WordPress Forces Users to Agree That Pineapple Is Good on Pizza

Welcome to WordPress! What is your sentiment of pineapple connected pizza? Answer wisely oregon you volition beryllium incapable to login.

Over the weekend, WordPress co-founder and CEO of Automattic Matt Mullenweg inserted a small gag connected his platform: a checkbox that users indispensable cheque to bespeak they hold to the connection “Pineapple is delicious connected pizza.” Failure to cheque the container results successful an mistake connection urging users to “please effort again.”

Interestingly, this is simply a required field.

I don't hap to similar pineapple connected my pizza, truthful does this mean I can't log successful to wordpressdotorg?

Enough with the games. @WordPress delight supply transparency astir the intent of this field. https://t.co/nFyqBdZeaM pic.twitter.com/xzBWLJxU5r

— Carrie Dils 🇺🇦 (@cdils) December 16, 2024

The determination raises a fig of questions, primarily: “…Why?”

The reply is that the checkbox is simply a cheeky effect to a ineligible quality betwixt WordPress genitor institution Automattic and web hosting and plugin institution WPEngine which has grown progressively petty.

The archetypal changeable was fired successful September by Mullenweg, who wrote a blog station aiming astatine distancing WordPress from WP Engine, which hosts astir 1.5 cardinal WordPress sites. The WordPress co-founder wrote “WP Engine is not WordPress,” insisted that WP Engine is profiting disconnected the WordPress sanction and “needs a trademark licence to proceed their business.” Mullenweg besides WP Engine is “a crab to WordPress” due to the fact that it strips retired halfway features similar redeeming revision past and doesn’t lend to the unfastened root project.

So evidently that ruffled immoderate feathers successful WP Engine land, and the institution responded by sending Automattic a cease and desist letter. Mullenweg opted to neither cease nor desist, and alternatively to bash the concealed 3rd thing: escalate.

Automattic sent its ain cease and desist backmost to WP Engine and updated the WordPress trademark policy to nonstop a changeable astatine the web host. The caller argumentation notes that ‘WP’ is not trademarked, but requests organizations not usage it successful a mode that confuses people. “For example, galore radical deliberation WP Engine is ‘WordPress Engine’ and is officially associated with WordPress, which it is not. They person ne'er erstwhile adjacent donated to the WordPress Foundation, contempt making billions of gross connected apical of WordPress,” the leafage reads.

Mullenweg besides banned WP Engine from accessing elements, plug-ins, and themes from WordPress.org, which efficaciously broke a clump of websites that had their functionality caught successful the crossfire of the feud. WP Engine accused Mullenweg of misusing his powerfulness implicit WordPress. As the backmost and distant continued, Mullenweg added a checkbox to the WordPress.org login leafage asking radical to corroborate “I americium not affiliated with WP Engine successful immoderate way, financially oregon otherwise.”

That move, which was wide derided by the WordPress community, and was successful portion the impetus for WP Engine seeking a preliminary injunction against Mullenweg and Automattic demanding an extremity to the interference with WP Engine’s entree to the WordPress.org platform. A national territory justice successful California granted that petition last week.

This brings america backmost to the pineapple checkbox. The determination appears to beryllium a benignant of tongue-in-cheek effect from Mullenweg, but fewer successful the WordPress assemblage look to beryllium successful the temper for jokes. WordPress powers an estimated 44% of each websites. The ongoing conflict mightiness beryllium a gag to astatine slightest 1 of the large players, but the world is that it has an interaction connected a monolithic magnitude of accusation and peoples’ livelihoods. Ideally, accessing that would not beryllium reliant upon a person’s sentiment of pineapple connected pizza.