As part of Matt Mullenweg’s extortion attempt against WP Engine (and with his latest action, the wider WordPress community), he has claimed that there was confusion between WordPress and WP Engine. As many have pointed out, there is much more confusion between WordPress and his company Automattic’s WordPress.com service. That isn’t the only place where there is confusion. Take this recent attempt at an explanation of the structure of WordPress, including the WordPress Foundation:

WordPress’s structure works similar to the Mozilla Foundation, with a small exception that Matt is a majority stake on both sides (Automattic and the WordPress Foundation). Mozilla’s board does have some cross-over between the Foundation and Corporation, but with larger boards that influence is diluted.

The comparison to the Mozilla Foundation doesn’t come out of nowhere. The website of the WordPress Foundation specifically cites the Mozilla Foundation as an inspiration:

We’re inspired by a number of other organizations and non-profits:

• Mozilla Foundation, making the web and email more accessible and built on open standards.

But it turns out they are not similar.

Contrary to that quote above, the Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. So the corporate entity is part of the foundation. The foundation also does basic things like tell you who the board members (and even who the previous one were). The same isn’t true of the WordPress Foundation.

Here is how Mozilla described their set up:

The Mozilla Foundation remains the nucleus for the Mozilla project. It maintains the primary responsibility for managing the open source project, stewarding and distributing the source code, setting policies, and organizing the relationships between all participants in the project. As the Mozilla Foundation focuses on the project’s governance, infrastructure and source code, the Mozilla Corporation will focus on developing and delivering end-user products, including marketing, sponsorships and a range of distribution-related activities. These activities are also expected to generate revenue, but the Mozilla Corporation only intends to pursue those that fit with the Mozilla project’s focus on end-user experience and are consistent with the public benefit goals of the parent Mozilla Foundation.

The WordPress Foundation and Automattic are separate entities. With the only overlap appearing to be Matt and the WordPress trademark.

The WordPress Foundation owns trademarks (though sub-licenses the WordPress trademark to his company), has a scholarship, and has a subsidiary that is involved in WordCamps.

To add to the confusion, the foundation website has a projects page, which lists various components of WordPress, but before that it says:

Matt Mullenweg, the director of the WordPress Foundation, has been directly involved in the creation of, or coordination of volunteers around, a number of WordPress projects that espouse the core philosophy:

Notice that it doesn’t actually say the things then listed are part of the foundation. So what is the purpose of that other than to conflate the foundation with with mostly unrelated projects?

While the Mozilla Foundation “focuses on the project’s governance, infrastructure and source code,” Matt Mullenweg apparently personally owns the WordPress website. At least some of the infrastructure for the WordPress website is provided by Automattic. For example, images on the WordPress website are served from ps.w.org and i0.wp.com, which are served from Automattic IP addresses. There doesn’t appear to be disclosure on what the connection between WordPress and Automattic for the infrastructure of the website and, importantly, what access to WordPress information they have that others don’t. The only instance we could quickly find of any information on that front at all didn’t provide much information (unsurprisingly, it came in response to a question from Sé Reed).

The two directors of the WordPress Foundation other than Matt Mullenweg are not involved with WordPress, they would be unlikely to take action in the current situation. But even if they wanted to take action, they wouldn’t be able to take direct action. Maybe, they could try to revoke the use of the WordPress trademark by WordPress, but there could be a legal agreement that would prevent that.