Regarding the altercation involving the co-founder of WordPress and WP Engine…

It seems that’s the situation at hand as well. WordPress is unable to pursue the relicensing strategy. It’s governed by the General Public License version 2 (GPLv2). This permit is both unchangeable and mandates any derivative work to be licensed under the same permit. What Mullenweg can — and is – undertaking, nonetheless, is attempting to extract more funds from WP Engine.

As highlighted by my colleague journalist Matthew Ingram in a compelling article on the controversy, “Matt is not solely the resilient founder of a nonprofit open-source initiative, he is a prosperous CEO of a profit-making company that is challenging a rival, and leveraging his position as the founder of the nonprofit to obtain funds from that rival.”

From my perspective, this is not a dispute about open source. It’s a confrontation between an individual valued in the hundreds of millions and a corporation valued in the billions. When unraveling any disagreement, be it a family squabble, a separation, or a business clash, one of the finest guiding principles is to track the money. What I’m interpreting here is it revolves around the money.

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AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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