I’m a big fan of WordPress, the publishing software that underlies Letters Blogatory. I started using WordPress in 2011 and have used it to bring you thousands of posts and for you to send back thousands of comments. It’s not quite free—I have to pay for a server I use to run the program and all the other software that goes into making a website, and I pay for a few so-called “premium” plugins that help with behind-the-scenes features like website security and backups. But if you had asked me in 2000 whether I could imagine myself publishing articles that anyone, anywhere in the world could read that would be key to my professional identity, I would have said no way.

WordPress the software is just a bunch of computer files that anyone is free to download, use, distribute, etc., for free. It’s being constantly changed and (ideally) improved by a bunch of volunteers who know how to write computer programs. As I understand it, many of them have day jobs with firms that make money by selling “themes” (website looks), “plugins” (extended website functionalities), or other services to people running websites.

One of these businesses, Automattic, will, for a fee (or even for free, for simple projects), host a website for you on wordpress.com, or sell you a bunch of other services. Lots of other companies will host WordPress websites for you, too. If you are thinking of starting a WordPress website, I recommend you spend the few dollars a month to have someone host it for you. Otherwise, you will spend a lot of hours doing what I’ve done for the past fourteen years setting up a server, learning how it works, and figuring out how to get everything set up and kept working over time. But on the other hand, if you do want to administer your own server, you can learn a lot and enjoy the same kind of satisfaction you get from assembling Ikea furniture. You might not be a carpenter or a joiner, but you are still building something you can use and enjoy, using tools others have provided that you come to understand with experience.

What makes Automattic unique is that it is run by the same man, Matt Mullenweg, who was one of the authors of the original WordPress software and who still runs wordpress.org, the website where you can download it and where all the themes and plugins (some written by Automattic, most written by third parties) are also available for download.

Worlds have collided in the last few days as Mullenweg, the Gutenberg behind Letters Blogatory and millions of other blogs, got himself involved in a classic business litigation against a website hosting company called WP Engine. WP Engine is represented by Quinn Emanuel, and Mullenweg and Automattic are represented by Hogan Lovells, so this lawsuit is the “real deal,” with good, expensive lawyers on both sides. There are a bunch of claims. The interesting ones to me: WP Engine is seeking a declaration that it is not infringing on trademarks including the “WordPress” trademark, and it accuses Mullenweg of trying to extort it by threatening to “go to war” or “go nuclear” by “smearing its name, disparaging its directors and corporate officers, and banning WPE from WordPress community events.” The complaint has a bunch of text messages from Mullenweg to WP Engine threatening to make bad things happen to WP Engine unless it agreed to pay a percentage of its revenue. When WP Engine refused, Mullenweg allegedly defamed it in a speech, calling it a “cancer” and accusing it of failing to contribute sufficiently to the WordPress community.

I’m not going to comment on the merits of the legal claims. But let me make a few observations. First, the text messages go to show that the very wealthy can be as foolish and venal as anyone else, and overconfident in their own street smarts. I mean, it’s just so dumb to have written those texts.

Second, it’s not a great look for Mullenweg to be pressuring WP Engine when he is both the head of wordpress.org, complaining about WP Engine’s supposed insufficient contributions, while he is also running one of WP Engine’s commercial competitors. Is he the keeper of the open-source software flame who selflessly made software he wrote available to the public, or a guy trying to make money and to squelch a competitor who is also making money from the software he created?

Finally, one of the peculiarities of “open source” software like WordPress is that once you license it with an open source license and give it to the world, if it becomes immensely valuable, it’s really hard to recapture that value for yourself. It looks from the outside as though Mullenweg wants a revenue stream from WP Engine even though everyone is free to use WordPress software for any purpose, even any commercial purpose, without paying a penny. Maybe it is bad etiquette to make a buck off of WordPress without making some kind of monetary contribution to the WordPress project. But if you don’t want people to act that way, then perhaps don’t license your software without restrictions. This last issue is particularly salient to me because I license my posts here at Letters Blogatory using a similar license: anyone is able to republish or even make derivative works from my posts, as long as they credit me and license their own works derivative works similarly. Years ago, I idly wondered what would happen if one of my posts “went viral,” and I realized that people would have paid good money to read it. Would I wish I could put the genie back in the bottle? Unlike Matt Mullenweg, I never had to wrestle with that temptation!

Image credit: Christopher Michel (CC BY)