The most worrying thing is that Mullenweg just seems unwell and has created his own reality distortion field where he can no longer see the absurdness and damaging nature of his actions. His behavior reminds me of a cult leader or a celebrity where they surround themselves with only people who do their bidding and gradually slip into this state.
For those who might be wondering what comes next - IANAL, but, this is what seems to usually happen:
Automattic has 72 hours to comply with the order. They probably will, plus or minus Matt being a whiny child about it. They have competent attorneys who are surely telling them to do so. They can also appeal the order, and they could even ask for the appeal to be granted on an emergency basis, but there's no promise that'd work, and usually it doesn't. The whole point of injunctions is that they stop things from changing until they're overturned by appeal or trial.
If they do comply, the status quo resumes until this goes to trial. There's no guarantee that WP Engine prevails at trial, but the fact that the injunction was granted means it's pretty likely they will, unless facts or law materially changes in the meantime. The statement Automattic released suggests to me that this is the path they'll take.
If they do not comply, things become... interesting. Of course, the case still eventually goes to trial. In the meantime, though, WP Engine can ask the court to force Automattic to comply. That probably looks like a motion to show cause why they have not complied, followed by further orders to comply and possible contempt findings. Contempt findings often come with monetary fines that escalate (e. g. $1,000 per day the first week, $2,000 per day the next, and so on). It can also come with jail time, though I am not sure how that works in cases where the entity being sued is a company.
It probably won't get to that, though. Refusing to comply with a preliminary injunction is an extremely bad idea, which is why almost nobody does it. Even states and government actors with strong political desires for things and a lot of power nearly always comply. While Matt Mullenweg is clearly not a rational actor, and clearly is willing to do extremely dumb things despite the advice of council, the other people who work for Automattic (and certainly its investors) are unlikely to be so willing to ignore the order of a federal court. If they do, their lives are going to get worse, not better, and possibly rapidly.
As of this writing, the Automattic WP Engine tracker site is still up.
(Hopefully some actual attorneys who read HN can correct anything I got wrong. I just haven't seen anyone write this out yet.)
None of this is surprising - anyone who was on tumblr and saw the absolute meltdown he had (Automattic now owns Tumblr, for those who lost track), and his continuous weird scorch-earth attacks on the queer community where he kept making up lies and justifications for decisions that made little sense, would have known he was in the early stages of a seemingly complete mental breakdown.
He personally digitally stalked and targeted online users, followed them from site to site, publishing and using user details that weren't public, and personally started attacking and practically doxxing those that couldn't take or understand his weird (unintelligible) stances. He would even argue with random users by PM'ing directly.
Which gets even stranger that he doesn't know to stay quiet, considering Automattic had to pay out to the New York City Commission on Human Rights, for constructing teams and moderation policies that unfairly targetted LGBTQ+ individuals^2. They kept the policies after acquisition, made them worse, and ended up paying out for it - just for them to end up going back to what they were doing.
---
To 404Media: There is an incredible article waiting to be written that has your name all over it. It was a huuuge thing that Automattic tried to cover up and keep from breaking containment. Just start with "the car full of hammers" comment that led to the blow-up (after a lot of targeted build-up).
He self-destructed and went absolutely mental, it was weird and strange. This was last year.
Edit: knowyourmeme^2 has a little bit of history, but it goes much deeper. It's a great story that Vice would have covered in extremely poignant details years ago, ready for the taking.
As someone who was around before WordPress existed, and witnessed all the proprietary CMS systems of the day, as well as personally building custom CMS systems professionally, it disappoints me to watch this unfold.
I used to see WordPress as an example of how open-source can be good business. Being open-source, and comparatively better then other proprietary options at the time, made WordPress an attractive option, and its user base grew rapidly. Blogging was also more popular then, although people still blog.
I think as of today there are better options then WordPress, and blogging is not the same as in the past. I think because of peoples history with products like WordPress, many people have gravitated towards static site generators.
Early on Automattic seemed like a place I might want to work, but obviously a lot that has changed since WordPress first launched. I can't see myself wanting to work there now, or wanting to use WordPress again. Not to mention I moved on from PHP a long time ago.
"In October, Mullenweg announced that he’d given Automattic employees a buyout package, and 159 employees, or roughly 8.4 percent of staff, took the offer. “I feel much lighter,” he wrote. But shortly after, he reportedly complained that the company was now “very short staffed.”"
He then offered another buyout package with even more generous terms, with like a 4 hour period to accept it. People did, and then he said "yeah, um, we're gonna ask you to say on indefinitely because we're really short staffed"
Curiously, in an old tweet Matt praises the openness of the web[1]. I guess this is in response to the bans elsewhere (twitter?); but still, Wordpress was positioned as an open alternative.
At the moment I feel uncertain about Wordpress and its status. Are there any plans to bring more stability here?
Of all the tech CEOs to get humbled in 2024, why did it have to be one from an open source project?
> Of all the tech CEOs to get humbled in 2024, why did it have to be one from an open source project?
He, by his own account, went 'scorched earth'/overreached as a result of his ignorance with licensing (either true or demonstrative).
Any marks on his back, he put there. Open source will genuinely be better off without people like him co-opting it. WordPress may be forked (won't be the first time, there's currently 12.6k)
I'm wildly interested to see where this all goes. Where does Matt/WordPress.(org|com)/the Foundation end?
To be clear, I am not defending this particular ceo, I only wish better for open source projects and Wordpress in particular.
Off topic, as someone prone to overreacting I have a lot of compassion towards Matt. At the same time it was his choice to attack the other party so actively and I wouldn’t try to excuse that.
I agree! Apologies if my post is abrasive. I wish better for Matt, in particular, as well. Despite his actions, I hope better for him too. Not just OSS or specifically WordPress.
With any good lie there's a nugget of truth. I do get the sense that Matt cares about these principles... my criticism is 'just' that they've been to mislead.
The guy tried to take an emotional argument he was having with himself to court. That works with the public, less so with a judge. Especially when documenting your rage/material impact at such depth.
Is there any possibility, that he could stop self-sabotage, and continue maintain WordPress, so there would not be a need to migrate 43.7% of all websites from WordPress to different CMS, or different update URLs for everything?
But I don't know actually what this is all about, is there any possibility.
I found it frustrating that the article highlights Mullenweg’s actions while failing to even briefly describe what WP Engine is, and what actions they took. The story felt very incomplete, perhaps intended for someone who is already familiar with all the details. I have copied below excerpts from the Wikipedia entry on WP Engine because I found it clarifying.
> WP Engine's main function is allowing businesses and organizations to build, host, and manage websites powered by WordPress.
> During the week preceding September 22, 2024, Matt Mullenweg—founder of WordPress.com—began speaking negatively about rival WP Engine. Mullenweg gave a speech at WordCamp US 2024 that argued that WP Engine had made meager contributions to WordPress compared to Automattic, criticized WP Engine's significant ties to private equity, and called for a boycott, sparking internet controversy.[30] In response, WP Engine issued a cease and desist against what it characterized as defamation and extortion, attributing his attacks to WP Engine's refusal to pay Automattic "a significant percentage of its gross revenues – tens of millions of dollars in fact – on an ongoing basis" for what it claimed were necessary trademark licensing fees (later clarified as 8% of all revenue, payable in gross or in salaries for its own employees working under WordPress.org's direction, combined with a clause that would've prohibited forking[31]) for the "WordPress" name.[32] Automattic responded by sending its own cease and desist the next day, citing the trademark issue.[33] On October 2, 2024, WP Engine sued Automattic and Mullenweg for extortion and abuse of power, which the defendants denied.[31]
As a result of the dispute, WordPress.org blocked WP Engine and affiliates from accessing its servers—which include security updates, the plugin and theme repository, and more—on September 25, 2024, a day after its trademark policy was updated[34] to ask against usage of WP "in a way that confuses people", listing WP Engine as an example.[35] Following backlash, access to WordPress.org was temporarily restored until October 1 to allow WP Engine to build its own mirror sites two days later,[36][37] which the company did.[35] On the 12th, WordPress.org replaced the listing of WP Engine's Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin on the WordPress.org plugin directory with a fork called "Secure Custom Fields" citing a guideline that empowers the foundation to "make changes to a plugin, without developer consent, in the interest of public safety".[38]
On October 7, 2024, to align the company's stance, Mullenweg announced that 159 employees—8.4% of Automattic—had quit in exchange for a severance package of $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher, with the condition that the resigned would not be able to return.[39] The next week concluded another offer of nine months' salary to attempt to placate those who could not quit for financial reasons,[40] though with only four hours to respond and the added term of being excluded from the WordPress.org community.[35]
WP Engine is definitely using the open source to make money, and is a big competitor to wordpress, but Matt is going scorched earth in a way that seems both embarrassing and ineffective.
It would be better if WP Engine contributed more to the open source project that they make so much money from, but it's not illegal or immoral. Maybe Amoral at worse?
If profiting off of open source without contributing back substantially is amoral, there's such a long list of companies (to say nothing of developers with upper middle-class incomes) who are similarly guilty.
And blocking core contributors with their stupid “Affiliated Checkbox”.
Unfortunately outright lying and saying that “I personally don’t think they voluntarily contribute enough” is “contributes nothing” seems to have been partially successful in seeding the idea.
The tl;dr of the dispute is that, a few months ago, Matt Mullenweg decided to start ratfucking WPEngine, to which they responded by suing to get them to stop ratfucking, and the court yesterday ordered Matt to stop ratfucking, to which he has apparently responded he doesn't want anything to do WordPress if he can't ratfuck WPEngine.
The reason why Matt started ratfucking is somewhat unclear. In the most charitable interpretation, he was unhappy with how little WPEngine was contributing to WordPress, and intended to create a pressure campaign to get them to do more, which backfired considerably. In a less charitable interpretation, this was merely an extortion campaign which turned out to be unsuccessful.
Matt claims that this is all in defense of open source, but I'm disinclined to believe him when the legal filings in his defense essentially amount to WordPress (whether the .com, the .org, the Foundation, the trademarks, the code itself, etc.) is entirely his personal property for him to do whatever the hell he wants with and we're all blubbering idiots for thinking that any action he'd ever taken (like setting up a foundation expressly to keep it from being one person's personal property) could ever change that.
MM was an WPE investor. He sold his stake in WPE a few years back, but I wonder if there was some bad blood in the board room that is the root cause of this public battle.
What's the legal basis for granting the injuction? Also what's WP Engine's legal basis for their counter suit? Isn't it Automattic's business? Can't they refuse to do business with someone if they want?
My memory of listening to a real attorney discuss this [1]
WP Engine showed they will be irreparably harmed, which in this case, means harmed in a way that cash can't fix. Thus the judge is preserving the status quo ante while the suit is worked out. (see 31:52 [1]).
edit: requires
1. likelihood (not more likely than not to win, but must show a decent chance);
3. balance of equities favors you (more fair to freeze);
4. public interest supports injunction
3 - 4 are, per Mike, fuzzy and "result driven". The most critical factors are success and harm.
Separately, there is a thing called "Promissory estoppel" where, even though you don't have a contract, you make a promise (Matt: wp.org is free forever to anyone), someone (WP Engine) relies on that promise to their detriment, and the plaintiff's reliance on that promise was reasonable. Discussion of promissory estoppel at 44:17 in [1]
Refusing to do business with someone is one thing. Using your power over a competitor to shove them out of the marketplace and, in effect, giving them reverse special treatment in order to punish them and only them, that's not the same.
It's described in the preliminary injunction linked in the article. I can't seem to copy-paste, but it's multipart test including whether the plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits, and also public interest. It's under the heading "legal standard." Every part of the test went in WP Engine's favor.
Very happy to see the punishment start against Matt, and I sincerely hope it continues and escalates. Not wishing for the end of WordPress, but Matt clearly needed to go a long time ago, and repercussions for his constant terrible actions will hopefully force him out.
(Submitted title was "Matt Mullenweg keeps digging his own grave". It's possible that the article originally had that as its headline, but if not, then it was editorialized, which is against the rules - "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
That crosses unduly into personal attack, even by the monumentally low standard of this topic. Please don't break HN's guidelines like this. You may not owe CEO egos better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
> It is about time for an Ayahuasca retreat or two to beat down some of that monumental ego.
I mean, one of all of my ex's attempts to get people's validation was doing Ayahuasca (by drinking Yagé). It did nothing for her huge ego - not even throwing up like crazy did anything for her.
It's not the first time Mullenweg shows his megalomaniac side and attempt to manipulate the community for his own benefit. I still recall pretty clearly all the Gutenberg drama. Some people will never change.
Sample size of 1. Don't discount the benefits of psychedelics. You must be willing to open yourself up to change and it's not an overnight thing. Takes time, many doses, many experiences, lots of introspection and meditation to wake up.
> second, the entirety of WP was produced from "free labor" by people all over the world. matt is just the beneficiary. grow up dude. it is about time for an Ayahuasca retreat or two to beat down some of that monumental ego.
Open Source does not mean free labour. WordPress has been built by people employed by Matt either via Automattic or via his other entities. WordPress would not exist as it is without Matt. To the point, if Matt didn't like you, you would find it hard to contribute.
He may be a dickhead and in the wrong. But acting like he's benefiting from other people's free labour just shows you've never paid attention to the development of WordPress.
It turns out that Matt personally owns Wordpress.org. I think that would surprise many people who contributed to Wordpress. It certainly surprised me. And likewise the Wordpress foundation has only three board members and only Matt is active.
A massive reason WP became the de facto web CMS was the community, including volunteers supporting plugins they wrote and published for free.
For example, in the early 2010s I manned a help booth at wordcamp. I frequented the forums and gave folk advice on issues they had with free plugins.
This is entirely distinct from Wordpress core and I would say that the ecosystem of plugins was the driving force behind WP’s rise to dominance. I neither wanted or needed Matt Mulenwegs blessing to participate, but he seems to have forgotten that lately.
> But acting like he's benefiting from other people's free labour just shows you've never paid attention to the development of WordPress.
Is Matt responsible, financially, for a large portion of WP development? Yes. Is he benefitting from free labor from OS contributors? Yes. Is the WP ecosystem enriched as a whole by commercial and OS contributors? Yes.
There is this whole issue - which plays into the dispute in multiple ways - that treats Matt, Automattic, WordPress, wordpress.org, wordpress.com, WordPress Foundation, as essentially interchangeable and synonymous. That's part of the problem.
This lawsuit is between two for-profit companies, Automattic and WPE. Automattic has investors and revenue streams. As does WPE. This isn't "Matt is financially responsible for WP development".
Your statement further highlights the issues actually. Matt owns, outright, wordpress.org and uses resources from Automattic to manage wordpress.org. One avenue this slap fight has taken is via Matt blocking WPEngine from wordpress.org. Matt, not Automattic. The WP Foundation is a thin veneer around Matt as well. There are a bunch more oddities in this whole thing if you care to look into it.
IMHO, Matt needs to step back from this whole thing and let the lawyers work out the dispute without his emotions clouding things. He also needs to clear up ownership of wordpress.org, ideally by transferring it to the WPF. And finally, he should step down from his role at the WPF to help it become a foundation independent of control from Automattic. He's proven to be an unstable steward of the WP ecosystem at this point and lost trust is hard to regain.
I make all of these statement as someone not connected to the WP ecosystem beyond sometimes helping a friend who leverages WP for his clients.
Sure... That's why nearly all the top contributors through out time have been paid to full-time work on WordPress by an entity related to Matt... Because free labour...
Using WordPress and paying attention to Trac are two different things.
But that time is long gone and WordPress being what is it today fundamentally depends on paid labour and not free labour. It would have withered to the side like other CMSes that depended on free labour. Nearly every top contributor that we can see in the WordPress commit history was paid.
You’re mistaken friend. Just because that time is “long gone” doesn’t mean it wasn’t paramount to the success of this platform. A disproportionate amount of work towards the WP ecosystem has been unpaid.
You're motte-and-baileying here, since you began with "WordPress has been built by people employed by Matt either via Automattic or via his other entities", and are now writing "WordPress would not be where it is today if it depended on free labour." The second sentence is unquestionably true, but doesn't mean that "every piece of Wordpress was produced by paid labour".
I disagree. They're fundamentally the same at the core. The argument at hand is whether or not Matt is where he is because of free labour. And the answer to that is a clear no. Automattic would not be a multi-billion dollar company because WordPress powers so much of the internet that Automattic gets lots of hosting customers. WordPress has such a big market share because Matt has invested heavily in the open-source version of WordPress.
And since the argument is based on wether of not Matt is where he is because of free labour the other person needs to prove that he is. I can't prove a negative. I can prove that nearly all the top contributors to the project have been paid by an entity related to Matt.
While you've attempted to frame the argument as something else, I believe that would be considered a strawman fallacy.
WPEngine is no more a parasite than just about every business using Linux or Chrome without offering material support. Parasites drain their host but does WPEngine hurt or drain Wordpress? In fact, doesn't WPEngine just make WordPress more popular as a business solution?
Exactly. A parasite would be a company that adopts an open-source solution, then "extends" it in an incompatible way, pushing their own proprietary extension that no one else is allowed to use.
