WP Engine is filing a lawsuit against WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Automattic
WP Engine has a federal complaint against Automattic and its CEO, Matt Mullenweg, following what it says are allegations of extortion and abuse of power that fundamentally threaten the open source WordPress community.
The legal action comes after the CEO and co-founder of WordPress called WP Engine, a rival company to Automattic’s WordPress.com, a “cancer” that extracts from the open-source project without giving back enough.
The complaint focuses on Mullenweg’s failed attempts to get WP Engine to pay tens of millions of dollars for a trademark license that he says is unnecessary.
WP Engine files federal complaint
WP Engine claims that Mullenweg’s public promises to maintain the WordPress project as an open, community-driven platform have been false, adding that the CEO has taken control of the trademarks to create his own for-profit business (which benefits from the open source project). while competitors are harmed.
An excerpt from the complaint reads: “The misconduct at issue here is all the more shocking because it occurred in an unexpected place: the WordPress open source software community, built on promises of the freedom to build, run, change and redistribute without barriers or limitations, for everyone. Those promises were not kept, and that community was betrayed by the wrongful actions of a few – Matt Mullenweg and Automattic – to the detriment of many, including WPE.”
WP Engine is now seeking legal remedies to protect its company and the broader WordPress community from what it describes as Automattic’s monopolistic and harmful practices.
WP Engine told TechRadar Pro: “Matt Mullenweg and Automattic’s self-proclaimed campaign against WP Engine has not only damaged our company, but the entire WordPress ecosystem. The symbiotic relationship between WordPress, its community, and the companies investing millions to support WordPress users and advance the ecosystem is based on trust in the promises of openness and freedom. Matt Mullenweg’s conduct over the past ten days has exposed significant conflicts of interest and governance issues that, if left unchecked, threaten to destroy that trust. WP Engine has no choice but to pursue these claims to protect its people, agency partners, customers and the broader WordPress community.”
