The curvature of influence:
Until recently, WordPress developers had little reason to consider “platform geopolitics.”
Plugin markets work best when many developers vie for site owners’ favour. They work badly when a few firms dominate, setting the defaults and shaping the roadmap. Developers like WP Fusion and Very Good Plugins therefore need a measure of whether the WordPress ecosystem is competitive or concentrated.
The most famous measure was invented by Albert Hirschman in 1945. It starts by summing the squares of each participant’s market share—in our world, that might mean install counts across the plugin repository. This index turns up in antitrust probes and, with a bit of tweaking, in GitHub issue threads and WordCamp talks. Almost every developer stumbles across it eventually.
Fewer know that Hirschman also created another index: one to measure power. Not just how big a player is, but how much leverage it wields over others. In WordPress, that means understanding Automattic’s gravitational pull: not just Matt Mullenweg’s philosophical charm, but the platform-level influence over Full Site Editing (FSE) and the Block Editor’s evolution.
The asymmetry of “open”
Hirschman rejected the naïve belief that because code sharing is open and mutually beneficial, it is politically or economically neutral. Relationships can be asymmetric. If a company can walk away from a project with less disruption than its partners, it can use that imbalance to extract concessions.
The WordPress community has been reminded of this in recent years. From the trademarking of terms like “Managed WordPress” to legal clashes with WP Engine, Automattic has shown that control over branding, repositories, and contribution rights can be wielded strategically. In 2024, a feud between Automattic and WP Engine saw access to key WordPress.org resources restricted, and Automattic’s own contribution hours to the open-source project plunge from roughly 4,000 a month to just 45. The episode prompted some developers to pull their plugins from the repo in protest, citing governance concerns and the erosion of trust.
The hegemon’s calculus
In Hirschman’s terms, a hegemon can use both carrots and sticks—feature inclusion and API stability as carrots, repository access or standard changes as sticks. The losses a developer suffers from resisting those demands are a measure of the hegemon’s power. Smaller shops try to protect themselves in advance by diversifying: supporting multiple CMSs, leaning into headless builds, or creating premium integrations that don’t depend entirely on WordPress.org distribution.
Yet this can be overdone. Like trade networks, plugin ecosystems grow in value with participation. If WP Fusion, for example, tried to wall itself off entirely from core FSE changes to protect its autonomy, it might inadvertently make its features less compatible and less attractive, nudging customers toward hegemon-friendly alternatives.
To keep developers engaged, a hegemon might promise to “only pull rank a little bit”—Mullenweg’s own stance in interviews has at times echoed this logic, positioning FSE and block standardization as the inevitable future, but not an immediate hostile takeover. If changes to the Block Editor are rolled out gradually, both Automattic and independent plugin shops can benefit.
Block Editor as battleground
In these models, FSE and the Block Editor become the modern equivalent of “global trade rules.” Integrating with them isn’t just a technical decision—it’s about market survival. When core defines block APIs or changes default behaviours, the cost of replacing those decisions can be huge.
If Automattic controls 80% of the block patterns in use, removing them means others must collectively expand their offerings by 80% just to maintain parity. If WP Fusion’s integration layer accounts for 10% of CRM connectivity in the ecosystem, replacing it would require a much smaller absolute effort. The result: changes from the hegemon are harder to unwind than those from smaller players.
Playing smart
The practical implications are clear. For smaller developers, sometimes the smartest play is to strategically align with core standards—even if grudgingly—while building independence elsewhere. Supporting the Block Editor while also offering non-FSE fallbacks, or integrating with competing ecosystems, can create resilience.
The reverse is also true: even modest moves to decouple from Automattic’s orbit can pay off. Alternative hosting alliances, direct distribution outside the repo, or multi-platform support can all reduce exposure.
Hirschman’s work, once a dusty footnote, suddenly feels relevant to plugin authors navigating the politics of the world’s most popular CMS. The revived interest isn’t just academic. It’s a survival guide—whether you’re a hegemon defending your roadmap, or a small shop like WP Fusion and Very Good Plugins looking to chart your own.