Hosting provider WP Engine has filed a lawsuit against Automattic and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, alleging extortion and abuse of power. The lawsuit comes after nearly two weeks of battle between Mullenweg, also CEO of Automattic, and WP Engine over trademark infringement and contributions to the WordPress community.
WP Engine accused Automattic and Mullenweg of failing to live up to their promise to run the WordPress open source project without restrictions and give developers the freedom to build, run, modify, and redistribute their software.
“Matt Mullenweg's conduct over the past 10 days exposes serious conflicts of interest and governance issues that, if left unchecked, threaten to destroy that trust. WP Engine , and the broader WordPress community, we have no choice but to pursue these claims,” the company added.
Court documents filed in a California court accuse Mullenweg of having a “long history.”
Obfuscating the true facts about his control of the WordPress Foundation and WordPress.org
The story so far
For over a week, Mullenweg has criticized WP Engine for infringing on WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks. He called them the “cancer of WordPress” and also accused WP Engine's private equity partner Silver Lake of being indifferent to the open source community. WP Engine then sent cease-and-desist letters to Mullenweg and Automattic asking them to retract these comments. Automattic sent its own cease-and-desist letter alleging that WP Engine infringes the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
Notably, Mullenweg on September 25th banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org resources, including plugins and themes, preventing the site from being updated. Two days later, Mullenweg granted a temporary reprieve and unblocked WP Engine until October 1st.
Automattic on Wednesday released a proposed seven-year term sheet it sent to WP Engine on Sept. 20, asking the hosting company to pay 8% of its gross revenue on a monthly basis in trademark royalties for WordPress and WooCommerce.
Alternatively, WP Engine could commit 8% by having employees contribute to WordPress' core features and functionality, or both time and money.
WP Engine did not accept these terms, which included a moratorium on forking plugins and extensions from Automattic and WooCommerce.
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