WordPress co-founder sued for alleged defamation and attempted extortion

Matt Mullenweg, the other co-founder of WordPress, and his company Automattic have been sued by WP Engine. These lawsuits come after a public dispute over WP Engine’s utilization of the WordPress brand.
The situation of the dispute
Let me first mention that WordPress is the most used platform and it is running almost 40% of all websites. Via WordPress, users are able to create their own websites by themselves, or they could use third-party developers, which is a more relaxed option that WPEngine provides.

Last September, Matt Mullenweg, who is also an Automattic vendor, directly and unkindly acknowledged WP Engine by calling it a “cancer for WordPress.” He said the name of this third-party provider is giving a false impression to the customers that it belongs to WordPress. He also accused WP Engine of turning off some features to save money.

According to the TechCrunch report, WP Engine, via a letter of demand sent to Matt Mullenweg, also asked him to withdraw his comments. In addition to claiming that the use of the WordPress brand was legal, the company also said that Matt Mullenweg was threatening them with a “devastating nuclear approach” if they would not agree to pay him “a significant percentage of its revenue for a WordPress brand license.”

Because of the situation, the WordPress Foundation addressed WP Engine, charging them with “not donating” to the foundation’s open-source sector which still had a billion dollars revenue from WordPress. Matt Mullenweg also hindered WP Engine from accessing some resources, thus, over 200,000 websites are affected.