Is there an ELI5 of the situation? I didn’t follow what happened. The court document has details but is the PoV of one of the parties, that makes it an unreliable summary for people like me who know nothing about the case
Mullenweg has for a little while claimed that WP Engine does not contribute sufficiently to the open-source WordPress project, that its branding causes confusion among users, and that it ships an inferior product that reflects badly on WordPress as a whole.
WP Engine disputes this and sent Mullenweg & Automattic a cease-and-desist letter, intending to stop the disparaging comments.
In reponse, Mullenweg cut off WP Engine customers from the theme and plugin repositories hosted at WordPress.org — which until recently people had believed to be under the control of the WordPress Foundation, but is actually under the personal control of Mullenweg.
Now this lawsuit has been filed.
Edit: Characters for the unaware:
Matt Mullenweg: The "top" person in WordPress in its various forms, including the non-profit WordPress Foundation, and the for-profit company Automattic (whichs runs the for-profit WordPress.com host, among other things).
- WordPress is open source, under GPLv2; a least since 2011;
- WordPress is managed by the WordPress Foundation since 2010 with Matthew Charles Mullenweg as director;
- Automattic is a private company that owns and runs WordPress.com, whose CEO and founder is Matthew Charles Mullenweg;
- WP Engine is a separated company that uses Wordpress that makes money by hosting WordPress since 2010;
- WP Engine and Wordpress.com are direct competitors;
- WordCamp is a conference run by volunteers that happens regularly, this year it happened between 17-24 of September
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What happened, afaik:
- Sept 23: Matt calls WP Engine "the cancer of WordPress" on his blog [1][2][3] and says that it profits from the open source without contributing enough
- Sept 24: WP Engine sends a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic to “retract false, harmful, and disparaging statements”, after Matt Mullenweg called it a “cancer” [4]
- Sept 25: Automattic sends a cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine, alleging unauthorized use of the WordPress trademark [5] and I quote "If you gave $1 to the WordPress Foundation, you’d be a bigger donor than WP Engine."
- Sept 26: WP Engine is banned from Wordpress.org [6] breaking plugin updates from WP Engine
- Same day: Matt on his personal blog says Automattic has "been attempting to make a licensing deal" with WP Engine "for a very long time, and all they have done is string us along" [7] and doubles down that this is about WP Engine's disrespecting WordPress trademarks
- Oct 1st: Automattic made public [8][9] a seven-year agreement proposed to WP Engine in exchange for 8% of their revenue, the document has the sign date of Sept 20 (during WordCamp?) that could be paid in royalties and/or employees to contribute to WordPress.org; the document also states no forking of WordPress allowed
- Oct 2nd (you are here): WP Engine sues Automattic AND Matt, Matt is here on this thread generating more evidence against himself in the comments [10]; the document has tweets, conversations, everything... And if it goes to a public trial more dirt will come up for sure;
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Extra facts (not necessarily related)
- Automattic has invested on WP Engine in 2011 [11]
- Automattic acquired Tumblr in 2019 for 3MM USD [12], and in Aug this year announced it was moving it to WordPress [13]
- Drupal creator gives some insight on this feud and how Drupal deals with that [14]
Yeah... I did this in a hurry (about 15min) before work, and HN doesn't allow edits after some time so let me complement the information.
AFAIU:
1/ The WordPress Foundation is a proper non-profit and has as mission guarantee the "open sourceness" and ensures all WordPress projects are under the GPL license.
2/ The Foundation holds the trademarks to WordPress, WordCamp, BuddyPress, WP-Cli and they define the rules of its usage.
This is relevant because part of this fight is related to WordPress licenses. Also because Matt is using both hats as CEO of Automattic and President of the Foundation to press WP Engine and this is why, as I understand, WP Engine is accusing Automattic of unfair competition.
Also the other action against WP Engine is related to the trademarks.
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On your points:
> The Foundation doesn't actually manage anything though, does it?
It does have responsibilities about the open source licenses and holds the trademarks to WordPress, plus has a team that is paid by the Foundation to seek these interests as a non-profit.
> WordPress.org is managed and owned by Mullenweg personally
Not necessarily, he did start it and is the main director, but the Foundation serves WordPress and, in theory, as a non-profit could have a different director.
> It does have responsibilities about the open source licenses and holds the trademarks to WordPress, plus has a team that is paid by the Foundation to seek these interests as a non-profit.
The Foundation hires no employees directly. Automattic sponsors some people to work on Foundation stuff.
>> WordPress.org is managed and owned by Mullenweg personally
> Not necessarily, he did start it and is the main director, but the Foundation serves WordPress and, in theory, as a non-profit could have a different director.
The WordPress.org domain and website, including the centralised plugin and theme repositories used by millions of sites, are not run by the California public benefit corporation known as the WordPress Foundation.
Instead, they are allegedly run by another of Matt's companies named Mobius Ltd.
I can't work on the allegations (nor I think it matters, it's just details on how it operates, not who is legally responsible).
But on "Automattic sponsors" that sentence is true, but not only Automattic, WordPress has more sponsors as well as voluntaries. So it is not all under Matt, even if he is the director of the Foundation.
>Sept 26: WP Engine is banned from Wordpress.org [6] breaking plugin updates from WP Engine
Also someone who is late to the party, but the "breaking plugin updates from WP Engine" wording confuses me. From the wording in [6] it seems like WP Engine was using plugins hosted by wordpress.org, which all broke when wordpress.org blocked WP Engine's access to those plugins. Did I get that right?
Yeah... I did this in a hurry (about 15min) before work, and HN doesn't allow me to edit so let me rectify:
WP Engine is banned from accessing Wordpress.org assets, this way all WP Engine clients were unable to get updates for their plugins, posing a considerable security risk. WP Engine is working on a solution for their users, I don't know right now if this is solved.
This one irks me, it should be something done in phases, not just blocking the access overnight. Lots of websites are getting attacked in this crossfire, really irresponsible move.
