Things get nasty in lawsuit between WordPress.org and WP Engine

“WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it, with them getting all of the profits and providing all of the services,” the post said, adding that if “WP Engine wants to control your WordPress experience, they need to run their own user login system, update servers, plugin directory, theme directory, pattern directory, block directory, translations, photo directory, job board, meetups, conferences, bug tracker, forums, Slack, Ping-o-matic, and showcase. Their servers can no longer access our servers for free. The reason WordPress sites don’t get hacked as much anymore is we work with hosts to block vulnerabilities at the network layer. WP Engine will need to replicate that security research on their own.”

In its lawsuit, WP Engine focused much of its attack on Automattic founder Matthew Mullenweg, accusing Mullenweg of lying to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the state of California about control of WordPress, and questioning whether it was truly being controlled by a non-profit.

“The WordPress source code and trademarks were initially owned by Defendant Matthew Mullenweg’s for-profit company, Defendant Automattic Inc.. In 2010, in response to mounting public concern, the WordPress source code and trademarks were placed into the nonprofit WordPress Foundation, which Mullenweg created, with Mullenweg and Automattic making sweeping promises of open access for all,” the filing said. “What Defendants’ statements and assurances did not disclose is that while they were publicly touting their purported good deed of moving this intellectual property away from a private company, and into the safe hands of a nonprofit, Defendants in fact had quietly transferred irrevocable, exclusive, royalty-free rights in the WordPress trademarks right back to Automattic that very same day in 2010. This meant that far from being independent of any company as Defendants had promised, control over the WordPress trademarks effectively never left Automattic’s hands.”