On Monday, WP Engine, the WordPress hosting service, served a cease-and-desist notice to Automattic, following comments made by Automattic’s CEO, Matt Mullenweg, in which he referred to WP Engine as a “cancer to WordPress”.
The notice demanded that Automattic and Mullenweg withdraw their remarks and cease from making further negative statements about the company.
WP Engine communicated the action through a tweet, highlighting the damage caused by Mullenweg’s false and harmful statements.
Just like Automattic, WP Engine also profits from the open-source WordPress project. The company claimed that Mullenweg had previously threatened WP Engine ahead of last week’s WordCamp summit.
The letter quoted Mullenweg’s threat, where he demanded a substantial payment from WP Engine before his keynote speech at the WordCamp US Convention on September 20th. If the payment was not made, Mullenweg threatened to launch a self-proclaimed ‘scorched earth nuclear approach’ against WP Engine in the WordPress community and beyond.
According to the letter, when WP Engine did not meet Mullenweg’s financial demands, he proceeded to make repeated false accusations against WP Engine to its employees, customers, and the public.
The letter further claimed that last week, Automattic started demanding WP Engine to pay a significant percentage of its gross revenues, running into tens of millions of dollars, to use trademarks like “WordPress”.
In its defense, WP Engine claimed its usage of the “WordPress” trademark was in line with fair use laws and the platform’s guidelines. The letter also provided screenshots of Mullenweg’s text messages to WP Engine’s CEO and board members, suggesting that Mullenweg threatened to exclude WP Engine from WordPress community events unless they agreed to Automattic’s demands.
At the time of reporting, Automattic had not responded to a request for comment.
Last week, Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, criticized WP Engine for profiting from the open source project without contributing much in return, while also disabling key features that power WordPress.
In a blog post, Mullenweg compared WP Engine’s contribution to the “Five for the Future” pledge, which aims to contribute resources towards the sustained growth of WordPress, with that of Automattic. He highlighted that despite both companies being of similar size and generating similar revenues, there was a significant gap in their contributions.
Mullenweg also accused WP Engine of giving customers a substandard version of WordPress.
Interestingly, Automattic was an investor in WP Engine in 2011 when the company raised $1.2 million in funding. Since then, WP Engine has raised over $300 million in equity, with a significant portion coming from a $250 million investment from private equity firm Silver Lake in 2018.
