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It’s a new year, but the drama of the WordPress community continues. Emergencythe company that runs WordPress.com, said it will reduce its contribution to WordPress core, the open source project that serves as the backbone of many Automattic products and ensures the longevity of WordPress as a technology and people.
Automattic CEO and WordPress co-developer Matt Mullenweg joined kerfuffle with WP Engine since September last year in terms of providing support to WordPress as an open and public project.
I a blog postthe company said it would reduce the hours it volunteers The Five For the Future program to compare what they offer to their WP Engine affiliate based on the number of hours they spend each week.
“As part of this renewal, Automattic will comply with its commitment to the commitment made by WP Engine and other players in the ecosystem, or about 45 hours per week that must be spent under the Five For the Future program as a benefit to the entire community and not just for exercise. body. one company. These hours have gone to security and critical changes,” said Automattic in a recent blog post.
The company added that it will also deploy resources in the fight against WP Engine.
At last year’s event, Mullenweg called WP Engine “cancer to WordPress,” showing the large share of the Silver Lake business in the company and the lack of contributions from the host to support the sustainable growth. In a new blog post, Automattic mentioned this as well.
“WP Engine’s previous small offering confirms the imbalance that should improve the health of WordPress. We believe in fairness and shared responsibility, and we believe that this move will encourage greater participation in all organizations that benefit from WordPress,” said Automattic.
Automattic supports rotation 2,560 hours per week, according to The Future’s Five Dashboard. This number is already lower than the 3,900 hours per week the company reported in September. It is not known whether this reduction is due to the number of companies is decreasing or general strategy change.
The company’s new blog post teased that members of the “team” have decided to work on commercial products such as WordPress.com, Pressable, WPVIP, Jetpack, and WooCommerce as they contribute to WordPress. So the engineers will focus on the product development rather than the core WordPress support. Automattic is also under pressure to improve its financial performance. In December, BlackRock invested 10% in Automattic – and this was not the first download. Overall, the investment company has reduced its investment by 50%.
The new law regarding contributions to community service was not the only thought related to WordPress.org. Earlier this week, Thijs Buijs, a WordPress developer and the person who led the stable team, decided to step down as a representative. A stable group look at the longevity of WordPress through social, economic, and environmental.
According to a Slack screenshot posted on Reddit, Buijs disagreed with Mullenweg’s approach to WordPress development. In response, Mullenweg undermined Slack’s sustainable approach when he said, “Today I learned that we have a sustainable team.” In particular, Mullenweg introduced the idea of this channel for the 2022 event.
Mullenweg’s legal battle with WP Engine has drawn calls for a different leadership in the WordPress world. Last month, Joost de Valk, creator of Yoast, the popular WordPress SEO tool, described a plan to create a “federated” WordPress storage system to get access to things like plugins and themes.
You can contact this reporter at im@ivanmehta.com or on Signal: @ ivan.42
