had already hinted at doing.
It’s clear, and Mullenweg has made it explicit, that he will not relinquish control of WordPress.
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