WordPress and its CEO have been given a telling off by a California district judge after WP Engine, a third-party WordPress hosting service, said they were damaging its business.
The judge ordered WordPress.com parent company, Automattic, and also CEO, Matt Mullenweg, to stop restricting the hosting service’s access to the open-source project that develops the WordPress publishing platform, WordPress.org.
The preliminary injection could end what has turned into a very personal crusade for Mullenweg, who accused WP Engine of “strip-mining the WordPress ecosystem.”
What Has the Judge Decided?
The judge has served an injunction in favor of WP Engine, which argued that Automattic’s decision to block it from WordPress.org’s servers harmed its business. In particular, it saw WordPress effectively take control of WP Engine’s ACF Plugin. This meant that WP Engine customers couldn’t easily update or install either the plugins or themes that they needed.
Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said Mullenweg’s “conduct is designed to induce breach or disruption.” He also wasn’t convinced by Automattic’s argument that WP Engine relied on WordPress.org to power its business.
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The ruling says: “While Defendants characterize WP Engine’s harm as self-imposed because it built its business around a website ‘that it had no contractual right to use…’ Defendants’ role in helping that harm materialize through their recent targeted actions toward WP Engine, and no other competitor, cannot be ignored.”
The ruling stipulates that Automattic will have to take down a list of companies and customers who use WP Engine that it had published online. The Verge adds that it “…also has to remove the checkbox that asks WordPress users to verify they’re not affiliated with WP Engine when logging in.”
WP Engine posted after the ruling on X, stating: “We are grateful that the court has granted our motion for a preliminary injunction that restores access to and functionality of wordpress.org for WP Engine, its customers and its users.”
A Long-Running TIFF
This argument has been going on for a long while. It centers upon WP Engine’s use of the free, open-source WordPress software. It uses this to drive its own pre-packaged WordPress hosting service. And it is now a rival to WordPress.com itself with The Verge reporting that “…more than 200,000 websites us[e] the service to power their online presence.”
Mullenweg has argued, very publicly, that WP Engine is using his venture’s open-source software but are not giving back to the WordPress community.
“The company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 million in assets under management,” Mullenweg said. “Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your open source ideals — it just wants return on capital. So, it’s at this point I ask everyone in the WordPress community to go vote with your wallet. Who are you going to give your money to: someone who is going to nourish the ecosystem or someone who is going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers?”
Lack of Commitment
Mullenweg added in a blog post that WP Engine had only contributed 40 hours per week to the WordPress.org open source project and said that it is “…setting a poor standard that others may look at and think is ok to replicate.”
Mullenweg argues that this could damage WordPress in the long term and gave the call to arms that the community “…must set a higher standard to ensure WordPress is here for the next 100 years.”
However, the plot thickens with allegations that Mullenweg demanded money off WP Engine for use of the WordPress trademark and that a volley of cease and desist letters went back and forth between the two companies. Mullenweg said in a blog post that WP Engine has to cough up what it owes for using the trademark or start contributing to the open source project.
The case will now go to trial and Automattic spokesperson Megan Fox told The Verge that the company looks forward to prevailing.
