For the first time, Matt Mullenweg has announced a holiday break for WordPress.org services. In his blog post, he said, "In order to give myself and the many tired volunteers around WordPress.org a break for the holidays, we're going to be pausing a few of the free services currently offered."
The paused services include new account registrations on WordPress.org, plugin reviews, and new submissions to the plugin, theme, and photo directories.
During this time, WP Engine will retain full access to WordPress.org. Matt explained, "As you may have heard, I'm legally compelled to provide free labor and services to WP Engine thanks to the success of their expensive lawyers, so in order to avoid bothering the court I will say that none of the above applies to WP Engine, so if they need to bypass any of the above please just have your high-priced attorneys talk to my high-priced attorneys and we'll arrange access, or just reach out directly to me on Slack and I'll fix things for you."
Matt has not provided a specific date for resuming these services, stating, "I hope to find the time, energy, and money to reopen all of this sometime in the new year. Right now much of the time I would spend making WordPress better is being taken up defending against WP Engine's legal attacks. Their attacks are against Automattic, but also me individually as the owner of WordPress.org, which means if they win I can be personally liable for millions of dollars of damages."
He concluded the blog post by saying, "If you would like to fund legal attacks against me, I would encourage you to sign up for WP Engine services, they have great plans and pricing starting at $50/mo and scaling all the way up to $2,000/mo. If not, you can use literally any other web host in the world that isn't suing me and is offering promotions and discounts for switching away from WP Engine."
The official WordPress Twitter account echoed the announcement: "In order to give tired volunteers around WordPress.org a break for the holidays, we're going to be pausing a few of the free services currently offered...And to be super clear for the court so we're not held in contempt, none of this applies to @wpengine."
Some have applauded the much-needed break for volunteers, while others expressed concern over the indefinite suspension of services.
Since a WordPress.org account is mandatory to buy WordCamp tickets, the temporary suspension of new user registrations had raised concerns, as it restricted new users from buying tickets for upcoming WordCamps, including major events like WordCamp Europe, Asia, Pune, Kolhapur, and Ahmedabad, where tickets are already on sale.
Jeff Chandler commented on the issue, saying, "If the requirement is not removed, at the very least, for WordCamp sites with events coming up and they suffer because of it, that's going to be such a huge blow to current and future event organizers and to the community itself."
Joost de Valk of Emilia Capital raised the issue in WordPress GitHub and Dion Hulse reenabled the registration if the referrer is WordCamp. "Login: Enable user account creations when the referer is WordCamp. This allows for WordCamps tickets to continue to be bought. Per Matt.", reads the Trac message.