Matt Mullenweg’s crusade against WP Engine appears to have hit a roadblock as the case moved from the court of public opinion to the court of…well, the court itself.
On Tuesday, December 10, WP Engine obtained a preliminary injunction against Mullenweg and Automattic which appears aimed at preserving the status quo from before Mullenweg’s alleged attack, thereby giving the case time to work through the court system while limiting the damage to WP Engine.
🔎 “What is it about?” »
As far as I can tell, several different changes will result from the injunction, including some pretty significant changes.
➡️ Mat/Automatic must stop blocking WP Engine and its customers from accessing WordPress.org. WordPress.org cannot block WP Engine sites from the system and Matt also needs to remove the checkbox regarding WP Engine affiliation.
Here’s one last look before it disappears:
➡️ Mat/Automatic must restore WP Engine control over advanced custom fields plugin And revert the WordPress.org listing to the way it was before September 20, 2024. I have no idea what this means for sites that have already been updated to “Secure Custom Fields”.
I can only imagine that this is going to cause a lot of problems from a strictly technical point of view. We will be monitoring our own dashboards in several places to see how this is actually done.
➡️ Mat/Automatic must stop disrupting access to WP Engine to its plugins on WordPress.org.
➡️ Matte/Automatic unable to modify WP Engine plugins on WordPress installations “via unauthorized auto-migrate or auto-update commands.”
➡️ Matte/Automatic must remove WP Engine tracker website and delete customer data.
➡️ Matte/Automatic I was given 72 hours to implement the changes. The injunction will remain in effect until the court issues its final judgment after trial.
As far as I can tell, WP Engine pretty much got what it wanted. This probably doesn’t bode well for Matt and Automattic given that the judge gave so much to WP Engine, although I’m certainly not a lawyer – maybe this is all just par for the course for a case like this.
Unsurprisingly, Matt doesn’t seem very happy. According to 404 Mediahe reacted quite negatively in the Post Status Slack community, posting the following:
It’s hard to imagine wanting to continue working on WordPress after this. I am sick and disgusted that I am legally obligated to provide free work to such a parasitic and exploitative organization as WP Engine. I hope you all get what you and WP Engine wanted.
Matt Mullenweg in Post Status Slack
Overall, I hope the injunction can bring some much-needed stability to WordPress while the lawyers sort things out more permanently.
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