The new WordPress Executive Director recently just resigned from her post as the Head of TikTok Americas, Governance and Experience. She worked as the Head from January 2023 until her subsequent resignation to take up her new post. But this is not Hubbard’s first time working at WordPress. She worked as the Chief Product Officer for WordPress.com from January 2012 till March 2023.

Mary Hubbard has an extensive working history as presented on her LinkedIn profile. She worked as the Chief Product Officer at TruRating from 2017 till 2020. The WordPress Executive Director also has worked at companies such as eBay, Walmart eCommerce, Assurant, and VBZ Inc. Her educational background includes International Business and Chinese at California State University and Language Business Studies and International Business at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Mary Hubbard: Reception of the news of her appointment as Executive Director

The overall reception to Mary Hubbard’s appointment as WordPress Executive Director has been met with positivity welcoming her on board. However, there are still tons of comments from the online community expressing their disappointment or concerns over the entire WordPress-WP Engine drama.

The feud between the two companies snowballed into a legal lawsuit filed by WP Engine accusing WordPress of extortion. Mullenweg has offered up a generous severance package for employees who want to resign. Employees who wanted to leave were offered $30,000 or six months of pay. Employees could choose whichever amount was higher.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy resigned from her position as Executive Director of WordPress very recently but there are no details about the reasons for her resignation.

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WordPress.org Blocks WP Engine

Image Credits: Photo by Erik Mclean on Unplash

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The Automattic CEO started this public battle with WP Engine as he believed WP Engine was violating the WordPress trademarks. Mullenweg even went so far as to call WP Engine a ‘cancer’ to WordPress. Shortly after, more fuel was added to the fire when WordPress announced that it was blocking WP Engine. The hosting provider was thus banned from using its free resources such as plugins and themes. This resulted in a huge backlash from WP Engine customers. These users were left vulnerable due to the discontinuation of crucial security updates from WordPress. The ban was later lifted temporarily until the 1st of October. Automattic also asked WP Engine to pay them 8% of their gross monthly revenue if they want to continue using the WooCommerce and WordPress trademarks. However, WordPress has not accepted these terms by Automattic.

WP Engine had even sent WordPress a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Mullenweg retract his statements about WP Engine. However, Automattic responded with their cease-and-desist letter where they accused WP Engine of infringing on the WooCommerce and WordPress trademarks.

WP Engine Sues Matt Mullenweg: More on this issue

WP Engine has accused Mullenweg of allegedly extorting money from them. As WP Engine sues Matt Mullenweg, the hosting provider also accused the Automattic CEO of abusing his power and being greedy.

The hosting provider is seeking to stop Mullenweg and Automattic from continuing on this tirade against WP Engine and the WordPress community as a whole. The lawsuit has also accused Mullenweg of having an alleged history of blurring the real facts.

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Matt Mullenweg Critizes WP Engine at WordCamp US 2024

WordPress Lifts Ban On WP Engine Temporarily

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The ban on WP Engine prevented its customers from using WordPress’ free resources such as themes and plug-ins. The prevention of updates left the sites vulnerable and put them at security risk. This move by WordPress was met with criticism in online spaces. WP Engine customers also took to social media to share security concerns brought by the ban.

Matt Mullenweg has made a few statements following the backlash. Mullenweg criticised Silver Lake for this feud. For context, Silver Lake is the private equity firm that owns WP Engine. In an official blog post, Mullenweg acknowledges the frustration coming from WP Engine customers. He also says that Silver Laks’s commercial decisions affected WordPress negatively.

WordPress Lifts Ban on WP Engine: More on this feud

This feud started when Mullenweg made a few comments criticising WP Engine at the WordCamp event. He then posted two more blog posts criticizing WP Engine further, one of which announced the ban on WP Engine. In the first blog post, Mullenweg called WP Engine a ‘cancer’ to WordPress. WP Engine has been allegedly lacking in its contributions towards WordPress despite using its free resources. Furthermore, WP Engine has also been accused of profiting off of the WP Engine and WordPress confusion, which has been emphasized over and over by Mullenweg. In fact, Mullenweg has reiterated a few times that ‘WP Engine is not WordPress’.

After the scathing comments and subsequent ban by WordPress, WP Engine sent Automattic a cease-and-desist letter. The hosting provider demanded for Mullenweg to retract his previous statements. In a turn of events, Automattic sent over their cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine and accused them of infringing on WordPress’ trademark.

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Matt Mullenweg Critizes WP Engine at WordCamp US 2024

WordPress.org Blocks WP Engine

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Automattic has announced that Tumblr blogs will be moving all of its blogs to the WordPress backend. Tumblr will slowly be migrating over half a billion blogs over to WordPress which is a tricky and lengthy process but doable.

In an official blog post, Automattic has put out official statements clarifying Tumblr’s migration. Tumblr is stated to remain the same as it used to be. Users will not notice a difference on the outside. However, the backend operation will be transferred over to WordPress. There will be changes in terms of internal operations.

This transfer of Tumblr blogs to WordPress is expected to make it easier for blogs to be shared across platforms. Tumblr will be run on a solid infrastructure backed by WordPress and it will thus benefit from an open-source project such as WordPress. Furthermore, the blog post also stated that WordPress would also benefit from this transfer. WordPress will have the advantage of Tumblr’s tools and creativity that the teams invest in the site.

Tumblr Blogs After Automattic Acquisition in 2019

Automattic is the parent company of both Tumblr and WordPress. The company acquired Tumblr back in 2019 for only $3 million. This acquisition came six years after Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion which is a drastic amount compared to the $3 million that Automattic spent on buying Tumblr. However, Automattic’s CEO, Matt Mullenweg believed that Tumblr’s future still had promise. Since Automattic acquired Tumblr, the company has worked towards improving the blogging site and bringing Tumblr back to its glory days.

However, even with Mullenweg’s optimistic outlook, Tumblr kept losing money at a whopping $30 million yearly. Due to Tumblr’s losses, Mullenweg had to transfer most of Tumblr’s teams to Automattic in 2023. Additionally, Tumblr employees had also been laid off. Tumblr continues to generate revenue through ads, subscriptions and other digital services.

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