Automattic and WP Engine in Cease and Desist Over WordPress Trademark

[engine]

The war of words has taken a step up to include C&Ds between both parties.

Just a day after WordPress hosting service WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist notice to Automattic asking its CEO to stop publicly trashing WP Engine, now Automattic has sent its own cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine, saying the latter has infringed several trademarks like WordPress and WooCommerce.

This comes after Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic and co-creator of WordPress, last week criticized WP Engine for profiteering off the open-source WordPress project, called it a “cancer to WordPress,” and accused the company of contributing very little to the community.

[techcrunch.com...]

[engine]

For the record, here's some of the other info related to this spat.

Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a ‘cancer to WordPress’ and urges community to switch providers [techcrunch.com]

WordPress.org has blocked WP Engine customers from updating and installing plugins and themes via WP Admin. [wpenginestatus.com]

WP Engine is banned from WordPress.org [wordpress.org]

[not2easy]

Umm, that would make their services useless and counterproductive. Unfortunately WP Engine attracted their clientele by assuming WP maintenance tasks like backups and updates and plugins for the sites they host. Likely to be a lot of people who never bothered to learn about the platform they use. It sounds like they asked for it.

[lexipixel]

... with the background between Matt, WordPress, (.org and .com) and WP Engine -- and now drastic moves, (e.g. bans, lawsuits)... it seems there were some within Automattic that didn't like how it's playing out.

Automattic Alignment
October 3, 2024
[ma.tt ]
"....there’s been a hurricane of public activity and press. Inside of Automattic, there’s been a parallel debate and process....... generous buy-out package possible, we called it an Alignment Offer: if you resigned before 20:00 UTC on Thursday, October 3, 2024, you would receive $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is.....

Short story: Automattic lost 8.4% of its staff. WP Engine needs to support 1.5m account on how to do manual plugin and theme installs (minimally), and lawsuits are pending.

.