The whole story started when two large WordPress companies got into a legal dispute over a trademark dispute.
Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 5:24 am
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What WordPress drama is this? (short summary)
Quick summary: There is ongoing litigation between two WordPress companies (WP Engine and Automattic) over a trademark dispute. Due to their influence, the incident escalated lebanon phone number resulting in a lot of negative PR for the WordPress ecosystem. The vast majority of WordPress sites are not affected by this story at all.
Automattic is a company founded by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. They are the creators of WooCommerce, WordPress.com hosting, Jetpack plugin, and more.
WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosting company hosted by Silver Lake, a large private equity firm.
Automattic has the exclusive commercial rights to use the "WordPress" trademark. They asked WP Engine to negotiate a licensing deal that would include paying Automattic or increasing its contribution to the free, open-source WordPress project.
With the two sides unable to come to an agreement, Matt opened up about the controversy at the annual WordCamp US conference, saying that WP Engine, despite being a company worth over $400 million, wasn't giving enough back to the free open source project of WordPress.
As the situation worsened, the two companies sent each other formal cease and desist (C&D) letters. Due to legal threats, Matt, as the co-founder of WordPress, banned WP Engine from accessing the WordPress.org server.
This means that all customers with sites hosted on WP Engine will no longer be able to receive updates from WordPress.org’s servers.
The ban was later temporarily lifted to protect users and allow WP Engine to create its own update server. Because WordPress is open source, the WP Engine team was able to build its own updater to ensure users of its hosting platform receive software updates.
Server bans officially come back into effect on October 1st. Shortly thereafter, WP Engine filed a federal lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg.
As the situation escalated, the WP Engine team was banned from accessing their WordPress.org account. This means that the WP Engine team can no longer publish updates for its WordPress plugins from the official WordPress.org servers.
One of WP Engine’s proprietary plugins is Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), which is popular among developers and used by over 2 million websites. To ensure that all users receive security updates, the WordPress.org team forked the ACF plugin without WP Engine’s consent, renamed it Secure Custom Fields (SCF), and took over the original ACF plugin directory page . The reason given is for maintenance and providing updates to users who are unaware of the show.
What WordPress drama is this? (short summary)
Quick summary: There is ongoing litigation between two WordPress companies (WP Engine and Automattic) over a trademark dispute. Due to their influence, the incident escalated lebanon phone number resulting in a lot of negative PR for the WordPress ecosystem. The vast majority of WordPress sites are not affected by this story at all.
Automattic is a company founded by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. They are the creators of WooCommerce, WordPress.com hosting, Jetpack plugin, and more.
WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosting company hosted by Silver Lake, a large private equity firm.
Automattic has the exclusive commercial rights to use the "WordPress" trademark. They asked WP Engine to negotiate a licensing deal that would include paying Automattic or increasing its contribution to the free, open-source WordPress project.
With the two sides unable to come to an agreement, Matt opened up about the controversy at the annual WordCamp US conference, saying that WP Engine, despite being a company worth over $400 million, wasn't giving enough back to the free open source project of WordPress.
As the situation worsened, the two companies sent each other formal cease and desist (C&D) letters. Due to legal threats, Matt, as the co-founder of WordPress, banned WP Engine from accessing the WordPress.org server.
This means that all customers with sites hosted on WP Engine will no longer be able to receive updates from WordPress.org’s servers.
The ban was later temporarily lifted to protect users and allow WP Engine to create its own update server. Because WordPress is open source, the WP Engine team was able to build its own updater to ensure users of its hosting platform receive software updates.
Server bans officially come back into effect on October 1st. Shortly thereafter, WP Engine filed a federal lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg.
As the situation escalated, the WP Engine team was banned from accessing their WordPress.org account. This means that the WP Engine team can no longer publish updates for its WordPress plugins from the official WordPress.org servers.
One of WP Engine’s proprietary plugins is Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), which is popular among developers and used by over 2 million websites. To ensure that all users receive security updates, the WordPress.org team forked the ACF plugin without WP Engine’s consent, renamed it Secure Custom Fields (SCF), and took over the original ACF plugin directory page . The reason given is for maintenance and providing updates to users who are unaware of the show.