WP Engine escalated its Federal complaint by citing Automattic’s publication of the WP Engine Tracker website as evidence of intent to harm WP Engine and exposing customers to potential cybercrimes. The updated complaint incorporates recent actions by Mullenweg to further strengthen their case.

The inclusion of thousands of domains that no longer use WordPress raises significant questions about how long identifiable information about WordPress installations has been collected and stored.

WP Engine has already alleged that Automattic's conduct amounts to attempted extortion, libel, interference with contractual relations, computer fraud and abuse, and unfair competition, among others.

The amended complaint, which now spans 144 pages—up from its original 62—alleges that Automattic and Mullenweg are using the WordPress trademarks to block WP Engine from the WordPress community as a means to “extort monopolistic pricing,” violating United States antitrust laws.

During the earlier part of the interview, before the focus turned to WP Engine, Mullenweg commented that because WordPress is open source it belongs to all of us who uses it. That’s true, but that doesn’t seem to be how he actually treats the WordPress ecosphere he’s created. It’s a fiefdom in which he wants to call all the shots, and community only seems to be legitimate to him if it’s a community he can own and monetize.

In an ironic twist to the ongoing dispute between Automattic and WP Engine, a newly published website on WPEngineTracker.com is displaying a protest message against CEO Matt Mullenweg.

Veteran WordPress core committers and contributors have described a “culture of fear” within the project, driven by co-founder Matt Mullenweg’s “outsized control” and the potentially career-ending consequences of opposing him. Many say the lack of formal governance has left them vulnerable to the whims of Mullenweg, whose recent actions have raised questions about the future direction of WordPress.

While data about WP Engine websites can be gathered from public sources, it's not clear whether the .csv file of WP Engine websites was obtained from a public source. There's some speculation that the data may have come from non-public WordPress.org access logs rather than DNS queries or a website crawler.

A few weeks ago, I sat down with my WordPress installation to see how difficult it would be to actually use a different API endpoint entirely instead of the default WordPress.org site.

In this video I am explaining the drama, but I am also sharing my opinion on how I think the WordPress founder is a bit hypocritical in some areas, and I offer some solutions for a better WordPress future.

The first comment notes that the counter is incorrect because it claims to count websites that have left WP Engine but that it should be saying how many domains have left. The reason is because of the “websites” listed redirect to one domain, which means that the count is inflated.

This post is a response to “Defending Open Source: Protecting the Future of WordPress,” which was recently published on Automattic’s website as an explanation of the company’s ongoing dispute with WP Engine. I feel it’s important to issue a critical reading of Automattic’s post, as it doesn’t seem to offer much of a serious or objective examination of the issues at hand.

To take Mullenweg’s argument about “bastardized simulacra” to its logical end, Mullenweg must believe that millions of customers have been wrong all along—they’ve somehow been duped. The product they’re using isn’t WordPress, even though that’s what they’re buying. And, what’s more, the changes WP Engine has made are so bad, so egregious, that virtually every major WordPress host does the exact same thing… including Automattic’s WordPress.com and WordPress.com VIP products, which both limited revisions before Mullenweg’s September 21 blog post, and all heavily modify WordPress through custom code, whether direct or via mu-plugins.

This new legal filing makes it crystal clear that Mullenweg has sole discretion over who can access it. If he’s ever upset with you for any reason, he can turn off your access or take over your plugin. I think that should deeply frighten anyone using WordPress today.

I have personally been blocked on X/Twitter by Matt, Automattic, and by the WordPress account itself. Sadly, it's become somewhat of a badge of honour, meaning at least we went out standing up for what we believed in instead of staying silent.

This very public spat has raised concerns among developers across the WordPress ecosystem who now worry whether they, too, could get cut off from WordPress. But Mullenweg doesn’t seem too worried about the impact.

The response, though, was beyond the pale. I can’t even link to it, it was so vile and hateful. Matt (or someone working for Matt but I assume not) took the post of a little community of six hundred Twitter followers and little more than 1,000 people globally and viciously attacked it in overtly sexual and sexist language.

After 159 Automattic employees took the first deal, which included six months of severance, Mullenweg posted another alignment offer on Automattic Slack on October 17. This second deal offered nine months of severance, but employees only had four hours to respond.

The ongoing dispute between WordPress and WP Engine has led to significant disruptions in the plugin ecosystem.

The utter hypocrisy of Matt Mullenweg’s actions isn’t really unsurprising to anyone who has watched Automattic for the last decade or more but it is my final straw.

A source familiar with Sydney WordCamp's operations told The Register that volunteers saw the takedown request as a personal threat – as non-compliance with the request would have led to them being forced from the event's organizing team.

WordPress.org is Matt Mullenweg’s personal website [source link in article]. Matt is also the owner of our largest competitor, WooCommerce. The conflict of interest was always there, but in the weeks following WordCamp US 2024, Matt crossed several lines that make it crystal clear that he has no intentions of running WordPress.org as an open and fair platform.

One of the world's biggest web publishing platforms - used by a large chunk of the internet - is locked in a spat which is affecting thousands of businesses worldwide.

Matt Mullenweg portrayed himself as a victim in his dispute with WP Engine, claiming in a tweet and blog post that they are ‘trying to curtail’ his free speech. Social media responses ranged from polite debunking of his First Amendment claim to accusations of hypocrisy.

On October 12th we sent a cease and desist letter to Automattic and WordPress.com regarding the unauthorized use of the WP Fusion trademark on .com's private mirror of the WordPress plugin repository. Automattic has responded and agreed to take down the listing. Here's a bit of background on why we filed the C&D, and the outcome.

Within the hour he announced that he had just spoken to the leaker and accepted their resignation. Within minutes a post to the Access-Checklist P2 would reveal the identity to the entire company.

Automattic’s actions also echo a supply chain attack in some ways. In a plugin directory, it’s considered a supply chain attack if an actor silently takes over a plugin and ships functional changes without disclosure, which is exactly what happened in this case. Automattic didn’t merely take ownership of the ACF plugin: it shipped smaller business logic changes which customers were not notified about. As a result, hundreds of sites were broken.

WP Engine claims it’s facing ‘multiple forms of immediate irreparable harm’ following Mullenweg’s public campaign against the company.

Following the recent ban and ACF to Secure Custom Fields fork/takeover incident, some plugin authors have announced their decision to remove their plugins from the WordPress.org repository.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg offered employees nine months of pay if they weren’t on board with his WP Engine dispute.