Hosting provider WP Engine has accused Automattic and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg of extortion and abuse of power. The lawsuit follows a nearly two-week battle between Mullenweg, who is also Automattic’s CEO, and WP Engine over trademark infringement and contributions to the WordPress community.
WP Engine accused Automattic and Mullenweg of failing to keep their promise to run the WordPress open source project without restrictions and giving developers the right to freely build, run, modify and redistribute the software.
“Matt Mullenweg’s actions over the past 10 days have exposed serious conflicts of interest and governance issues that, if left unchecked, risk destroying trust. WP Engine has no choice but to pursue these claims to protect our employees, agency partners, customers and the broader WordPress community,” the company added.
Case documents filed in California courts also accuse Mullenweg of having a “long history.”
It obfuscates the real facts about his control over the WordPress Foundation and WordPress.org.
The story so far
For over a week, Mullenweg has accused WP Engine of infringing on WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks. He called them “a cancer on WordPress” and criticized Silver Lake, WP Engine’s private equity partner, for not paying attention to the open source community. WP Engine later sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mullenweg and Automattic asking them to retract these comments. Automattic sent its own cease-and-desist letter alleging that WP Engine infringed on its WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
Specifically, Mullenweg banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org resources, including plugins and themes, on September 25, preventing updates to the site. Two days later, Mullenweg provided a temporary moratorium until October 1 and unblocked WP Engine.
On Wednesday, Automattic announced the proposed seven-year contract, which was sent to WP Engine on September 20. The document requested that the hosting company pay a royalty fee of 8% of its monthly gross revenue for use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
Alternatively, WP Engine might commit to 8% by deploying staff to contribute to core WordPress features or a combination of time and money.
WP Engine did not accept these terms, which included probation for plug-in and extension forks from Automattic and WooCommerce.
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