Matt Mullenweg’s crusade against WP Engine seems to have hit a roadblock as the case moved from the court of public opinion to the court of…well, the actual court.
On Tuesday December 10, WP Engine won a preliminary injunction against Mullenweg and Automattic that seems to be aimed at preserving the status quo from before Mullenweg’s alleged attack, thus giving the case time to work through the court system while limiting the damage to WP Engine.
🔎 ‘What’s this about?’
As far as I can tell, there are a few different changes that will come as a result of the injunction, including some pretty big ones.
➡️ Matt/Automattic must stop preventing WP Engine and its customers from accessing WordPress.org. WordPress.org cannot block WP Engine sites from the system and Matt also must remove the checkbox about WP Engine affiliation.
Here’s one last look before it’s gone:
➡️ Matt/Automattic must restore WP Engine’s control over the Advanced Custom Fields plugin and return the WordPress.org listing to the way it was before September 20, 2024. I have no idea what this means for any sites that have already been updated to “Secure Custom Fields”.
I can only imagine it’s going to cause a lot of problems strictly technically speaking. We will monitor our own dashboards in a couple of places to see how this is actually done.
➡️ Matt/Automattic must cease disrupting WP Engine’s access to its plugins at WordPress.org.
➡️ Matt/Automattic cannot modify WP Engine plugins on WordPress installations “through unauthorized auto-migrate or auto-update commands.”
➡️ Matt/Automattic must delete the WP Engine tracker website and remove customer data.
➡️ Matt/Automattic was given 72 hours to implement the changes. The injunction will remain in effect until the court reaches its final judgment after the trial.
As far as I can tell, WP Engine got pretty much what it wanted. It also probably doesn’t bode well for Matt and Automattic given that the judge gave WP Engine so much, though I’m certainly not a lawyer – maybe this is all very normal for a case like that.
Unsurprisingly, Matt doesn’t seem very happy. According to 404 Media, he reacted pretty negatively in the Post Status Slack community, posting the following:
It’s hard to imagine wanting to continue to working on WordPress after this. I’m sick and disgusted to be legally compelled to provide free labor to an organization as parasitic and exploitive as WP Engine. I hope you all get what you and WP Engine wanted.
Matt Mullenweg in Post Status Slack
All in all, I hope that the injunction can bring some much-needed stability to WordPress while the lawyers sort everything out in a more permanent manner.
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