This heated controversy is over a technology for the creation and hosting of sites that are on the world of WordPress, a phenomenon among its many users. On one side is a clash between the founder of WordPress, Automattic's chief executive Matt Mullenweg, and WP Engine-the host site of the built WordPress pages.

WordPress is open-source and free. It's powering a significant part of the internet, like around 40% of the websites out there. There's an option to host it on a website or just use one of the ready-made solutions, such as Automattic or WP Engine.

In mid-September, Mullenweg published a blog post where he labeled WP Engine as a "cancer to WordPress." The host, according to Mullenweg, has disabled the ability for users to view and track the revision history for every post. He believes that this feature forms the "core of the user promise of protecting your data" and that WP Engine turns it off by default to save money.

He also attacked investor Silver Lake with WP Engine, saying they don't give enough back to the open source project and that WP Engine's use of the "WP" brand has confused customers into thinking it is part of WordPress.
The legal battle
WP Engine responded with a cease-and-desist letter to Mullenweg and Automattic, demanding that they retract their statements. It also argued that its use of the WordPress trademark was fair use.

The company claimed that Mullenweg said he would take a "scorched earth nuclear approach" against WP Engine unless it agreed to pay "a significant percentage of its revenues for a license to the WordPress trademark."

As a reaction, Automattic retaliated by sending its cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine stating that they infringed the trademark usage rules of WordPress and WooCommerce.

WordPress Foundation also changed the page of Trademark Policy and mentioned that the hosting company WP Engine has confused its users.

The WordPress trademarks do not encompass the abbreviation 'WP, but please don't use it in a way that confuses people. For instance, many believe WP Engine is 'WordPress Engine' and officially connected with WordPress, which is not true. They've never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite taking billions of revenue on top of WordPress," the new page states.

WP Engine ban and trademark battle
Mullenweg subsequently prevented WP Engine from accessing the resources of WordPress.org. Although things like plug-ins and themes are under an open source license, providers like WP Engine have to run a service to fetch them, which is not covered under the open source license.

This crashed many websites, which means they could not update plug-ins and themes, among other things. The incident also exposed some of the websites to security attacks. In the end, the community did not like this trend of making small websites vulnerable and powerless.

After the attack, WP Engine published a post in which Mullen Weg had, according to them, abused his WordPress control to sabotage access to the website WordPress.org for WP Engine's clients.

In such a scenario, Matt Mullenweg's unprecedented and unjustifiable action is interfering with the normal operation of the whole WordPress ecosystem, not just WP Engine and our customers but all WordPress plugin developers and open source users who are dependent on WP Engine tools, the company said.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has misused his influence on WordPress by denying WP Engine access to https://t.co/ZpKb9q4jPh, citing that it's because WP Engine has been suing https://t.co/erlNmkIol2. That is categorically false. Our Cease &…\\
— WP Engine (@wpengine) September 26, 2024
WordPress.org then removed the restriction until October 1 after taking a temporary action by allowing access to the resources of WP Engine on September 27,.

In his blog post, Mullenweg clears that the fight is only with WP Engine regarding trademarks. According to him, Automattic has been trying to reach a trademark licensing deal for quite a long time; however, the only response of WP Engine has been "to string us along".

On September 30, the hosting company updated its site's footer a day before WordPress.org's deadline for the ban on WP Engine, to clarify that it is not directly affiliated with the WordPress Foundation or owns the WordPress trade.
"WP Engine is a proud member and supporter of the community of WordPress® users.". The WordPress® trademark is a registered trademark of the WordPress Foundation, and the Woo® and WooCommerce® trademarks are registered trademarks of WooCommerce, Inc. The names and logos of WordPress, Woo, and WooCommerce on this website are for identification purposes only and do not imply any endorsement by WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc. The updated description on the website read: "WP Engine is not endorsed or owned by, or affiliated with, the WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc."

The company changed its plan names from "Essential WordPress," "Core WordPress," and "Enterprise WordPress" to "Essential," "Core," and "Enterprise."

WP Engine said in a statement that it changed those terms to moot Automattic's claims.

"We, like the rest of the WordPress community, use the WordPress mark to describe our business. Automattic's suggestion that WPE needs a license to do that is simply wrong, and reflects a misunderstanding of trademark law. To moot its claimed concerns, we have eliminated the few examples Automattic gave in its September 23rd letter to us," a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.

On X, the company posted that it has successfully deployed its own solution for updating plug-ins and themes.

We are pleased to report that our solution has now been fully deployed and regular workflow practices have returned to our customers around the globe. We thank all our customers for their patience and support during the last week. Like so many of you, we love WordPress, and are…

— WP Engine (@wpengine) October 1, 2024
On October 15, TechCrunch reported that Automattic planned to define trademarks since early this year involving "nice and note nice" lawyers, according to an internal blog post written by the company's then chief legal officer. The post also mentioned a strategy to file more trademarks, which the foundation eventually did in July.

Community Impact
It could happen to other projects. The community needs a statement from Automattic that now holds the exclusive license on the WordPress trademark indicating just what people can and cannot use with respect to "WordPress".

The WordPress Foundation, holding the trademark, has filed "Managed WordPress" and "Hosted WordPress." In case these trademarks are issued, developers and providers would fear that they might be against them.
Developers fear relying on commercial open-source products related to WordPress with access that can quickly take away.

Speaking against the monopoly of one individual in control of WordPress, Ghost, the creator of open source content management system, weighed in. "That web needs more independent organisations and needs more diversity," he said in an X post. "40 percent of the web and 80 percent of the CMS market should not be controlled by any one individual".

On October 9, web application development framework Ruby on Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson said that Automattic is violating the principles of open source software by asking WP Engine to pay 8% of its revenues.

Automattic is totally offside and the damage potential to the open source world goes well beyond WordPress. Let's not get sidetracked by the theatrics or its characters, he said in a blog post.

On the same day, Mullenweg added a new checkbox to the contributor login on WordPress.org that requires everyone to confirm they are not affiliated with WP Engine in any way or form. The move received flak from the community. Contributors complained they were banned from community Slack for speaking against the change.

We say its customers, agencies, users, and the community are not the company's associates.

Like the rest of the community, we came to notice a new checkbox at https://t.co/ZpKb9q4jPh for logins, which has caused much confusion within the community of whether they must answer the question along with the checkbox or not.
We hold our customers, agencies, users and….

— WP Engine (@wpengine) October 9, 2024
On October 12, the control of the ACF, or Advanced Custom Fields plug-in, maintained by WP Engine, was usurped by WordPress.org. The ACF is actually a plug-in that makes creating custom fields on the WordPress edit screen much easier for any developer. With WP Engine having lost control over the public source plug-in repository, Silver Lake-backed company can no longer update the plugin. According to WordPress and Mullenweg, that's allowed under the policies on plug-ins.

WP Engine lawsuit
On October 3, WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg over claims of abuse of power in a California court. The hosting company further alleged that Automattic and Mullenweg didn't keep their promises to run WordPress open source projects without any constraints and giving the developers the freedom to build, run, modify, and redistribute the software.

"Matt Mullenweg's actions in the past ten days have revealed severe conflicts of interest and governance problems that, if unchecked, are destroying that trust. WP Engine has no choice but to pursue these claims in defense of its people, agency partners, customers, and the larger WordPress community," the company said in a statement to TechCrunch.

In addition, the court case contains some quoted texts in which Mullenweg asserts that he may potentially consider hiring WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner. Commenting Hacker News, Mullenweg said Brunner wanted to be an executive director of WordPress.org.
Automattic calls the case meritless.

"I stayed up last night reading WP Engine's Complaint, trying to find any merit anywhere to it. The whole thing is meritless, and we look forward to the federal court's consideration of 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, requesting the judge to restore its access to WordPress.org. The company also filed an administrative motion asking the court to shorten the time to hear its earlier preliminary injunction a day later.

On the same date, Mullenweg and team opposed an expedited hearing in a court document filed on October 21. They further argued that the case was not about WP Engine's access to WordPress because they already had access to "https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress" and could choose to use it in any way.

The complaint states it this way: "Rather than being about access to WordPress software, this case instead is about WordPress.org – a website owned and run by Defendant Matt Mullenweg individually, for the benefit of the community he loves," the filing reads.
WordPress.org is not WordPress. WordPress.org is not Automattic or the WordPress Foundation, and is not controlled by either. To the contrary, as Plaintiff itself acknowledges, WordPress.org is Mr. Mullenweg's responsibility.

On October 23, Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin ruled that the first hearing on primary injunction will be on November 26 unless there is an objection.

Automattic Exodus
On October 3, 159 Automattic employees who did not agree with Mullenweg's direction of the company and WordPress overall took a severance package and left the company. Almost 80 percent of people who left work in Automattic's Ecosystem / WordPress division.

On October 8, WordPress announced that Mary Hubbard, who has been the TikTok U.S.'s head of governance and experience, will start off as executive director. She has taken over the place that Josepha Haden Chomphosy vacates amid the 159 people quitting the company. A day prior to this, one of WP Engine's engineers went up on his social network of choice and announced his take-up with Automattic.

On October 12, Mullenweg wrote on his post that every Automattic employee working at the time would receive 200 A12 shares as an appreciation gesture. These shares are a special class meant for Automattic employees and can be sold after a year; they do not have an expiry date.

Two weeks later, on October 17, Mullenweg posted yet another alignment offer — this time with only four hours for response — complete with a nine-month severance package. But he added he would cut off anyone making the deal from WordPress's community on WordPress.org altogether.