Recently, a public dispute has emerged between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and hosting company WP Engine. Matt has accused WP Engine of misleading users through its branding and profiting from WordPress without adequately contributing back to the project.
As the Founder and Project Lead of Drupal, another major open source Content Management System (CMS), I hesitated to weigh in on this debate, as this could be perceived as opportunistic. In the end, I decided to share my perspective because this conflict affects the broader open source community.
Although this post was prompted by the controversy between Automattic and WP Engine, it is not about them. I don't have insight into their respective contributions to WordPress, and I'm not here to judge. I've made an effort to keep this post as neutral as possible.
Instead, this post is about two key challenges that many open source projects face:
The imbalance between major contributors and those who contribute minimally, and how this harms open source communities.
The lack of an environment that supports the fair coexistence of open source businesses.
These issues could discourage entrepreneurs from starting open source businesses, which could harm the future of open source. My goal is to spark a constructive dialogue on creating a more equitable and sustainable open source ecosystem. By solving these challenges, we can build a stronger future for open source.
This post explores the "Maker-Taker problem" in open source, using Drupal's contribution credit system as a model for fairly incentivizing and recognizing contributors. It suggests how WordPress and other open source projects could benefit from adopting a similar system. While this is unsolicited advice, I believe this approach could help the WordPress community heal, rebuild trust, and advance open source productively for everyone.
Click 'Read More' below to read the full blog post.
