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Automattic is not the parent company of WordPress. They are the parent company of WordPress.com, the hosted website service that utilizes the open source WordPress platform.
WordPress — the GPL licensed open source project — was started in 2003 as a fork of b2 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.
Automattic was started by Matt Mullenweg in 2005 as a corporate entity, and they have an exclusive privilege to utilize the WordPress name and logo in their products for WordPress.com.
The WordPress Foundation owns and manages the WordPress trademark.
That said, WordPress.com and WordPress are not interchangeable terms. WordPress.com is distinctly Automattic’s product and not in any way related to the open source project.
WordPress is a content management system that is open source and developed by hundreds of contributors that volunteer their time and efforts. Many of those contributors work for companies that utilize WordPress in their day to day.
Automattic is one of the companies that supports some of their employees to work on the WordPress project, however they have no official ownership of the project.
How to distinguish WordPress versus Automattic
When a blogger or journalist references WordPress, WordPress.com, and Automattic, it is important to be specific in how you identify each entity.
- Automattic owns and runs WordPress.com, but WordPress.com is only one of their products.
- WordPress.com runs on WordPress, but the two terms are not interchangeable (The .com is important to include when referencing it).
- WordPress is open source and no corporate entity runs it or is parent to the project.
- The WordPress Foundation manages the trademark for WordPress.
- The trademark is typically not allowed to be used, but WordPress.com has an exception.
- Matt Mullenweg is a co-founder of WordPress, the founder of Automattic, and the head of the WordPress Foundation. Yes, this is confusing, but the differences matter.
Why does it matter how WordPress / WordPress.com / Automattic are referenced?
Primarily, it’s important because many people misattribute the WordPress project to Automattic, the company.
The people that work on WordPress put their energy and passion into the project. It’s demoralizing to hear the project referenced as something made by a company you have nothing to do with.
If you ever write about WordPress and are looking for a way to reference it, be sure you’re denoting the project properly. WordPress is an open source content management system.
Hey Brian, so true and we need to help people understand the distinction. I even struggle with people’s misconceptions with WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org. As a community it is still compared this way a lot. Totally confusing and so many end up thinking their site is actually going to be on .org. I always change it to WordPress.com vs. a self-hosted WordPress site.
Between your clarification and that one, I sometimes feel like I am having to make explain it daily 🙂
Hi Brian,
Short and to the point. It is always a struggle to make people understand the difference, but what’s often even more frustrating is that many people will answer “ok, but aren’t many people from WordPress.com contributors to WordPress?”. While it is true, there are even more WordPress contributors that aren’t working fro Automattic as you highlighted, but the shortcut is too easy.
Did I cause this article to be written? I’m sorry!
Ha, absolutely not 🙂 I’m not sure what you’re referencing. This mistake happens all the time on tech blogs. Nothing in particular caused me to write it; just had the time to finally do it.
Just like Google begging people to stop using their name as a verb, you can’t even imagine how much effort we’re putting into trying to get people to understand the difference. http://get.wp.com/ is only one example of that. We also reach out to as many publication making the mistake as we possibly can for them to rectify it in their post/articles. That’s why you’ll often see a note at the end along the lines of “updated: Automattic blah blah blah” if you revisit older articles from major publications (the ones who most often do proceed with at least an edit note). And so on. One of the biggest challenges is that Matt co-started both. But that’s not something we can change. 🙂
Who is the major funder of the Foundation?
For-profit Automattic vs non-profit WordPress is just semantics.
When most of your money comes from one source, you might as well be a subsidiary.
This is very insulting for people working in WordPress but NOT working for Automattic
Please don’t shoot the messenger.
Automattic is getting RICH off all the WordPress people. Vaultpress, WP.com, VIP, Polldaddy, and other businesses generate many tens-of-mllions every year.
It’s a business and the Foundation is the primary front-man (advertising/PR, buzz source).
But heaven forbid anyone speaketh the truth about this, 🙂 lol!
Guess I just don’t understand this “drink the purple koolade” loyalty to WordPress.
“WordPress is open source and no corporate entity runs it or is parent to the project.
You’re splitting hairs here. Matt co-founded WordPress the software, founded the WordPress foundation, and founded Automattic. Matt is the director of the Foundation, and CEO of Automattic. Saying there is a separation between the entities seems a bit disingenuous.
Case in point, if the Foundation were *truly* independent, they wouldn’t violate their own trademark policies and allow Automattic use of the trademark for wordpress.com.
Thank you Brian, for making the legalities a little less confusing.