Automattic staff walk with severance over WP Engine feud
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The Register UK ☛ Automattic staff walk with severance over WP Engine feud
Matthew Mullenweg, CEO of WordPress biz Automattic and co-creator of the open source software, says he feels "much lighter" after 159 employees departed in the wake of his controversial attempt to pressure WP Engine to license trademarks the rival has used for years.
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Manton Reece ☛ Automattic, WP Engine, and 37signals
Why do I bring all this old 37signals news up? I think there are parallels with Matt Mullenweg today. For many people in the WordPress community, they won’t quickly forget how he blew everything up, wrecking what seemed to be a friendly competitive spirit inside the WordPress ecosystem, with bloggers, developers, volunteers, and hosting companies all working toward furthering WordPress’s mission to democratize publishing.
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Tedium ☛ Could WP Engine’s WordPress Lawsuit Hurt Open-Source?
It looked like the WordPress mess had a period of relative calm for a few days, but now it’s stormy once again.
And honestly, I can’t help but feel like it’s only gotten uglier and harder to defend. WordPress and its parent company, Automattic, are still fighting with WP Engine, and it hasn’t gotten any nicer.
The story can best be observed around the arc of Theo Browne, perhaps the most prominent developer voice in the YouTube ecosystem. (Apologies to ThePrimeagen, who is also quite good.) Primarily a TypeScript coder, Browne doesn’t usually delve in the realm of PHP, but he felt the need to report on the conflict this past week in a video titled “This might be the end of WordPress.” The video drew a bunch of attention, and leaned pretty strongly against Matt Mullenweg for many of the reasons we covered previously.
Update
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Matt Mullenweg: ‘WordPress.org just belongs to me’
Mullenweg heads up WordPress.com and its parent company, Automattic. He owns the WordPress.org project, and he even leads the nonprofit foundation that controls the WordPress trademark. To the outside observer, these might appear to be independent organizations, all separately designed around the WordPress open-source project. But as he wages a battle against WP Engine, a third-party WordPress hosting service, Mullenweg has muddied the boundaries between three essential entities that lead a sprawling ecosystem powering almost half of the web.
To Mullenweg, that’s all fine — as long as it supports the health of WordPress long-term.
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WordPress CEO Matt Mullenweg goes 'nuclear' on Silver Lake, WP Engine
More than two decades after starting WordPress, Matt Mullenweg finds himself in the most intense battle of his career.
His company, Automattic, is taking aim at buyout firm Silver Lake, the majority owner of WP Engine, an ordeal that's escalated into an ugly legal fight.