WP Engine, a web hosting company, filed an injunction with a Northern California court, appealing to it to step in and reinstate its access to the WordPress.org open source repository.

Last month, WP Engine filed a lawsuit against WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Automattic. Following the filing of the lawsuit, Mullenweg, who also owns WordPress.org, barred the company's access to the open source project.

This also meant WP Engine couldn't update its Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plug-in, which it uses to make and edit their edit screens. This month, WordPress took control of ACF and forked the plug-in, citing developer guidelines, which gives them the power to change a plug-in "without developer consent, in the name of public safety.".

In the new filing, WP Engine seeks to reinstate "the status quo as it existed on September 20, 2024" regarding the company's access to the open source repo.

WPE respectfully requests that the Court issue a preliminary injunction restoring and preserving the status quo as it existed prior to Defendants' wrongful actions as described above. The preliminary injunction requires no security because returning the situation to the status quo will have no negative effect on Defendants,\" read the court filing.
Furthermore, these safeguards are also required to be granted to affiliates, partners, employees, users, and customers of the organization.

What's notable about Mullenweg's move, though, is that he added a new checkbox to the WordPress.org contributor login earlier this month stipulating that users should confirm they are not in any way affiliated with WP Engine. Contributors at the time said they got banned from the community Slack for criticizing the move.

The complaint attached a separate declaration by WP Engine's CEO Heather Brunner, stating that only recently did she understand that "wordpress.org was associated with and/or owned by the nonprofit WordPress Foundation.".

The company vigorously denies WP Engine's allegations -- which are gross mischaracterizations of reality -- and reserves all of our rights, an Automattic spokesperson said. Automattic is confident in our legal position and will vigorously litigate against this baseless filing, as well as pursue all remedies against WP Engine.