What is this WordPress drama? (Recap)
Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2025 5:09 am
Summary: There is a lawsuit between two WordPress companies (WP Engine and Automattic) over a trademark dispute. Due to their influence, there have been escalations that have led to a lot of negative PR for the WordPress ecosystem. The vast majority of WordPress sites are NOT affected by this dispute at all.
It all started because two big companies in the WordPress industry got into a legal battle over a trademark.
Automattic is a company founded by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. They are the creators of WooCommerce, the WordPress.com hosting service, the Jetpack plugin, and more.
WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosting company owned by a large private tunisia cell phone number list equity firm, Silver Lake.
Automattic owns the exclusive commercial rights to use the “WordPress” trademark. It asked WP Engine to negotiate a licensing agreement that would either provide payments to Automattic or increase contributions to the WordPress project, which is open source software.
After the parties failed to reach an agreement, Matt went public with the dispute at the annual WordCamp US conference, where he claimed that WP Engine, despite having over $400 million in revenue, was not contributing enough to the free and open source WordPress project.
As things got heated, both companies sent each other a formal cease and desist (C&D) letter. Due to the legal threats, Matt, as a co-founder of WordPress, banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org’s servers.
It all started because two big companies in the WordPress industry got into a legal battle over a trademark.
Automattic is a company founded by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. They are the creators of WooCommerce, the WordPress.com hosting service, the Jetpack plugin, and more.
WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosting company owned by a large private tunisia cell phone number list equity firm, Silver Lake.
Automattic owns the exclusive commercial rights to use the “WordPress” trademark. It asked WP Engine to negotiate a licensing agreement that would either provide payments to Automattic or increase contributions to the WordPress project, which is open source software.
After the parties failed to reach an agreement, Matt went public with the dispute at the annual WordCamp US conference, where he claimed that WP Engine, despite having over $400 million in revenue, was not contributing enough to the free and open source WordPress project.
As things got heated, both companies sent each other a formal cease and desist (C&D) letter. Due to the legal threats, Matt, as a co-founder of WordPress, banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org’s servers.