The World War in WordPress between Automattic and WP Engine is still ongoing and escalating, especially when Jason Bahl, the developer of the WPGraphQL plugin (which converts data from WordPress into the popular GraphQL format used in the social world), announced his move from WP Engine to work directly with Automattic.
Jason Bahl, holding the position of Principal Software Engineer at WP Engine, has been with the company for three and a half years. He revealed that he received an offer from Automattic to join them while continuing to develop WPGraphQL as before, and to make WPGraphQL an official canonical plugin on WordPress.org.
Bahl mentioned that he enjoyed his time at WP Engine, and the company has taken good care of him as an employee. However, he found that WP Engine was slowly losing interest in the open-source world, which conflicted with his belief in open-source. His time was being consumed by internal projects instead of focusing on WPGraphQL, and he and some colleagues tried to persuade WP Engine to rekindle their interest in open-source, but to no avail. As a result, several of his coworkers have already left WP Engine.
He stated that Automattic has a long-standing reputation in the open-source community, making him believe that it is a better fit for WPGraphQL and will help the plugin continue to develop at a faster pace.
Personally, he does not see eye to eye with Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, on everything, such as disagreeing with blocking WP Engine customers’ access to WordPress.org abruptly. However, Matt himself is open to listening to differing opinions, which Bahl views as a common occurrence where people do not always see eye to eye on everything.
TLDR: Jason Bahl, the developer of WPGraphQL, has decided to leave WP Engine and join Automattic to further develop WPGraphQL as an official canonical plugin on WordPress.org. He believes Automattic’s open-source commitment aligns better with his values and will help WPGraphQL progress more rapidly.
Leave a Comment