WP Engine has launched 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 WordPress co-founder referred to WP Engine, a rival company to Automattic’s WordPress.com, as a “cancer” that takes from the open-source project without giving back sufficiently.
The complaint focuses on Mullenweg’s failed efforts to get WP Engine to pay tens of millions of dollars for a trademark license that it claims is unnecessary.
WP Engine federal complaint
WP Engine claims Mullenweg’s public promises of maintaining the WordPress project as an open, community-driven platform have been false, adding the CEO has taken control over the trademarks to benefit his own for-profit business (that benefits from the open-source project) while harming competitors.
An extract 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 constraints, for all. Those promises were not kept, and that community was betrayed, by the wrongful acts of a few—Matt Mullenweg and Automattic—to the detriment of the 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 damaging practices.
WP Engine told TechRadar Pro: “Matt Mullenweg and Automattic’s self-proclaimed scorched earth campaign against WP Engine has harmed not just our company, but the entire WordPress ecosystem. The symbiotic relationship between WordPress, its community and the businesses that invest 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 last ten days has exposed significant conflicts of interests 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.”
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