The company behind WordPress, Automattic Inc., and its founder, Matt Mullenweg, continue to face backlash over a "nuclear war" started with WP Engine (WPE) that allegedly messed with maintenance and security of hundreds of thousands of websites.

In a proposed class action lawsuit filed this weekend, a WPE customer, Ryan Keller, accused Automattic and Mullenweg of "deliberately abusing their power and control over the WordPress ecosystem to purposefully, deliberately, and repeatedly disrupt contracts"—all due to a supposed trademark infringement claim. If granted, the class would include "all persons in the United States who had ongoing active WPE WordPress Web Hosting Plans on or before September 24, 2024 through December 10, 2024."

WPE had previously sued Automattic and Mullenweg, alleging that the attack on WPE was actually an attempt to extort what Keller alleged was "tens of millions of dollars" in payments from WPE for using the WordPress trademark. Mullenweg made it clear that the value of the payments was "based on what he thought WPE could afford, rather than what the value of the trademark actually was," Keller's complaint alleged.

Read full article

Comments

Automattic-owned blogging site and social platform Tumblr has financially backed Tapestry, the newly launched app designed to organize feeds from across the open web, including RSS, Mastodon, Bluesky, and others. Launched as a Kickstarter project in January 2024, Tapestry went on to raise over $177,000 via crowdfunding for its app, which opened up to the […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

WordPress.com owner Automattic last year acquired the multi-service messaging app Beeper for $125 million and said it would merge it with Texts.com, an earlier acquisition in the same category. Now, Beeper is releasing the first set of redesigned apps for iOS and desktop in beta after the merger. In a blog post, Beeper said that […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Since 2022, blogging site Tumblr has been teasing its plans to integrate with the fediverse — the open social web powered by the protocol ActivityPub also used by Mastodon, Threads, Flipboard, and others. Now, the Automattic-owned blogging platform is sharing more information about when and how that integration could actually happen. As it turns out, […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

A cybersecurity company says hackers are pushing Mac and Windows malware through sites that are using outdated versions of WordPress.

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members, two of whom he says planned to spearhead a new fork of the open source WordPress project. While community criticism of WordPress’s governance isn’t new, the latest brouhaha kicked off back in September when Mullenweg publicly chastised WP Engine, a […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

It’s a new year, but drama in the WordPress community keeps going. Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, said that it would reduce its contribution to WordPress core, the open source project that acts as the backbone of most of Automattic’s products and ensures the longevity of WordPress as a technology and community. Automattic CEO […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Days after web hosting provider WP Engine won a preliminary injunction against WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg and rival hosting provider Automattic, Mullenweg announced that WordPress.org is taking a holiday break. WordPress.org — a site that provides access to WordPress plug-ins, themes, and other artifacts to the community — will take a break from providing free […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

There are few matters in life that divide a room more than the prudence of putting pineapple on pizza. But if you’re of the persuasion that tropical fruit has no place on a pie, you’ll have to swallow a bitter pill — if you want to access the WordPress.org developer portal and forum, at least. […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

This story has been updated throughout with more details as the story has developed. We will continue to do so as the case and dispute are ongoing. The community around WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites, is going through a very heated controversy. At the core is a fight […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

WPAI's products include an AI plugin maker, an assistant for site builders, and a chatbot for WordPress-related questions.

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

BlackRock has cut the worth of its stake in web hosting provider Automattic by 10%, the asset manager said in its latest quarterly disclosure report. The company, which invested in Automattic during its Series E round in 2021, valued its investment in the WordPress-hosting company at $37.5 per share, down from $41.7 per share earlier […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

WordPress.com owner Automattic has added another company to its portfolio of online content creation tools and services with its acquisition of Grammarly competitor, Harper. Although it’s competing in the same space as the popular grammar checker used by many online writers, Harper’s tool is aimed at developers, open source, and works to maintain privacy by […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.