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?

But I suspect Automattic wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to retain WordPress' shine of open source, but also be able to extract their pound of flesh from any competitor that might appear, whenever they see fit. Screw that.

I think I can get behind the general idea that some companies need a little prodding to pull their weight to something like the Five for the Future campaign. Encouraging developers to pull their projects from a company and employees to jeopardize their careers? Eek.

We're getting some feelings out about WordPress and Matt Mullenweg vs WP Engine drama

That brings us roughly to the present as I write, and a new wrinkle in the story. It seem like Mullenweg is now targeting Advanced Custom Fields (ACF).

In a follow-up statement to CNBC, a WP Engine spokesperson said Mullenweg’s antics had “harmed not just our company, but the entire WordPress ecosystem.” The spokesperson added that Mullenweg’s “conduct over the last ten days has exposed significant conflicts of interest and governance issues that, if left unchecked, threaten to destroy” the trust of the WordPress community.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said on Thursday that 159 employees (roughly 8.4% of staff) accepted a severance package that the company had offered to those who disagreed with his direction of WordPress and his handling of the tussle with web hosting provider WP Engine.

The lines between the WordPress open-source project, the nonprofit backing it, and the commercial arm owned by Automattic are blurring.

And honestly, I can’t help but feel like it’s only gotten uglier and harder to defend. WordPress and its parent company, Automattic, are still fighting with WP Engine, and it hasn’t gotten any nicer.

TL;DR: Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic, co-founder of WordPress, and single point of failure for WordPress.org is trying to bully me with legal threats over my commentary regarding his recent behavior.

After a brief reprieve, WP Engine has been banned again from WordPress.org

In an interview with The Repository, Mullenweg said Automattic now wanted more than 8% of WP Engine’s annual revenue, or an equivalent of resources invested into the WordPress project—or a combination of both—in exchange for the use of its “WordPress” and “WooCommerce” trademarks.

Matt Mullenweg’s unquestioned access to infrastructure and resources across the WordPress project, the WordPress Foundation and Automattic inc, which owns and operates the infrastructure the project depends on — in addition to the actions he has taken in the past week and earlier this year — is something that I would consider to be a grave security concern and the largest existential threat to the WordPress project itself.

MM (Matt) reached out wanting to clarify some things about the WordPress vs WP Engine drama, so I had him come over to my studio to talk it out

I believe that if WordPress is to survive, let alone thrive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed from all forms of official WordPress leadership, as expediently as possible.

The WordPress Foundation is the nonprofit which manages the WordPress code and ecosystem. Until this blowup started, it was widely believed to maintain the wordpress.org website (the domain, however, is owned by Matt Mullenweg rather than by the Foundation), which acts as the central repository for all updates, themes, and plugins, as well as managing the WordPress documentation and maintaining a large discussion forum for WordPress devs and users. The Foundation is administered by a board of three people, one of whom is Matt Mullenweg.

ThePrimeagen: he didn't answer, ThePrimeagen: i pressed him

The dispute between Automattic and WP Engine has intensified. Both companies have issued Cease and Desist orders to each other, leading WP Engine to remove the news feed from the WordPress admin dashboard. In response, WordPress.org has now banned WP Engine from utilizing any of its resources.

WP Engine must win this legal battle for the continued health and vibrancy of the WordPress project.

We can do better. We should do better. Never, ever, should end users be burdened by the result of a legal dispute, especially if it is done by choice in a (hopefully futile) attempt to swing the dispute in the favour of one of the parties involved. For the continued health of the WordPress project, WP Engine should win.

The co-founder of WordPress steps in it, repeatedly, in a forest-for-the-trees fight with WP Engine that makes me feel sad for the open internet.

Today WP Engine sent what is called a “cease and desist” letter to Automattic demanding that Automattic and its CEO Matt Mullenweg stop making and retract false, harmful and disparaging statements against WP Engine. In response to misinformation he has disseminated about the letter, its purpose, and who it is directed at, we are making the full letter available here

In case you missed it, WordCamp US 2024 ended on a very wild note, with Matt singling out WP Engine as enemy number one. To be clear: the main takeaway here is that Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, is very concerned. If you didn’t get that feeling from his presentation, then you missed the point of his speech. And it’s not your fault, because the speech missed the mark.

And that brings me to what is perhaps Matt’s greatest blunder; in criticizing a competitor, Matt is going to bring everyone’s attention to WordPress being Matt’s personal fiefdom.