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Can Businesses Trust Open Source? Beyond Licenses and Legal Concerns

Jan 28

5 min read


WordPress drama, #WPDrama, WPEngine vs Automattic and Matt Mullenwig… There are many ways that you could describe the recent war of words and dueling lawsuits between two of the biggest companies in the WordPress community. However you label it, it’s been a scary time for people who make their living with WordPress.


I’ve been building websites and headless web apps using WordPress, contributing to the community knowledge base, and speaking at WordPress conferences since 2012. So it comes as no surprise that we’ve received calls from clients in the last couple of months asking about the future of WordPress and if they should move to a platform like Wix or SquareSpace instead (more on this later).


The drama and fallout is a great reminder that business reliance on open source is a longtime phenomenon, but not at the depth we’re seeing today.


Looking Back


The story of business and open source has been quite a journey over the past few decades.


The 1990s

In the 1990s, most companies viewed open source with deep skepticism - Microsoft's Steve Ballmer famously called Linux "a cancer." But pioneers like IBM saw potential, investing $1 billion in Linux development. Red Hat emerged to prove open source could be profitable, while foundational projects like Linux, Apache, and MySQL took root.


The 2000s

The 2000s brought a shift toward acceptance. Enterprise Linux adoption grew steadily as the LAMP stack became standard. Google built on Linux and released Android, while cloud providers started offering Linux-based services. Important projects like Firefox, WordPress, and Git launched, expanding open source beyond servers.


The 2010s

The 2010s marked a complete transformation. Microsoft went from opponent to advocate, opensourcing .NET core and eventually acquiring GitHub. Cloud native computing emerged through Kubernetes and Docker, while companies began competing through open source contributions. But challenges arose too - the Oracle-Google Java dispute highlighted intellectual property tensions, and Amazon's monetization of open source projects sparked debate.


The 2020s

Now in the 2020s, open source dominates enterprise software, but faces new complexities. Companies experiment with open core models and cloud services, while sustainability and governance remain ongoing challenges. Recent conflicts like Elastic vs AWS and the WordPress/Automattic situation show the delicate balance between corporate control and community interests. Meanwhile, AI is reshaping how open source code is written and maintained, adding another layer of transformation to this evolving relationship.


Open-Source Drama: More Than Just WordPress



The open source world has been rocked by several high-profile incidents lately that have businesses questioning their dependencies. The WordPress situation has put this in sharp focus - Matt Mullenweg's recent moves with WordPress.com and comments about WPEngine have sparked debate about who really controls popular open source platforms.


Last year, Redis Labs stirred similar concerns by changing their license to the Redis Source Available License. While this change was seen as mostly positive by the programming community, AWS responded by launching their own Redis-compatible service, leaving many organizations scrambling to reassess their Redis implementations. HashiCorp caused waves too when they switched from MPL to Business Source License, triggering community pushback and project forks.


The Elastic versus AWS dispute from 2021 might be the most telling example. When Elastic changed its license to prevent AWS from offering Elasticsearch as a service, AWS simply forked the project and created OpenSearch. This showed just how quickly these situations can escalate and how cloud giants can reshape the open source landscape.


These cases keep circling back to the same core issues: How do open source companies make money without alienating their communities? Who gets to call the shots? And how do we balance commercial success with community benefit? There's no easy answer, but these incidents are forcing businesses to think hard about their open source strategy.


Over the course of several weeks, I want to take a look at the practical, non-legal considerations businesses must weigh when building on open source software. Is it safe? Is it really free? How can you mitigate the risks while benefiting from the innovation and rapid development happening in open source today? We’ll look at project governance and community health, commercial backing and fork risks. Understanding these factors is crucial for making informed decisions about open source adoption. Through real-world examples like the recent WordPress ecosystem changes, we'll explore how businesses can evaluate, adopt, and contribute to open source while protecting their interests and supporting sustainable development.


The WordPress Controversy as a Case Study


The drama really kicked off in the week leading up to Matt Mullenwig’s September 20th, 2024 talk at WordCamp US. In this talk, he called out WP Engine and its main investor Silver Lake, saying they don’t do enough to give back to the open source project they’ve built their business on. He then wrote a blog post attempting to draw a distinction between WordPress and WP Engine.


When WP Engine responded the following Monday with a cease & desist letter, the details about the previous week’s back-and-forth came to light. Drama then continued for the following couple of weeks, culminating in many active members of the wordpress community pausing contributions and support.


Open source communities are built on a foundation of trust and shared purpose. When drama and internal conflicts erupt, especially between commercial entities and community leadership, it undermines the core principles that make open source successful. These principles include transparency in decision-making, collaborative development, and putting the project's long-term health above individual interests.


The impact extends beyond immediate participants. Businesses relying on open source software need stability and predictability. When high-profile disputes erupt, particularly involving project leaders or major contributors, it creates uncertainty about the project's future direction. Organizations start questioning their technology choices, developers become hesitant to contribute, and the ecosystem's growth can stall. The WordPress situation demonstrates how quickly community trust can erode when commercial interests and governance disputes become public, potentially affecting millions of websites and businesses built on the platform.


So what's next?


The evolution of open source in business has been quite a ride - from outsider status to running critical infrastructure. But as we're seeing with WordPress right now, success brings its own challenges. You can't just look at the technical specs anymore. Smart businesses need to think hard about community health, how decisions get made, and what happens if things go sideways.


At its heart, open source runs on trust. When leaders and companies let drama spill into public view or make big moves without buy-in, they shake the very foundation that makes open source work. We need better ways forward - business models that make sense, clear rules everyone understands, and communities that stay strong even when things get tough. Because open source isn't just some tech choice anymore - it's how modern software gets built.


Next week, we’ll do a deep dive into the core trust considerations for your business when deciding to bring open source into your project or infrastructure.


 

To establish my bonafides, here's a link to me speaking at WordCamp San Francisco 2013 two hours before Matt Mullenwig took the stage for his 2013 State of the Word address.



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