PCGamer recently ran an article entitled “For 20 years, WordPress existed without much drama—now it’s at the center of a big fight that won’t be over soon”.
So what’s behind the drama, and who – or what – is WordPress fighting with?
40% Of The Internet
An estimated >40% of the web uses WordPress. WordPress sells its services through a company called Automattic.
Matt Mullenweg, the originator of WordPress and the owner of Automaticc, recently wrote an article for the WordPress news section.
He had clearly become irritated that so many people thought a rival app, WP Engine, was an official partner of WordPress.
Mullenweg wrote, “It has to be said and repeated: WP Engine is not WordPress. My own mother was confused and thought WP Engine was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they’re giving you WordPress, but they’re not. And they’re profiting off of the confusion. WP Engine needs a trademark license to continue their business.”
Strong words, and he’s clearly not happy about WP Engine benefitting from similar branding.
Early Legal Proceedings
Yahoo’s Ernie Smith wrote that WP Engine were upset by Mullenweg’s “public outbursts” and decided to sue – and they weren’t just randomly throwing dice and hoping for winning numbers. The company won a preliminary injunction against Automattic in a federal lawsuit.
The battle has been likened to a “soap opera”.
A Little History
Way back in 2003, Mullenweg co-founded WordPress, envisioning it as a free, open-source content management system (CMS). T
he open-source nature of WordPress allowed developers around the world to contribute, which built a vast array of themes, plugins, and tools that has made creating a website far easier to newcomers.
Mullenweg has said that WP Engine has used WordPress’s trademark without contributing significantly to the project.
In September, at WordCamp US, Mullenweg said in his presentation, “Silver Lake [investor in WP Engine] doesn’t give a dang about your open-source ideals, it just wants return on capital.”
WP Engine actually sponsored that event. A few days later, they sent a cease-and-desist notice to Automattic, and argued that Mullenweg used the event to negotiate for a licensing deal rumoured to be worth tens of millions per year.
The company called Mullenweg’s financial demands “outrageous” and said that he had made “repeated false claims” about WP Engine.
Automattic followed by sending its own cease-and-desist notice, saying that WP Engine infringed on their WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
As per TechCrunch, the latter’s notice read, “Negative reviews and comments regarding WP Engine and its offerings are imputed to our Client, thereby tarnishing our Client’s brands, harming their reputation, and damaging the goodwill our Client has established in its marks”.
Ernie Smith wrote, “From that starting point, things got out of hand almost immediately, with users and open-source contributors caught in the middle. Mullenweg cut WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org—a repository similar to an app store for themes and plugins.”
Mullenweg also pressed WP Engine’s customers to leave and publicly claimed WP Engine had intended to smear his name.
Then, in October 2024, there were stories of contributors getting banned from Slack channels or quitting. Mullenweg appeared on podcasts and talked about his case in detail.
What Else Has Mullenweg Done?
Smith wrote that Mullenweg launched “increasingly vindictive attacks, including barring a popular plugin maintained by WP Engine, Advanced Custom Fields, from the WordPress.org directory on security grounds, and replacing it with an open-source fork, Secure Custom Fields.”
Automattic also prevented WP Engine employees from signing into the WordPress community site, and launched a tracker of departing WP Engine customers.
But a December preliminary injunction ruled that Automattic must restore WP Engine’s access to WordPress.
Mullenweg posted on social media that he was “disgusted and sickened” that he was forced to provide “free labor and services”, and said that the ruling should “chill every open source maintainer.” He wrote that while he disagreed with the court’s decision, he has complied with the order.
Why Does The Feud Matter?
With so much of the internet depending on WordPress tools, the uncertainty hasn’t been helpful for businesses.
The BBC interviewed Tricia Fox, head of an agency managing about 70 websites. Fox said, “I can’t run a business on this level of uncertainty.”
Daniel Card of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, said WordPress was “crucial to the internet”, and that its actions have a ripple effect on various other companies.
Fox said that migrating her websites to a different host would cost “tens of thousands of pounds” over a few years.
What’s Happening Now, in 2025?
WordPress is slowing down. From a reported thousands of hours per week of open-source contributions, there’s now “the rough equivalent of one full-time employee”, writes Smith.
The drama and court battle has affected Automattic’s valuation, but WP Engine and its users have regained access to the theme and plugin libraries.
Smith says that their future access is uncertain – and hints that the wider future of WordPress is, too, signing off with the line, “For the first time in nearly 20 years, WordPress no longer feels like a sure bet if you need to get a website online.”
Has Mullenweg Posted More News Since?
Mullenweg’s latest post on the WordPress site was entitled “Joost/Karim Fork”. He described Joost as a leader in the SEO space.
He had WordPress “marketing leadership responsibility” between January 2019 and June 2019. Mullenweg said he was not effective in the role.
Karim leads Crowd Favorite, a “small WordPress agency” employing about 50 people.
The two projects are forking, which Mullenweg fully supports. He says that forking allows people to experiment with governance, leadership, decision-making, and technical approaches.
Mullenweg hasn’t given up working on WordPress. He says that his day job “running a 1,700+ person company” takes him 60-80 hours a week but he spends additional time working on WordPress 6.8 “and beyond”.
He is excited to see what Joost and Karim work on together, and says that the beauty of open source is that people can take the GPL code and create their own vision.
