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Comment by jeanlucas

Long post, writing this for myself as well:

The players

- 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

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;

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]

[1] https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/22/matt-mullenweg-calls-wp-en...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41619587

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41631912

[5] https://automattic.com/2024/09/25/open-source-trademarks-wp-...

[6] https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/

[7] https://ma.tt/2024/09/wordpress-engine/

[8] https://automattic.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/term-sheet...