Incompetent manchild 
has a tantrum 
, 30% of the internet implicated 
We are litigation counsel for WP Engine and write to address the serious and repeated misconduct Automattic has directed toward WP Engine over the past several days.
Stunningly, Automattic's CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic – his for-profit entity – a very large sum of money before his September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, he was going to embark on a self-described "scorched earth nuclear approach" toward WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond. When his outrageous financial demands were not met, Mr. Mullenweg carried out his threats by making repeated false claims disparaging WP Engine to its employees, its customers, and the world. Mr. Mullenweg has carried out this wrongful campaign against WP Engine in multiple outlets, including via his keynote address, across several public platforms like X, YouTube, and even on the Wordpress.org site, and through the WordPress Admin panel for all WordPress users, including directly targeting WP Engine customers in their own private WordPress instances used to run their online businesses.
Mr. Mullenweg's covert demand that WP Engine hand over tens of millions to his for-profit company Automattic, while publicly masquerading as an altruistic protector of the WordPress community, is disgraceful. WP Engine will not accede to these unconscionable demands which not only harm WP Engine and its employees, but also threaten the entire WordPress community. WP Engine has sought to do the right thing at each stage of Mr. Mullenweg's wrongful campaign and will continue to do so, with the integrity and candor that are hallmarks of its own culture and that of many other participants in the WordPress ecosystem. Mr. Mullenweg's words and conduct constitute actionable wrongdoing and must cease immediately.
He went to defend himself on Reddit:
They had the option to license the WordPress trademark for 8% of their revenue, which could be delivered either as payments, people (Five for the Future .org commitments), or any combination of the above.
I would have happily negotiated from there, but they refused to even take a call. Their entire strategy has been to obscure and delay, which they tried to do on Friday. "Can we get the right folks together early next week?" They've been stringing us along for years, I'm the dummy for believing that they actually wanted to do anything. But making it right, now.
And also went in for a fight on orange site:
WP Engine calls itself the worlds #1 wordpress hosting (with over 1.5m clients), but they aren't even in the top 10 material contributors to wordpress. Although they have pledged to support wordpress development, is is only to the tune of 40 hours a week. Their pledge is miniscule given their usage of wordpress and isn't even in the top 25 pledges made. It seems they were called out on this, and told to resolve it or it would get highlighted, and highlighted it was.
Sure, the license allows them to do whatever they want, but there's nothing wrong with publicizing that they don't give much in return. With over $400M ARR, thats something they could easily resolve.
Take note, this is how to do business negotiations:
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Oh my God. I don't know why I read that wpengine screed in full but I did and it was painful. They speak like hr zombies that used to be ya fiction writers. The response was so much better. This means the second guy is 100 is not guilty or whatever this about.
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it was written by some female SF lawyer so yeah
he dared ask for money for his profit making company from another for profit company
for context re Automattic
They were previously a mid sized startup living off Wordpress but recently they want to go big w/ VC money so basically Reddit profit mode
and the biggest company profiting off Wordpress is WPEngine so naturally they set their sights on them...
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He threatened -- and followed through with -- having the 501c3 entity (WordPress.org) supplement his coercion of WP Engine. You can't puppet a charity to stuff your for-profit company's pockets.
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Automattic retained the exclusive commercial license to the trademarks. The WP foundation just manages the open source software and non commercial use of it
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How is that relevant at all to Mullenweg commandeering WordPress.org news feeds and events to coerce WP Engine? The trademark topic is actually pretty irrelevant to the extortion claims.
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