I'm #teamWordPress and #teamautomattician all day, every day. But I still believe in the creed, even though I believe Matt Mullenweg has perverted it into an unrecognizable jumble of BS to enrich himself on the backs of underpaid staff and unpaid volunteers.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg made another buyout offer this week, and threatened employees who speak to the press with termination.

A timeline of key events in the dispute between WordPress (or, better to say Matt Mullenweg) and WP Engine, documenting important moments and changes in their relationship.

Wordpress and Automattic started what was initially a fairly reasonable complaint against WP Engine but what has since turned in to an absolute mess putting the entire Wordpress ecosystem at stake.

WordPress has been the most popular content management system for years — and WP Engine was one of the most popular WordPress hosting services around. Not long ago, everyone was happy. Now, it's a miserable open-source business war. What happened?

From investments and trademarks to lawsuits and bans, this timeline highlights the key events that have shaken the WordPress ecosystem and put its open-source future in jeopardy.

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg has weaponized WordPress.org and appropriated the popular Advanced Custom Fields plugin from its creators. This action sets a dangerous precedent, and violates the integrity and security of the platform.

As Matt Mullenweg and David Heinemeier Hansson feud over FOSS, community worries about the fallout

Have you suffered financial losses due to the financial fallout from this WP Engine vs Automattic dispute? Please post your details here so we can add it to the tracker!

Now, more than 150 employees have left WordPress’s parent company Automattic (nearly 10% of the workforce) after Mullenweg offered buyouts to anyone who disagreed with his approach with WP Engine.

According to an internal blog post a source shared with TechCrunch, Automattic was crafting a plan to get significantly stricter about trademark enforcement across WordPress and its e-commerce platform WooCommerce since at least the beginning of the year. Separate sources have confirmed the authenticity of the post.

WordPress's latest move of hijacking the ACF plugin firmly solidified that it can't be trusted, regardless of the reasoning behind it.

In late September 2024, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, started a public dispute with hosting provider WP Engine, calling the company “a cancer to WordPress.” He accused WP Engine of not contributing enough to the WordPress ecosystem and profiting off of trademark confusion. The story only got stranger from there…

As part of Matt’s increasing irresponsible and irrational behaviour, WordPress took over the extremely popular plugin, Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), renaming it “Secure Custom Fields” (SCF). With it, they stole years of reputation, good reviews and most importantly, trust from ACF.

Every time Matt Mullenweg has lied, misrepresented or behaved in a questionable manner.

Here’s the kicker: Any fork, especially if WP Engine backs it, will be a win for Matt. It means they’re finally contributing. Since it’s GPL their modifications are available to everyone else, including Automattic.

Just when the community thought things couldn’t get more disruptive – because they’re already mighty disruptive – they have.

So while I always try to keep things from getting personal, I'll break practice to make this plea: Matt, don't turn into a mad king.

Over the last few weeks, the web has watched in horror as Matt Mullenweg has "gone nuclear" after starting his own personal crusade against WP Engine. At this point, it doesn't really matter whether Matt had a valid point or not, because in the process he's executed a supply chain attack, thrown WordPress users under a bus and then proceeded to lock core contributors out.

I am officially terminating my core contributions and involvement with the WordPress project. This project was something I poured hundreds of hours into and it greatly pains me to just stop here. Anyone is free to lead the project again in the #core-fields channel of Slack. I am done making excuses for Matt's actions and will not associate myself with core any longer.

We were saddened and appalled by Matt Mullenweg’s actions this morning appropriating the Advanced Custom Fields plugin that our ACF team has been actively developing for the WordPress community since 2011.

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg calls it “a rare and unusual situation” resulting from WP Engine’s legal moves.

Several people who were banned at the same time are more important to the community. Having their voices taken away in this way is more damaging. I guess this is the start of the fallout from going nuclear that was talked about at the beginning of the fight.

One way or another, letting go of power is the only cure for tyranny. It’s not too late for Matt to embark on a path to deeper growth as a leader.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg recently started a crusade against WP Engine, a profit-driven company based on WordPress’s open source platform, which has evolved into a lawsuit that could blow a hole in the internet.

In a word, it's a godawful mess. And every user of WordPress has effectively been dragged into it, whether they wanted to be part of it or not. Instead of looking like a hero who is protecting a community, Matt looks like a multimillionaire corporate executive who has come to see a nonprofit, open-source community as an extension of himself, with his own needs or desires as the only criteria for taking action. It's not good for WordPress or the open-source community and ecosystem as a whole, and it is unlikely to end well.

In a public beef with a major client, co-founder Matt Mullenweg is showing the world that he’s one of the pettiest CEOs out there.

Developers have expressed concerns over relying on commercial open source products related to WordPress, especially when their access can go away quickly.

WordPress.org users are forced to confirm they are not "affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise" before registering a new account or logging in.

Matt Mullenweg has said things that are misleading and in other cases appear to be outright false. One of his own lawyers is disagreeing with him over fundamental issue (it isn’t the only issue they disagree with him). Was the trademark donated to the WordPress Foundation or not?