Several respected members of the WordPress community have said publicly that they feel unable to speak freely about these events. A project that depends on volunteer and sponsored contributions cannot build accessible software if the people doing that work fear the consequences of doing it.

Workers at Automattic, which owns WordPress.com and several other platforms, have said the company has endured years of chaotic leadership decisions.

Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, wrote in a company-wide Slack messages on Wednesday, viewed by 404 Media, that board members "conspired" behind his back to vote to put him on leave.

After months of lawsuits, injunctions, plugin disputes, and public sparring between Automattic and WP Engine, WordPress is showing its first sustained market share decline in years.

Newly unsealed passages cited in WP Engine’s complaint allege that Automattic categorized hosting companies as “friends,” “would-be friends,” and “charlatans,” and planned to “steal every single” site from those who refused a trademark deal.

In its trademark filing, Automattic lists the word “automatic” as a disclaimer, meaning an unregistrable word, “such as wording or a design that doesn’t indicate the source of your goods or services or is otherwise merely descriptive of them,” according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

WordPress cannot—must not—continue at the whims of one centralized company or person. We’ve seen, time and again, the problems this can cause the project.

Mullenweg.wtf is on hiatus. This website will remain online as a record of Mullenweg's unhinged attack on WordPress and its community. The WP Engine vs Mullenweg court case will drag on beyond 2026. I will return should anything spicy occur before the final verdict.

Matt Mullenweg commented that the conflict he initiated could eventually lead to the closure of WordPress.org. He claimed that the only way to end the conflict was for WP Engine to drop their lawsuit, which would have the effect of enabling Mullenweg to resume his campaign to drive WP Engine out of business.

WordPress co-founder Matthew Mullenweg on Saturday deactivated the WordPress.org accounts of five members of the WordPress community, and justified his actions by saying it will encourage them to fork the open source content management system.

This is tiresome, folks. It was tiresome when I was a part of the community. It was tiresome when Matt was building dramas on my back. It was tiresome when his fanboys joined right in.

Automattic noted it would focus its open source hours on “security and critical updates”. The other hours would be redirected to for-profit projects like WordPress.com. This means that the community will be expected to take up the slack if it wants WordPress to improve.

Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members, two of whom he says planned to spearhead a new fork of the open source WordPress project.

Veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher has described Matt Mullenweg’s move to shut down WordPress’s sustainability team as “bizarrely heinous behavior.”

Automattic will only contribute 45 hours each week to ‘match’ the amount of time spent by third-party hosting platform WP Engine.

I’m very open to suggestions. Should we stop naming releases after jazz musicians and name them after Drake lyrics? Eliminate all dashboard notices? Take over any plugins into core? Change from blue to purple?

I’ve often considered how the WordPress world “worked” unhealthy. I’ve spoken to many slightly outside of our industry over the past months about what was happening and several people, independent of each other, described WordPress as “a cult” to me. And I understand why.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg on Friday announced a shutdown of almost all services on WordPress.org, the open source project site that’s the home of the software, plugins, and the WordPress community, but was unclear on when the shutdown would end.

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg expresses "disgust" at having to provide "free labor" to WP Engine, calls court decision a bad precedent.

The court determined that WP Engine’s evidence of harm, including the loss of a $40,000 client contract, was persuasive. Defendants countered with four arguments but “None is persuasive.” The court accepted that WPEngine will suffer irreparable harm without preliminary injunctive relief.

Automattic is ordered to undo several of the actions of its CEO Matt Mullenweg in its ongoing legal battle with WP Engine. “It's hard to imagine wanting to continue to working on WordPress after this," Mullenweg said in a community Slack message.

Mullenweg and co ordered to restore WP Engine's access to wordpress.org and stop touching WordPress installations

Court grants WP Engine's request for a preliminary injunction, handing Mullenweg and Automattic an across the board defeat

Automattic and its CEO Matt Mullenweg also have to quit interfering with WP Engine’s ACF plugin.

The ruling orders Automattic to restore WP Engine’s access and control of ACF on WordPress.org.

Judge is inclined to grant preliminary injunction against Automattic, but WP Engine’s fight isn’t over yet

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said she was “inclined to grant some sort of injunction” but described WP Engine’s proposed order as “exceedingly vague,” making it difficult to enforce.

Tim Brugman, a Full-Stack Developer, pointed out, “A8c’s _new_ SCF plugin deactivates Advanced Custom Fields PRO when it is activated. An action that is not allowed by the dot org Plugin Handbook.”

An unofficial transcript of the WP Engine v Automattic & Matt Mullenweg preliminary injunction hearing on November 26, 2024.

Matt Mullenweg’s latest move in his battle with WP Engine raises questions about an open-source project seemingly endorsing the forking and redistribution of premium plugins without compensation or acknowledgment, potentially violating the GPL.