WordPress.org statement threatens possible shutdown for all of 2025

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg on Friday announced a shutdown of almost all services on WordPress.org, the open source project site that’s the home of the software, plugins, and the WordPress community, but was unclear on when the shutdown would end. 

This move sharply increases the uncertainty surrounding WordPress, IDC said.

“My sense is that many enterprise WordPress administrators will think twice about continuing to use the software under these circumstances,” said IDC Research Manager Michele Rosen. “It’s such a shame to watch a leader in the open source community repeatedly sabotage his own project.”

“At this point, I have real concerns about the impact of Matt Mullenweg’s words and actions on the overall image of open source software,” she added. “Even if he feels that WP Engine’s actions are unethical and the court is wrong, his actions are clearly having an impact on the WordPress ecosystem, including his own business. It seems self-destructive.”

To put this move into context, the shutdown only directly impacts WordPress.org, whereas most enterprises using Automattic’s WordPress are leveraging WordPress.com, the commercial hosting site. But given the ripple effects across all of WordPress, it is likely that enterprise users would also be impacted.

“The WordPress CMS is licensed under the GPL, so it is permanently available for free. However, a lot of WP’s value comes from themes and plugins,” Rosen said. “My understanding is that in some cases, the wordpress.org URL is hardcoded into WordPress, which can make it difficult or impossible to update your themes and plugins if they haven’t been added to the directory. It really depends on the particular website’s configuration.”

Hopes to restart ‘sometime in the new year’

The Mullenweg statement started off innocuously enough, saying that the WordPress.org team will take some time off for the holidays at the end of the year. But it turned unsettling when it raised the possibility that they may not reopen at all in 2025.

“In order to give myself and the many tired volunteers around WordPress.org a break for the holidays, we’re going to be pausing a few of the free services currently offered. New account registrations on WordPress.org — clarifying so press doesn’t confuse this: people can still make their own WordPress installs and accounts,” the statement said, adding that service pauses will also include “new plugin directory submissions, new plugin reviews, new theme directory submissions and new photo directory submissions. We’re going to leave things like localization and the forums open because these don’t require much moderation.”

But after mentioning his ongoing legal struggles with WP Engine, Mullenweg said “I hope to find the time, energy, and money to reopen all of this sometime in the new year. Right now, much of the time I would spend making WordPress better is being taken up defending against WP Engine’s legal attacks.”

Shutdown may hurt WordPress

Peter Zeitsev, the founder of Percona, an open source database software vendor, said that if the shutdown continues through all of 2025, “this will stifle the development of WordPress — no new user accounts, no new plugins published, etc. This could also spark the creation of an alternative hub to wordpress.org, one that would be truly operated in the interest of the [open source] community.”

Zeitsev said that he fears that there will be meaningful enterprise impacts if the shutdown continues. “Many WordPress users do not really interact with WordPress.org at all, but some commercial enterprise users can also rely on WordPress.org functionality, and they can be impacted,” he said.

Asked how this move will help WordPress.org, Zeitsev thinks it likely won’t, and that it might end up hurting them. 

“It might be that [Mullenweg] thinks there will be public/community pressure on WP Engine and the court to take his side, but I feel it will be seen as the opposite. Matt has been a wonderful steward of the WordPress community for so long, so governance and ownership of WordPress.org were not thought about,” Zeitsev said.

“Now things have changed, and commercial and community players in the WordPress space will be thinking about how much authority Matt personally has, and whether or not they can trust him to operate the ecosystem they invested so much in, in a way that reflects its interest.”