The conflict between WordPress and WP Engine is taking a new turn. WordPress has forked WP Engine’s ACF plug-in, without the makers’ permission.
The feud between WordPress and WP Engine continues. The conflict arose because Automattic, WordPress’ parent company, believes WP Engine should pay licensing fees for using WordPress. WP Engine refused to pay, resulting in them being denied access to WordPress resources for automatic updates. WP Engine took legal action, to which WordPress is now responding with another stunt.
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Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, announced via a blog post that the company has “forked” Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) into a new plug-in, which it is renaming Secure Custom Fields. For their part, the creators of ACF let it be known via X that WordPress has never before taken away a plug-in that is actively under development “unilaterally and forcibly,” they say without their permission.
Plug-in ‘forked’
WordPress has forked the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plug-in into a new plug-in Secure Custom Fields, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced in a blog post. AFC is a plug-in that allows users to create custom fields while editing pages, such as images or social media embeds, for example. Mullenweg reveals that it has stripped Secure Custom Fields of its commercial nature.
According to Mullenweg, WordPress has the right to modify a plug-in “without the developer’s permission. Here he refers to section 18 of the plug-in guidelines in his blog post.
The developers of AFC, however, think otherwise. Indeed, in a post on X, they reveal that WordPress has never before taken a plug-in that is actively under development “unilaterally and forcibly” from its creators, especially without their permission. The developers now recommend that users download the plug-in through the ACF website, as they no longer have control over the version previously installed by users.
Finally, Mullenweg’s blog post also talks about a security bug that would have been fixed, although he does not make it clear exactly what bug it is about.