WordPress is the blogging engine that powers about half of the websites currently active in the world, and we is one of them. If you are a website developer, and follow the development of WordPress, you surely know that for the past few weeks, two of the biggest WordPress platforms, namely Automattic and WP Engine have been engaged in an online battle.
Recently, it has been reported that WP Engine, a third party WordPress blog engine host has sued Automattic, the company that owns the blog engine and also Matt Mullenweg, the creator of the blog engine.
To summarize the narration; for a long time, Matt Mullenweg has asked WP Engine to help in the development of the WordPress engine, and during the WordCamp US 2024 event a few weeks ago, has said that WP Engine is a cancer to the future of WordPress because of their refusal to help in its development.
Technically, both Automattic and WP Engine are the two largest WordPress hosting companies in the world right now, with WP Engine receiving a $250 million funding injection by equity firm Silver Lake in 2018.
During the event, Matt Mullenweg said that there is a significant difference between these two companies when comparing the time spent on the technology development of the WordPress platform, where Automattic spends 3900 hours a week, and where WP Engine spends only 40 hours in the same period same
Matt's previous request to WP Engine appeared to have been ignored by the company, and this led Matt to remove his submission. After a week of fighting on social media, WP Engine issued a C&D (cease & desist) order to Matt Mullenweg, where the owner of the blog engine issued their own C&D order and ordered WP Engine to stop using the WordPress trademark arbitrarily.
Because of this, WP Engine issued a lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg saying that Matt is now not allowing companies like them to run their business using the WordPress open source engine without hindrance, especially when Automattic is blocking access to WordPress resources. such as plug-ins, APIs and free WordPress themes from September 25 to October 1, 2024.
The suit, filed in a California court, also says that Matt Mullenweg also misrepresented his holdings in WordPress.org and the WordPress Foundation.
Also recently, Automattic is seen to have shown a post saying that they are asking WP Engine to pay eight percent of their annual income or give some of their labor to help in the development of the WordPress blog engine for the next seven years, but this seems to be the case. has been ignored by WP Engine.
The dispute between Automattic and WP Engine is seen as very strange and troubling, especially since these two companies are the largest WordPress blog engine hosts in the world.