Back in November 2024, WebSight Design published a breakdown of the growing feud between WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WordPress hosting company WP Engine. At the time, the dispute was ugly but still in its early stages - WP Engine had been blocked from WordPress.org resources, ACF had been forcibly forked, a lawsuit had just been filed, and about 8% of Automattic staff had walked out the door. Since then, things have gotten significantly worse on nearly every front. Here is what has happened since.
A Quick Recap
If you missed the original post, the short version is this: Mullenweg publicly called WP Engine "a cancer to WordPress" in September 2024, accused them of profiting off the WordPress brand without paying trademark licensing fees, and then banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org resources, breaking plugin and theme updates for WP Engine customers. WP Engine fired back with a cease-and-desist and eventually a federal lawsuit. For the full backstory, read the original piece here.
Lets catch up
December 2024: WP Engine Wins the First Round in Court
The first significant legal development favored WP Engine. A U.S. federal judge granted WP Engine a preliminary injunction ordering Automattic and Mullenweg to stop blocking access to WordPress.org. The court required that WP Engine's access be fully restored, including removing the special login restrictions Mullenweg had added specifically targeting WP Engine accounts. WP Engine also regained access to the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin repository that Automattic had seized in October. This was an early but meaningful win for WP Engine, and it signaled that the courts were not going to let Mullenweg use WordPress.org infrastructure as a weapon while the case played out.
January 2025: Mullenweg Cuts Automattic's Contributions to Match WP Engine's
One of Mullenweg's core criticisms of WP Engine throughout the dispute had been that WP Engine contributed only about 45 hours per week back to the WordPress open source project despite generating enormous revenue on top of it. His response in January 2025 was to announce that Automattic would reduce its own contributions to the Five for the Future program to exactly match that number - 45 hours per week. Whether this was a protest, a power play, or both, it was a notable move. Automattic had long been the largest contributor to WordPress core development, and pulling back that contribution had real downstream consequences for the project.
Early 2025: Automattic Loses Hundreds More Employees
The staff exodus that began in October 2024 did not stop. After the initial wave of 159 departures, more followed. By April 2025, Automattic had conducted a formal round of layoffs cutting approximately 16% of its global workforce - roughly 280 employees across 90 countries. Unlike the earlier voluntary buyout, this round came with no advance notice. Employees had their access revoked without warning and were notified via personal email after the fact. Multiple former employees reported that colleagues were laid off while on parental leave, sick leave, and sabbatical.
Earlier in the year, Mullenweg had also shut down the WordPress Sustainability Team after its team representative cited a Reddit thread Mullenweg had created asking for suggestions on how to create more "WordPress drama" in 2025. The rep announced they were stepping down, and Mullenweg replied by saying he had just learned the team existed and it was a good time to dissolve it entirely. That particular episode generated a significant amount of negative press.
In total, between voluntary departures and layoffs, Automattic shed somewhere close to a quarter of its headcount within roughly six months.
2025: The Lawsuit Gets a Lot Bigger
What started as a dispute over trademark usage and access to plugin updates grew into a sprawling federal case through 2025.
In September, the court issued a ruling allowing the majority of WP Engine's claims to proceed - including intentional interference with business relationships, unfair competition, and defamation claims against both Automattic and Mullenweg personally. The court had dismissed some earlier claims but gave WP Engine the opportunity to amend and re-file, which they did, adding more detailed allegations of antitrust conduct.
The amended complaint argues that Automattic controls access to the official WordPress plugin and theme repositories in a way that gives them the ability to exclude competitors from the ecosystem. It further argues that Mullenweg's dual role as both Automattic CEO and the person who controls WordPress.org creates a structural conflict of interest that enables coordinated market exclusion. These are serious allegations, and the court allowing them to proceed is significant.
WP Engine also alleged during this period that Mullenweg had attempted to pressure payment processor Stripe into cancelling WP Engine's payment processing contract after the lawsuit was filed. Automattic denied the characterization and called the allegation a repackaging of existing claims.
Late 2025 Into 2026: Discovery Wars and the WordPress Foundation Under Threat
By late 2025 and into early 2026, the litigation had expanded into at least six separate active disputes within the same case, covering Mullenweg's personal deposition, the ACF plugin fork, WP Engine's financial condition, trademark licensing history, internal branding decisions, and now the governance and finances of the WordPress Foundation itself - the nonprofit organization that officially owns the WordPress trademark and supports WordCamps globally.
The Foundation has no paid employees and funds community events and open source education programs around the world. The fact that it has now been drawn into the litigation as a target is a development that has alarmed many in the WordPress community. If Silver Lake and WP Engine's legal team is successful in challenging the Foundation, the structural underpinning of the entire WordPress project could be destabilized.
Both sides have accused each other of withholding evidence during discovery. Nearly every filing has been accompanied by motions to seal portions of the record, so much of what is actually being argued remains hidden from public view.
May 2026: WordPress 7 Ships and Mullenweg Writes His Most Personal Post Yet
On the positive side of the ledger, WordPress 7 shipped in mid-May 2026. Within seven days of release, 46% of all WordPress installs had auto-updated to 7.0 with no reported breakage - a technical achievement that should not be understated given the scale and diversity of WordPress deployments worldwide.
But the release came with a cost. On May 27, 2026, in a post marking WordPress's 23rd anniversary, Mullenweg published what may be his most raw and unguarded public statement since this dispute began. He described the legal operation Silver Lake has deployed against him as designed to inflict "legal torture" and accused it of going after not just Automattic but the WordPress Foundation and, by extension, the entire open web.
He disclosed for the first time publicly that a close colleague is hospitalized waiting for a heart transplant, and that the demands of the ongoing litigation have prevented him from being present. He also addressed Silver Lake directly, writing that they have already won, that he submits, and asking them to stop and allow everyone to move on.
It is a striking thing to read from someone who spent the better part of 2024 and 2025 projecting defiance at every turn. Whether it signals a genuine push toward settlement or is simply exhaustion putting words on a page is impossible to know at this point.
What Does This Mean for WordPress Users?
The short answer is that the platform itself continues to function and improve - WordPress 7 is out, it is stable, and if you are on a host that is not WP Engine, day-to-day operations are largely unaffected by the legal dispute.
If you are hosted with WP Engine, your plugin and theme updates have been running through WP Engine's own infrastructure since October 2024. The preliminary injunction also restored your direct access to WordPress.org resources. WP Engine remains operational and continues to serve its customers while the case proceeds.
For the broader WordPress ecosystem, the more concerning question is what happens to the WordPress Foundation if the litigation continues on its current trajectory. The Foundation is the structural backbone of WordPress's open source identity, and drawing it into an adversarial legal proceeding is unprecedented.
WebSight Design will continue to monitor the situation and keep you updated on any developments that affect our clients and the broader WordPress community.
If you are using WordPress Managed Hosting through WebSight Design, your updates and site security are being actively managed by our team. If you have questions about how any of this affects your site, reach out to us directly.
