It turns out that their idea of a better deal was to move me onto a more expensive plan with lower limits than the plan I’d been on for 10+ years. They kept trying. I kept saying “I’m not interested”. But I got tired out of their constant spamming. So I left.
Over my time with them I’d spent somewhere in the region of $40k I think. I referred a fair few people to them as well. Not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things I realise, but you’d think it would count for something. Apparently not.
I’m no longer a customer of WP Engine. I could have stayed another ten years. I’m taking my next $40k and spending it elsewhere.
Drupal has a similar setup where the founder of the open source project also founded a company (Acquia) and took many $millions of investment. It created a lot of confusion in the market about what would be the terms of competition… how benevolent the open source “overlord” would remain.
As Acquia grew its footprint, I knew quite a few companies who diverted investment from Drupal into other CMS ecosystems. Ironically Wordpress was the beneficiary of a lot of that. Within a couple years every “Drupal agency” I was aware of was doing Wordpress too. And every “Drupal host” had expanded into Wordpress or general hosting. Look around… Drupal ain’t dead but it’s not spreading anymore either. I know there were other factors, but I also know Acquia was a factor, at least commercially.
Investors and entrepreneurs need a clear runway in front of them to feel comfortable making large investments. Matt seems to be planting himself in the Wordpress runway, at minimum as a gatekeeper and possibly as a straight-up obstacle. He’s trying to wear the open source hat as he does this, but everyone can see the Automattic hat too. Even if he is doing this with the best of intentions, I think it will not have a positive effect overall.
Then there will be engineers who will get certified on this tech, training companies, and the ecosystem just keeps taking root, where the source of the innovation is all but forgotten.
The owner of WPEngine is investing in billions - and they are contributing relatively little to the software that they never wrote, but got for free.
discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613628
The criticism outlined by Matt in this article is related to their lack of engagement with the open source community around WordPress and their unwillingness to significantly contributing to the project.
I seriously had no idea they only contributed a tiny amount (40 hours per week) and I know of other (larger) agencies like mine who do more than this so I hope WPE pull their finger out and implement a better strategy to give back.
