FreeWP, a fork of WordPress, has been launched, aiming to be community-centric again after breaking away from WordPress.org

Vinnie Green, a former member of the development community for WordPress, an open source content management system, has started a project called FreeWP , a fork of WordPress.

The Wait is Over: FreeWP is Here to Shake Up the WordPress Ecosystem - FreeWP
https://freewp.com/the-wait-is-over-freewp-is-here-to-shake-up-the-wordpress-ecosystem/

Forking is Beautiful – WordPress News
https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/

The background to the creation of FreeWP is that Matt Mullenweg, the developer of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, sharply criticized WP Engine, a WordPress-based web hosting service, for 'not giving back to the community,' and blocked WP Engine's access to WordPress.org, the WordPress development project.

WordPress announces it will block access from WP Engine, stating that 'users whose sites are broken should ask WP Engine to fix them' - GIGAZINE

However, Mr. Mullenweg's actions as the owner of WordPress.org have been questioned not only by WP Engine but also by Automattic employees, and people in the WordPress community who disagreed with Mr. Mullenweg's stance have been encouraged to resign from Automattic and even kicked out of the WordPress community's Slack.

'WordPress.org is owned by me personally,' says Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg, who is also the CEO of Automattic. Where is the line between a non-profit open source project and a commercial service?

by WordCamp United States

Green also criticized WordPress and Mullenweg's behavior and was blocked by the official WordPress X account.

This tweet got me blocked by the official @WordPress account, which is definitely not just a trench-coated trio of @photomatt https://t.co/FWJIHzaTW4 pic.twitter.com/yHDy3R5fy2

— Vinny Green (@vinnysgreen) October 5, 2024

'Mallenweg is mocking the community. He doesn't respect what the community has built. He doesn't believe in the value of the words he uses to speak to you with ChatGPT. He has the power. He has the keys. He has the money. He thinks we have nothing,' Green said, announcing the launch of FreeWP, a fork of WordPress.

Matt is laughing in the community's face. He doesn't respect what the community's built. He doesn't believe in the values he's ChatGPT'ing to you.

He's got the power.
He got the keys.
He got the money.
He thinks we have nothing. #freewp https://t.co/5Fg4FC17gN

— Vinny Green (@vinnysgreen) October 10, 2024

'Once formally established, FreeWP will be established as a contributor-owned and -operated organization, giving power back to the community where it belongs,' Green said on the FreeWP official website, saying that the organization will create a separate community from WordPress.org, run by Mullenweg and the WordPress Foundation.

FreeWP already has domains such as 'wp2cloud.com', 'wp2desktop.com', 'wp2.social', 'wp2.global' and 'wp2.wiki'. This 'wp2' stands for WordPress 2.0, and Green says that he aims to make WordPress free, open, and community-driven.

In response, Mullenweg commented through the official WordPress account, 'WordPress itself started as a fork of the b2/cafelog project. (Omitted) If you don't agree with the direction WordPress is going, we encourage you to work with Green to develop a great fork of WordPress. Long live FreeWP!'

The right to fork the software is at the heart of open source. WordPress itself started as a fork of the b2/cafelog project. WordPress was one of several forks from b2, which included b2++ (which eventually became WordPress Multisite) and some like @b2evolution which still…

— WordPress (@WordPress) October 10, 2024