Automattic, after significantly reducing its contribution hours earlier this year to the WordPress project from a staggering 3,539 hours per week to a mere 45 hours, is now returning to contributing to the WordPress project. Automattic is re-engaging across key areas of the project, from WordPress Core, Gutenberg, Playground, Openverse, and WordPress.org.
WordPress Contributions Resume at Automattic
After a brief pause to regroup and plan their next steps, the team announced they are ready to fully reengage with the WordPress project, “After pausing our contributions to regroup, rethink, and plan strategically, we’re ready to press play again and return fully to the WordPress project.”
Automattic revealed in the annoucement that their pause provided an opportunity to gain important insights into WordPress’s broad impact and the potential to influence the future of the web through collaboration, “ We’ve learned a lot from this pause that we can bring back to the project, including a greater awareness of the many ways WordPress is used and how we can shape the future of the web alongside so many passionate contributors.”
However, the announcement did not disclose any specifics about contributor numbers or contribution hours.
Automattic vs WP Engine: A Brief Recap
The tensions between Automattic and WP Engine trace back to Matt Mullenweg’s keynote at WordCamp US 2024. This escalated into legal disputes involving cease-and-desist orders and WP Engine’s temporary ban from accessing WordPress.org resources. There was also the controversial forking of the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin and its return based on a court order.
Complications continued when WordPress.org modified its login page, requiring users to confirm non-affiliation with WP Engine, a decision that was later revised.
These ongoing legal battles have influenced WordPress’s development cycle, leading to a change in the release schedule: moving from three major releases per year to just one.