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Ban lifted, for now,
Accusations fly, profits soar,
Wordpress and WP at war.
Wordpress backtracks WP Engine ban amidst accusations of profit extraction and trademark infringement
Wordpress.org has temporarily lifted a ban on WP Engine until 1 October, following a wave of complaints from the community. The ban was initially imposed by Wordpress co-founder Matt Mullenweg on Wednesday, after he accused WP Engine of failing to contribute sufficiently to the open-source ecosystem surrounding the Wordpress CMS platform.
Mullenweg also accused WP Engine of 'breaking the trust and sanctity' of the software's promise to users by not adhering to its code of storing revisions to content in a database. WP Engine was further accused of disabling and locking down a Wordpress core feature to extract profit. This decision to block WP Engine was met with criticism from several members of the broader Wordpress community.
"WP Engine needs a trademark license, they don't have one. I won't bore you with the story of how WP Engine broke thousands of customer sites yesterday in their haphazard attempt to block our attempts to inform the wider WordPress community regarding their disabling and locking down a WordPress core feature in order to extract profit," Mullenweg said.
Mullenweg pointed a finger at WP Engine's private equity investor, Silver Lake, for the decision not to cooperate with Wordpress.org. Automattic, a similar-sized player to WP Engine, contributes 3915 hours a week to the open-source community, while WP Engine contributes just 40 hours a week.
"What I will tell you is that, pending their legal claims and litigation against WordPress.org, WP Engine no longer has free access to WordPress.org's resources," Mullenweg said.
Automattic has sent a cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine over trademark infringement. Automattic alleges that WP Engine has built a business of over US$400 million in revenue based on unauthorised use of its Wordpress trademark. WP Engine has been accused of misleading consumers into believing there is a direct affiliation between the two companies.
"WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardised 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," Mullenweg said.
"WP Engine is not WordPress," Mullenweg concluded.
