WordPress Turmoil and the FAIR Package Manager

I’d been a happy WordPress user since I switched from the Vignette content management system (CMS) for WordPress in 2003. Many others quickly joined me. Today, 43.5% of all websites use WordPress. But, then in 2024, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, who founded and is the CEO of Automattic, WordPress’s parent company, declared that WordPress hosting power WP Engine was a “cancer to WordPress” and things got really ugly really fast.

WP Engine is the most successful third-party WordPress company, with an estimated value of somewhere…