Automattic vs WP Engine: Here’s What We Know

A heated legal battle between Automattic and WP Engine is underway. The conflict is playing out before the WordPress community and causing quite a stir.

At the center of it all is WordPress co-founder (and Automattic CEO) Matt Mullenweg. He has publicly called out hosting provider WP Engine for allegedly “violating WordPress’ trademarks”. In addition, he deemed the company a “cancer to WordPress” for profiting from the open-source software without giving enough back to the project.

Legal actions have been filed by both companies. A series of tit-for-tat moves has resulted in WP Engine being banned from using the WordPress.org servers.

Events are happening at a blistering pace. To help you keep up, we’ve put together a timeline of what’s happened so far. We’ll keep updating it as things continue to unfold.

Cease and Desist Letters

Here’s a quick summary of both letters that were presented publicly by Automattic & WP Engine.

Automattic to WP Engine

• Automattic claims exclusive commercial rights to the WORDPRESS trademark and ownership of WOOCOMMERCE and WOO trademarks, presenting several U.S. trademark registrations as evidence.
• The letter alleges that WP Engine’s entire business model, generating over $400 million in annual revenue, is based on unauthorized use of Automattic’s trademarks.
• Automattic proposes a potential licensing relationship to resolve the matter amicably, but demands immediate cessation of trademark use and substantial compensation (suggesting an 8% royalty on WP Engine’s annual revenue, which would exceed $32 million).

Read the full letter

WP Engine to Automattic

• Quinn Emanuel, representing WP Engine, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic on September 23, 2024, addressing alleged misconduct by Automattic’s CEO, Matthew Mullenweg, who threatened a “scorched earth nuclear approach” if WP Engine didn’t pay Automattic a large sum of money before his September 20th keynote at WordCamp US.
• The letter claims that when WP Engine refused to pay, Mullenweg made false and disparaging statements about WP Engine during his keynote and continued a smear campaign across various platforms, including WordPress.org and the WordPress Admin panel.
• WP Engine demands that Automattic cease making false statements, stop interfering with WP Engine’s relationships with employees and customers, and preserve all relevant documents and data related to the dispute.

Read the full letter

Friday, October 25, 2024

WP Engine publishes “Ensuring Stability and Security: Recent Timeline“, an article detailing the company’s actions and statements.

We’re keenly aware of the impact recent events have had on the WordPress community and ecosystem, and we’re deeply grateful to the many partners and customers who have stood by WP Engine and trust us to serve you in the face of unprecedented and unwarranted attacks and attempts to disrupt our platform.

WP Engine’s top priority has always been and remains the integrity, security, availability and performance of our tools, and we will continue to take the decisive steps necessary to ensure we can continue to deliver the enterprise-grade experience we’re committed to building.

Whether as a customer, an agency partner, or a valued member of the WordPress community we’re committed to keeping you updated on the latest developments.

Monday, October 21, 2024

Users logged into WordPress.org Slack have been logged in order to switch SSO for the instance. Matt Mullenweg states that it is required to comply with WP Engine’s preservation request.

Sunday, October 20, 2024

Matt Mullenweg says “Quiet for a while” in his latest blog post, My Freedom of Speech.

After this post, I will refrain from personally commenting on the WP Engine case until a judge rules on the injunction. I will continue to exercise my First Amendment rights to promote others’ speech. However, I hope others speak up on our battle with WP Engine, and I will boost their speech wherever I can.

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Nicholas Garofalo posts Expanding Our Code of Conduct to Protect Private Conversations on WordPress.org

This new addition ensures that private messages receive the same level of protection as personal information and that sensitive communications shared in confidence will not be disclosed without prior consent. An important exception to this is when sharing private messages is necessary for reporting incidents or concerns to the Incident Response Team, as part of our commitment to maintaining a safe and respectful environment.

Ultimately, this change encourages honest, constructive engagement across all levels of participation.

Friday, October 18, 2024

WP Engine has filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against Automattic and its CEO Matthew Mullenweg. The legal action, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the defendants engaged in extortionate behavior and subsequent retaliatory actions that have caused substantial harm to WP Engine’s business operations.

WP Engine is seeking court intervention to restore the “status quo” and prevent further alleged interference with their business while the case proceeds.

Thursday, October 17, 2024

404 Media reports, Employees Describe an Environment of Paranoia and Fear Inside Automattic Over WordPress Chaos. Highlighting a new (alleged) “Alignment offer” from an internal communication shared with the publication.

Reporter Samantha Cole has interviewed Automatticians for the report:

“I’m certain that Matt hasn’t eliminated all dissenters, because I’m still there, but I expect that within the next six to twelve months, everyone who didn’t leave but wasn’t ‘aligned’ will have found a new job and left on their own terms,” another current employee told me. “My personal morale has never been lower at this job, and I know that I’m not alone.”

Sunday, October 13, 2024

Scott Kingsley Clark creator of Pods Plugin and Fields API lead has stepped down from contributing to the WordPress project.

Hello all, I must first preface this by saying this is not a post to get into the specifics of what’s going on with the community right now.

I am no longer contributing to WordPress as things stand. As a result of me stepping down, we need new leadership to take Fields API to where it needs to be for WordPress core.

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Matt Mullenweg via WordPress.org announces that on behalf of the security team are invoking point 18 of the plugin directory guidelines and are forking Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) into a new plugin, Secure Custom Fields.

The team at Advanced Custom Fields points to instructions for getting both the free and Pro plugins directly from their website.

Colin Stewart, a member of the WordPress.org Security Team didn’t know the takeover of Advanced Custom Fields was coming.

Automattic employee James Giroux knew the fate of Advanced Custom Fields before the public was notified. He shared his perspective in ACF Gets a Fork By WordPress.org.

Matt Mullenweg has taken the next step in his fight with WP Engine and Silver Lake by forking Advanced Custom Fields into Secure Custom Fields (SCF) to protect its security after WP Engine/Silver Lake’s ban from WordPress.org infrastructure. While emotions are high, this move highlights the importance of maintaining the security and integrity of WordPress’s ecosystem. Forking under the GPL is not unprecedented, and this action reinforces the need for WP Engine/Silver Lake to negotiate in good faith.

Matt Mullenweg posts Everyone’s an Owner, and granted everyone at Automattic 200 shares of A12 stock, so about a $12M bonus for the employees.

I had been brainstorming with finance and HR for something nice we could do for everyone who stayed. We couldn’t give them all a six-month bonus, which would have cost ~$126M, but we did take how much we spent on severance for the 159 people, rounded up a bit, and granted everyone at Automattic 200 shares of A12 stock, so about a $12M bonus for the employees.

Jack Arturo owner of WP Fusion has filed a cease and desist letter with Automattic for unauthorized use of their trademark in the WordPress.com plugin directory.

Monday, October 7, 2024

WPGraphQL lead developer Jason Bahl announces WPGraphQL as a Canonical Plugin for WordPress, departs WP Engine to join Automattic.

With that said, I’m excited to announce that after 3.5 wonderful years at WP Engine, I’ve accepted an offer with Automattic to continue my work on WPGraphQL as it transitions into becoming a canonical community plugin on WordPress.org.

Friday, October 4, 2024

WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, steps down from her position.

I still believe that open source is an idea that can transform generations. I believe in the power of a good-hearted group of people. I believe in the importance of strong opinions, loosely held. And I believe the world will always need the more equitable opportunities that well-maintained open source can provide: access to knowledge and learning, easy-to-join peer and business networks, the amplification of unheard voices, and a chance to tap into economic opportunity for those who weren’t born into it. 

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Mullenweg posts Automattic Alignment on his blog. Highlighting that “It became clear a good chunk of my Automattic colleagues disagreed with me and our actions.”

So we decided to design the most generous buy-out package possible, we called it an Alignment Offer: if you resigned before 20:00 UTC on Thursday, October 3, 2024, you would receive $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher.

8.4% of the company (159 employees) that didn’t agree with Automattic’s/Matt’s actions OR decided it was time for change, opted for the buy-out package.

Automattic calls the WP Engine lawsuit Meritless.

Automattic is confident in our legal position, and will vigorously litigate against this absurd filing, as well as pursue all remedies against WP Engine. Automattic has retained Neal Katyal, former Acting Solicitor General of the United States, and his firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, to represent us.

Neal has been adverse to Quinn Emanuel a number of times, and won every case.

Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) team members have been blocked from accessing their WordPress.org accounts. They have posted on X to direct free ACF users to a workaround for continued updates.

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Josepha Haden Chomphosy WordPress Executive Director, confirms a report by Jeff Chandler that she is no longer working for Automattic.

WP Engine posts a public statement on X and links to their legal complaint document.

Neil Peretz, associate general counsel at Automattic, posts WordPress Trademarks: A Legal Perspective on the Automattic blog.

The WordPress Foundation owns the right to use the WordPress marks for non-commercial purposes. It can also sublicense out this right for particular events (e.g., WordCamps) and to people supporting the WordPress project and community. The Foundation also licensed the name WordPress to the non-profit WordPress.org, which runs a website that facilitates access to WordPress-related software.

The right to use the WordPress marks for commercial purposes (e.g., selling software, hosting, and agency services) is owned by Automattic. Automattic, in its sole discretion, can sublicense the WordPress marks to others who wish to use them for commercial purposes. The concept of “sole discretion” also means that Automattic can refuse to license the marks to anyone it deems inappropriate.

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Automattic publishes the Term Sheet given to WP Engine.

For transparency, Automattic is publishing the full term sheet WP Engine was offered on September 20^th. Given WP Engine’s behavior, deception, and incompetence since September 20^th these terms are no longer sufficient.

Mullenweg was interviewed by The Repository in the article Mullenweg Threatens Corporate Takeover of WP Engine.

“That deal’s not on the table anymore. We’re seeking more, not 8%,” Mullenweg said. “I don’t want to speculate on what the deal might be… In July it was less than 8%, it was smaller. In September it was 8%. The deal they have to do next could be taking over the company, they have no leverage.”

Monday, September 30, 2024

Heather J. Brunner, CEO WP Engine wrote an email to WP Engine customers regrading the recent events. WP Minute has only obtained the image, not the actual email, as we are not on a WP Engine customer list.

Our teams have rallied since the disruption with plugin/theme updates and have been working over the past several days on our go-forward solution.

We have been building resilience into our systems and we will continue iteratively enhancing these through the week. Please know that we will not rest until this matter is fully solved and we are able to sustain your “normal” workflow practices independently.

Saturday, September 28, 2024

Mullenweg posts Where is Lee Wittlinger? The Managing Director of Silver Lake is summoned to an open debate in the closing lines of Mullenweg’s post.

Lee controls the board of WP Engine. The board is why WP Engine hasn’t done a trademark deal for their use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.

You hide behind lawyers and corporate PR when you’re wrong, not when you’re right.

Mullenweg appears on a livestream interview with “Theo – t3.gg” The WordPress interview

It is my life’s work. [They’re] a private Equity Firm. They bought into this a few years ago; they’re going to be out in a few years. This is what I’m doing the rest of my life.

Friday, September 27, 2024

Mullenweg posts WP Engine Reprieve on WordPress.org.

We have lifted the blocks of their servers [WP Engine] from accessing ours, until October 1, UTC 00:00. Hopefully this helps them spin up their mirrors of all of WordPress.org’s resources that they were using for free while not paying, and making legal threats against us.

Thursday, September 26, 2024

Mullenweg appears on “ThePrimeTime” YouTube livestream, “Matt talks about WordPress Situation“

Something else that, uh, was posted on Reddit, uh, is allegedly they have taken the Stripe plugin — So part of how WooCommerce makes money, they also violate the WooCommerce trademark, by the way, uh, part of how WooCommerce makes money is with a deal with Stripe — and so on, on WP Engine servers, they essentially hack the Stripe plugin to change the attribution code to go from us to them, which is probably tens of millions of years

Mullenweg details the “core issue at play” in a blog post, “WPE & Trademarks”.

In short, WP Engine is violating WordPress’ trademarks. Moreover, they have been doing so for years. We at Automattic have been attempting to make a licensing deal with them for a very long time, and all they have done is string us along. Finally, I drew a line in the sand, which they have now leapt over.

We offered WP Engine the option of how to pay their fair share: either pay a direct licensing fee, or make in-kind contributions to the open source project. This isn’t a money grab: it’s an expectation that any business making hundreds of millions of dollars off of an open source project ought to give back, and if they don’t, then they can’t use its trademarks. WP Engine has refused to do either, and has instead taken to casting aspersions on my attempt to make a fair deal with them.

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Mullenweg posts “Charitable Contributions” on his blog to thwart allegations that “…imply I’m a mafia boss trying to extort them…”.

Mullenweg takes to WordPress.org to announce that “WP Engine is banned from WordPress.org”:

WP Engine needs a trademark license, they don’t have one. I won’t bore you with the story of how WP Engine broke thousands of customer sites yesterday in their haphazard attempt to block our attempts to inform the wider WordPress community regarding their disabling and locking down a WordPress core feature in order to extract profit.

What I will tell you is that, pending their legal claims and litigation against WordPress.org, WP Engine no longer has free access to WordPress.org’s resources.

WP Engine responded on X:

WP Engine details the impact of the ban on their status page.

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Mullenweg posts on X, claiming that WP Engine has removed the News and Events widgets from the WordPress dashboard. This would prevent WP Engine’s customers from reading negative stories about the company.

Monday, September 23, 2024

WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic.

The letter alleges that Mullenweg threatened WP Engine if they did not pay a large sum of money before his Q&A session at WordCamp US:

Stunningly, Automattic’s CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic – his for-profit entity – a very large sum of money before his September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, he was going to embark on a self-described “scorched earth nuclear approach” toward WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond. When his outrageous financial demands were not met, Mr. Mullenweg carried out his threats by making repeated false claims disparaging WP Engine to its employees, its customers, and the world. Mr. Mullenweg has carried out this wrongful campaign against WP Engine in multiple outlets, including via his keynote address, across several public platforms like X, YouTube, and even on the WordPress.org site, and through the WordPress Admin panel for all WordPress users, including directly targeting WP Engine customers in their own private WordPress instances used to run their online businesses.

Automattic responds with a cease-and-desist letter of its own. The letter alleges unauthorized use of WordPress Foundation and WooCommerce intellectual property:

WP Engine promotes its services as bringing “WordPress to the masses”. See https://wpengine.com/about-us/. In reality WP Engine brings almost zero aspect of WordPress to the world: It claims to contribute 40 hours per week to WordPress (see https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/pledge/wp-engine/), while, by contrast, Automattic is contributing almost 4000 hours per week to WordPress. See https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/pledge/automattic/.

Instead, WP Engine’s entire business model is predicated on using our Client’s trademarks – particularly WORDPRESS, WOOCOMMERCE, and WOO – to mislead consumers into believing there is an association between WP Engine and Automattic. Even a cursory review of WP Engine’s website shows numerous examples of such misappropriation.

Automattic also includes a document of exhibits that detail the alleged violations.

WordPress community members Tia Wood and Andrew Palmer host a live space on X to discuss the conflict. Mullenweg participates and answers questions. 

You can read an AI-generated transcript of the event.

Saturday, September 21, 2024

Mullenweg posts “WP Engine is not WordPress” on WordPress.org. He repeated his stance on WP Engine’s relatively small contribution to the product. In addition, he alleges the company is “profiting off of the confusion” caused by its branding.

He goes on to demonstrate how WP Engine turns off the WordPress post revisions feature:

What WP Engine gives you is not WordPress, it’s something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress, but actually they’re giving you a cheap knock-off and charging you more for it.

Friday, September 20, 2024

WP Engine publishes “Highlighting Over a Decade of Innovation and Contribution to the WordPress Community”, its first response to Mullenweg’s comments.

The company claims a “vast investment in the WordPress ecosystem”:

The contributions that WP Engine as an organization, and so many of our people make to this wider world of WordPress go past the core software itself and include the investment of significant resources into growing the community of developers, users, and organizations that can use WordPress, creating new and sophisticated use cases.

Our ongoing support for modern web frameworks, exemplified by the development of Faust.js, WPGraphQL, and our Headless WordPress platform, is a testament to the way we’re pushing the boundaries of what WordPress can do.

Mullenweg publishes “Are Investors Bad?” on his blog to clarify his stance on private equity.

Mullenweg closes out WordCamp US with a live Q&A session. He prefaces the talk by saying it may be one of his “spiciest” WordCamp presentations. He reads “WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinking” aloud and doubles down on his claims regarding WP Engine.

There was also some controversy surrounding Mullenweg’s visit to WP Engine’s sponsor booth. He elaborated on the issue via a Reddit post.

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Mullenweg posts “WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinking” on his blog. The following passage mentions the lack of contribution from WP Engine and calls out its owner, Silver Lake:

Compare the Five For the Future pages from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion. These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours. WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page, but the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your Open Source ideals. It just wants a return on capital.

Community Takes

The WordPress community has reacted to this situation with a variety of opinions. Here’s a selection of what people are saying:

• An open letter to Matt Mullenweg by Cullen Whitmore
• Contributing to the WordPress Ecosystem (My Thoughts) by Syed Balkhi
• WordPress’ Big “Tragedy of the Commons” Problem by Kevin Geary
• Matt Mullenweg Vs… Everyone? by Jeff Matson
• WCUS: Freedom Isn’t Free by James Giroux
• The WCUS Closing I Wish We’d Had by Brian Coords
• WP Engine Must Win by Ryan McCue
• Transparency, Contribution, and the Future of WordPress by Joost de Valk
• WTF is WordPress? by Robert DeVore
• The Automattic-WP Engine debacle and clarity of concepts by Richard Best
• Matt vs WP Engine: Too Far? by Justin Ferriman
• Misconceptions About Matt, Open Source, and Contributions by Brian Coords
• What the heck is going on with WordPress? by Paolo Belcastro
• Matt vs. WP Engine: Thoughts from a former WordPress startup founder by Trent Lapinski
• When WordPress Goes to War by Seth Goldstein
• Contributing to WordPress, a Letter to Matt by Andy Fragen
• Content Fighting Systems by Ernie Smith
• Taking a Stand for the WordPress Ecosystem: Why We Must All Give Back by Anil Gupta
• WordPressed by Nicolas C. Ward
• A Stronger Foundation for the Ecosystem by Ryan McCue
• The WordPress Saga: Does Matt Mullenweg Want a Fork or Not? by Alex Williams
• “Nice Guy” Matt Mullenweg, CEO of WordPress.com Cries Foul and Threatens Me With Legal Action by Kellie Peterson
• A Full Cup by Liz Kakoski
• WPGraphQL Becomes a Canonical Plugin: My Move to Automattic by Jason Bahl
• Thank you WordPress by Josepha Haden Chomphosy
• 21 Years of WordPress by Sarah Gooding
• A Plea for Automatticians by Kellie Peterson
• Did Automattic commit open source theft? by Gergely Orosz

YouTube Videos

The WP Minute Discusses Automattic v. WP Engine (5 Minute appearance by Mullenweg)

Theo – t3.gg interviews Matt Mullenweg

ThePrimeTime interviews Matt Mullenweg