This story has been updated with more details as it developed. We will continue to do so as long as the case and dispute are ongoing.
The world of WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites, is going through a very heated controversy. The central theme is the fight between WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress.
WordPress technology is open source and free, and powers a large portion of the Web: around 40% of websites. Websites can host their own WordPress instance or use a solution provider like Automattic or WP Engine for a plug-and-play solution.
In mid-September, Mullenweg wrote a blog post calling WP Engine a “cancer for WordPress.” He criticized the host for disabling users' ability to view and track the revision history of each post. Mullenweg believes this feature is the “core of the user's promise to protect their data” and said WP Engine turns it off by default to save money.
He also called out WP Engine investor Silver Lake and said that they do not contribute enough to the open source project and that WP Engine's use of the “WP” brand has confused customers into believing it is part of WordPress. .
The legal battle
In response, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mullenweg and Automattic, asking them to withdraw their comments. It also said that use of the WordPress trademark was covered by fair use.
The company claimed that Mullenweg had said he would take a “nuclear scorched earth approach” against WP Engine unless it agreed to pay “a significant percentage of its revenue for a license to the WordPress brand.”
In response, Automattic sent their cease and desist letter to WP Engine, saying they had violated WordPress and WooCommerce trademark usage rules.
The WordPress Foundation also changed its Trademark Policy page and called out WP Engine, claiming that the hosting service has confused users.
“The abbreviation 'WP' is not covered by WordPress trademarks, but don't use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think that WP Engine is 'WordPress Engine' and is officially associated with WordPress, but it is not. “They haven’t even donated a single time to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions in revenue on top of WordPress,” the updated page reads.
WP Engine ban and trademark battle
Mullenweg then banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org resources. While things like plugins and themes are under an open source license, providers like WP Engine must run a service to retrieve them, which is not covered by the open source license.
This broke many websites and prevented them updating plugins and themes. It also left some of them exposed to security attacks. The community was not happy with this approach of leaving small websites helpless.
In response to the incident, WP Engine said in a post that Mullenweg had misused his WordPress management to interfere with WP Engine customers' access to WordPress.org.
“Matt Mullenweg's unprecedented and unjustified action interferes with the regular functioning of the entire WordPress ecosystem, impacting not only WP Engine and our customers, but all WordPress plugin developers and open source users who rely on the WP Engine tools like ACF,” WP Engine said.
On September 27, WordPress.org temporarily lifted the ban.allowing WP Engine to access resources until October 1st.
Mullenweg wrote a blog post clarifying that the fight is only against WP Engine for trademarks. He said Automattic has been trying to negotiate a brand licensing deal for a long time, but WP Engine's only response has been to “shackle us.”
On September 30, a day before WordPress.org was due to ban WP Engine, the hosting company updated its site's footer to clarify that it is not directly affiliated with the WordPress Foundation nor does it own the WordPress commerce.
“WP Engine is a proud and supportive member of the WordPress® user community. The WordPress® trademark is the intellectual property of the WordPress Foundation, and the Woo® and WooCommerce® trademarks are the intellectual property of WooCommerce, Inc. Uses of the names WordPress®, Woo®, and WooCommerce® on this website are for identification. solely and does not imply an endorsement by the WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc. WP Engine is not endorsed, owned by, or affiliated with the WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc.” the updated description on the site reads.
The company also changed the names of its plans from “Important WordPress”, “Core WordPress” and “Enterprise WordPress” to “Important”, “Core” and “Enterprise”.
WP Engine said in a statement that it changed these terms to dismiss Automattic's claims.
“We, like the rest of the WordPress community, use the WordPress brand to describe our business. Automattic's suggestion that WPE needs a license to do that is simply incorrect and reflects a misunderstanding of trademark law. To allay your alleged concerns, we have removed the few examples Automattic gave us in its September 23 letter,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.
On October 1, the company posted on X that it had successfully implemented its own solution for updating plugins and themes.
On October 15, TechCrunch reported that Automattic was planning to settle trademarks earlier this year involving “nice and personable” lawyers, according to an internal blog post written by the company's then-chief legal officer. The publication also mentioned a strategy to register more brands, which the foundation finally did in July.
The WordPress community and other projects feel that this could happen to them too and want clarification from Automattic, which has an exclusive license to the WordPress brand. The community is also asking for clear guidance on how they can and cannot use “WordPress.”
The WordPress Foundation, which owns the brand, has also trademarked “Managed WordPress” and “Hosted WordPress.” Developers and suppliers fear that if these trademarks are granted, they could be used against them.
The developers have expressed concerns about relying too much on commercial open source products related to WordPress, especially when access to them can quickly disappear.
The founder of the open source content management system Ghost, John O'Nolan, also weighed in on the issue and criticized the management of WordPress by a single person.
“The internet needs more independent organizations and it needs more diversity. “40% of the web and 80% of the CMS market should not be controlled by any individual,” he said in a post.
On October 9, the creator of the Ruby on Rails application development framework, David Heinemeier Hansson, opined that Automattic is violating the principles of open source software by asking WP Engine to pay 8% of its revenue.
“Automattic is completely out of touch and the potential damage to the open source world extends far beyond WordPress. “Don’t let the drama or its characters distract you from that threat,” he said in a blog post.
The same day, Mullenweg added a new checkbox to the WordPress.org contributor login, asking people to verify that they are not associated with WP Engine in any way. This measure was criticized by the taxpayer community. Some taxpayers said they were banned from the loose community for opposing the measure.
In response, WP Engine said that its clients, agencies, users, and the community as a whole are not partners of the company.
On October 12, WordPress.org took over the ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) plugin, which makes it easy for WordPress developers to add custom fields on the edit screen, which was maintained by WP Engine. As WP Engine lost control of the open source plugin repository, the Silver Lake-backed company was unable to update the plugin. WordPress.org and Mullenweg said the plugin guidelines allow the organization to take this step.
WP Engine Lawsuit and
On October 3, WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg for abuse of power in a California court. The hosting company also alleged that Automattic and Mullenweg failed to live up to their promises to run open source WordPress projects without restrictions and to give developers the freedom to create, run, modify and redistribute the software.
“Matt Mullenweg’s conduct over the past ten days has exposed significant conflicts of interest and governance issues that, if left unchecked, threaten to destroy that trust. “WP Engine has no choice but to make these claims to protect its people, partner agencies, clients, and the WordPress community at large,” the company said in a statement to TechCrunch.
The lawsuit also points to alleged texts from Mullenweg regarding the potential hiring of WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner. In a comment on Hacker Information, Mullenweg said that Brunner wanted to be CEO of WordPress.org.
In response, Automattic called this case unfounded.
“I stayed up last night reading the WP Engine complaint, trying to find any merit to it. “All of this is baseless and we hope the federal court will consider their lawsuit,” the company’s legal representative, Neal Katyal, said in a blog post.
On October 18, WP Engine filed an injunction in a California court, asking the judge to restore its access to WordPress.org. A day later, the company filed an administrative motion asking the court to shorten the deadline for hearing its previous preliminary injunction.
automatic exodus
On October 3, 159 Automattic employees who disagreed with Mullenweg's direction of the company and with WordPress in general accepted a severance package and left the company. Nearly 80% of the people who left worked in Automattic's Ecosystem/WordPress division.
On October 8, WordPress said Mary Hubbard, who was TikTok's US head of governance and experience, will start as CEO. This position was previously held by Josepha Haden Chomphosy, who was one of the 159 people who left Automattic. A day before this, one of the WP Engine engineers announced that he would be joining Automattic.
On October 12, Mullenweg wrote in a post that each Automattic employee would receive 200 A12 shares as a token of appreciation. These shares are a special class for Automattic employees that can be sold after one year and have no expiration date.
On October 17, Mullenweg posted another alignment offer on Automattic Slack, with a response window of just four hours, with a nine-month severance package. However, if anyone accepted the offer, they would also lose access to the WordPress.org community, Mullenweg said.
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