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Days after World Wide Web hosting provider WP Enginewon a preliminary injunction against WordPressco - Godhead Matt Mullenweg and rival hosting provider Automattic , Mullenweg announced thatWordPress.org is take a vacation time out .
WordPress.org — a website that provide access to WordPress sparking plug - ins , idea , and other artifacts to the community — will take a break from providing free services , include fresh account registrations , new plug - ins , themes , photo directory submissions , and stopple - in recap , Mullenwegsaid in a blog post .
In answer , Joost de Valk — the ex - CEO of WordPress - based SEO optimization tool Yoast — wrote ablog postabout taking a federated and independent approach to WordPress . His scene were patronage by enterprise web consulting firm Crowd Favorite ’s CEO Karim Marucchi througha separate blog billet .
“ We , the WordPress residential district , need to decide if we ’re OK being lead by a exclusive person who controls everything and might do affair we discord with or if we require something else . For a project whose tagline is ‘ Democratizing publishing , ’ we ’ve been very blue on exactly that : commonwealth , ” de Valk say .
In his post , de Valk made five points about creating a WordPress Foundation - like entity to go the project and handing over all community assets , such as themes and plug - ins , to that entity . He also propose giving the WordPress trademark to the public domain . The WordPress Foundation own the trademark , and Automattic has an exclusive commercial licence for the earmark .
He also articulate that all ballyhoo - in mirrors should be federated , and information should be share between these servers . In October , after Mullenweg banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org , he withdraw control of WP Engine ’s Advanced Custom Fields spark plug - in andforked it with a new name call Secure Custom Fields . De Valk enjoin in his blog post that such situations should n’t occur again .
Mullenweg gloss on de Valk ’s post , saying he should pursue this project under any name other than WordPress . “ I think this is a great estimation for you to lead and do under a name other than WordPress . There ’s really no way to accomplish everything you require without starting with a fresh slate from a hallmark , stigmatisation , and people ’s point of vista , ” Mullenweg said .
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Since Mullenweg and WP Engine shut away horns in September , there have been calls about change the structure of open source WordPress governance . Earlier this calendar month , 20 signer , let in core WordPress contributors , criticize Mullenweg ’s actions and urge him to research “ residential district - minded solutions ” inan loose letter .
While Mullenweg has beenopen to the ideas of WordPress forks and even welcomed them , he has strictly defended the current operating modelling of the residential area .
As for the next step , de Valk said he would talk to loss leader in the WordPress community in January to fix the track forrard . WP Engine welcomed this initiative in a berth on Xand committed to ferment on the project with other leaders .
“ WordPress ’s success as the most widely used CMS is not the accomplishment of any one person or a undivided art object of open root computer code . It is the result of a ball-shaped community — one thousand of developers , agency , businesses , and others — who have invested their time , talent , confidence , and resources in advocating for , supporting , and build the global WordPress ecosystem and technology , ” the company said .
Correction : This story was updated on December 23 to reflect that de Valk is the former Yoast chief operating officer and to correct the URL for WordPress.org .
