Six Apart Takes Aim At WordPress Users; WordPress Pissed

Anil Dash, Six Apart’s Chief Evangelist, took aim at WordPress users in a blog post today. Instead of upgrading to the new version of WordPress, he says, consider moving over to their platform.

Now, it’s generally fair game to target your competitors, and Dash’s blog post was so tame that I can’t even find a good quote to pull into this post. But that didn’t stop WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg from going for blood. In a Twitter message, Matt says “six apart is getting desperate, and dirty.” Anil fires back almost immediately with “@photomatt desperation is resorting to name-calling and slander instead of substance — if there’s a factual error, i’m glad to fix it.”

Last week the two companies dueled in the comments to a post we wrote – See David Recordon (SixApart) and Lloyd Budd (Automattic) comments starting here.

Who’s right? No idea. Dash notes that upgrading WordPress is not exactly easy. WordPress CEO Toni Schneider emailed me to say that some bloggers are actually moving from Moveable Type to WordPress.

What’s clear is that neither platform is perfect, and requires far too much work for the bloggers. They both need to watch out for upcoming next generation platforms, which may eat both their lunches.