It has to be said and repeated: WP Engine is not WordPress. My own mother was confused and thought WP Engine was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to cus…

Pending their legal claims and litigation against WordPress.org, WP Engine no longer has free access to WordPress.org’s resources.

WP Engine celebrates its longstanding commitment to the WordPress community, highlighting core contributions, community support, and ongoing innovation.

Matt Mullenweg unleashed a no-holds-barred tirade at WP Engine, which has been commercializing WordPress since 2010.

The brouhaha in the WordPress community looks likely to escalate into a legal battle around trademarks.

This story has been updated throughout with more details as the story has developed. We will continue to do so as the case and dispute are ongoing. The

The employees accepted a severance package offered to those who disagreed with Matt Mullenweg's direction of WordPress and his fight with WP Engine.

The WordPress situation devolves further, which raises an obvious question: What does this mean for every other open-source project?

Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. This is The Torment Nexus (you can find out more about me and this newsletter — and why I chose to call it that — in my inaugural post.) Since this is only the fifth edition of the newsletter, I am still working out some bugs, so please bear with me. Thanks for reading – and if you decide to subscribe, or upgrade to paid, thank you for that as well! Your contributions allow me to continue doing this. None of these newsletters are behind a paywall at this point (I

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.

WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg has ignited a battle with third-party hosting service WP Engine. Here’s the latest on the drama.

Matt Mullenweg, who founded WordPress more than two decades ago, finds himself in a legal battle against Silver Lake over the firm's ownership of WP Engine.

Trademark royalties is one way to force support of open source, we guess

Matt attacked WP Engine, then the community fired back. Here are my thoughts on this dumpster fire and why we might be entering a very dangerous era for WordPress.

I'm still catching up, but here's the next post in the Matt vs Everyone fiasco.

How open source projects can balance Makers and Takers: lessons from Drupal's contribution credit system and recommendations for WordPress and other open source communities.

I believe Matt Mullenweg's abuses of his unilateral, unchecked powers prove that it is in the best interest of the entire WordPress community that he be removed from power immediately.

Matt –I had the pleasure of attending WCUS in Portland and was present for your presentation. In the broadest sense you believe that WP Engine is not contributing enough back to WordPress. I don’t believe the way it has been handled has been helpful to the community, in fact, I believe it has been harmful. I hope that trust can be regained and the Community can heal.

The feud between Automattic and WP Engine has continued, with WordPress.org blocking access by WP Engine’s servers. In WP Engine Must Win, I wrote about my thoughts on the legal argument on this battle, and why it is important that WP Engine win the trademark case in order to protect the ecosystem. I also touched on the moral argument: The case […]

24Sep2024

During an interview with The Verge, WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg said WordPress.org “belongs to me” and addressed the dispute with WP Engine.

Commit to the future of WordPress and the open web.

As we learn more about the Matt vs WP Engine fight, it's time to clear up some major misconceptions.

Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg called WP Engine “a cancer to WordPress.”…

On stage at WordCamp US last week, Matt Mullenweg gave a keynote presentation which made a wide range of points about contribution, the ethics of open source, and the commitments various companies make to contributing. In particular, he called out WP Engine in what was a fairly clear direction to the community to stop using […]

Introduction On 3 October 2024, an Associate General Counsel at Automattic published a useful post on “WordPress Trademarks: A Legal Perspective”. The post is useful for a few reasons, including because it acknowledges, I believe for the first time during the current controversy, the role of nominative fair use. And so, in that sense, it contributes to the community’s understanding of Automattic’s take on the trademark issues. I have been saying for a while now that nominative fair use would likely be a central issue in any trademark litigation between Automattic and WP Engine. WP Engine’s court filing confirms that. Why I have written this post I have written this post because Automattic’s positions on: trademark infringement in its cease and desist letter to WP Engine; and nominative fair use in the post referred to above, are potentially significant for large numbers of other WordPress hosting providers (excluding WordPress.com). As a long-time user of WordPress, it concerns me that such an important topic is not being more openly discussed by other lawyers, particularly US trademark …

Yeah ... the inside track of WordPress is a mess right now. I'm sure we all have opinions, so I figured I should log mine in as well.

The WordPress Foundation owns and oversees the trademarks for the names and logos of WordPress as well as a few other WordPress-related brands. Trademarks are a signifier of a product’s identity an…

One of the many lies in Silver Lake and WP Engine’s C&D was their claim that Automattic demanded money from them moments before our CEO Matt Mullenweg gave his keynote at WordCamp US. Tha…

Last night, WP Engine filed a baseless lawsuit against Automattic, Matt Mullenweg, and WordPress.org. Their complaint is flawed, start to finish. We vehemently deny WP Engine’s allegations—which ar…

That escalated quickly

This is an appeal to temporarily reconsider your recent decision to ban WP Engine from WordPress.org.

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The censored Reddit post on why Matt Mullenweg is really going after WP Engine.

Much has been made about the verbal and legal spat between Automattic/Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine. There are plenty of arguments to be made for each side. However, I’d like to examine what I see as a broader issue. And it has nothing to do with Mullenweg’s role as project…

(This post should be read while listening to Wish by Joshua Redman. The writing is synchronized to the music reading speed.) Contributor day just wrapped up for Portland for WordCamp US. If you ev…,(This post should be read while listening to Wish by Joshua Redman. The writing is synchronized to the music reading speed.) Contributor day just wrapped up for Portland for WordCamp US. If you eve…

I knew going to war with Silver Lake, a $102B private equity firm, they would pull out every dirty trick to try to smear my name, do oppo research, imply I’m a mafia boss trying to extort th…,I knew going to war with Silver Lake, a $102B private equity firm, they would pull out every dirty trick to try to smear my name, do oppo research, imply I’m a mafia boss trying to extort the…

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has rescinded an 8% licensing deal offered to WP Engine in September, suggesting that escalating tensions between the two companies could lead to a corporate acquisition by Automattic. In an interview with The Repository, Mullenweg said Automattic now wanted more than 8% of WP Engine’s annual revenue, or an equivalent of […]

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…

If I close my eyes I can still smell the pages of well-worn books and feel their dusty spines, walking down the quiet aisles of the public library in the small town where I grew up. It wasn’t one o…

Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Tumblr owner Automattic, is supposed to be on sabbatical. Instead, he’s arguing with Tumblr users over an individual content

Internal documents obtained by 404 Media show that Tumblr staff compiled users' data as part of a deal with Midjourney and OpenAI.