WP Engine countered Mullenweg’s accusations by highlighting their contributions and support for the WordPress community. The company accused Automattic of attempting to demand millions of dollars from WordPress’s trademark licensing. This back-and-forth exchange has created a highly tense atmosphere between the two companies.

WordPress’s latest announcement stated:

“If WP Engine customers are having issues with their sites, they should contact WP Engine support to resolve the problem.

WP Engine needs a trademark license; they currently do not possess one. Yesterday, while attempting to prevent us from informing the WordPress community about their attempts to disable and lock in a core feature of WordPress for profit, I don’t want to bore you with the story of how they broke thousands of customers’ sites.

What I can tell you is that while WP Engine waits for legal claims and lawsuits against WordPress.org, they no longer have free access to WordPress.org’s resources.

If WP Engine wants to control your WordPress experience, they must manage their own user login systems, update servers, plugin directory, theme directory, pattern directory, block directory, translations, photo directory, job listings, meetups, conferences, bug tracking systems, forums, Slack, Ping-o-matic, and showcase. Their servers will no longer have free access to our servers.

The reason WordPress sites are not being hacked as frequently anymore is that we work with hosting providers to block vulnerabilities at the network layer. WP Engine will have to replicate these security investigations on their own.

Given WP Engine’s attacks against us, why should WordPress.org provide these services for free?

WP Engine is free to offer their modified, corrupted version of the GPL code of WordPress to their customers, and customers can experience the version of WordPress envisioned by WP Engine, with all profits going to them and all services provided by them.

If you want to experience the real WordPress, use any hosting provider other than WP Engine. WP Engine is not WordPress.”

Source: https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/

On Wednesday, WordPress escalated its conflict with hosting provider WP Engine by blocking this company’s servers from accessing WordPress.org resources, potentially depriving them of critical software updates.

WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that can be extended with plugins. Its main hub is WordPress.org, which also hosts resources like themes and plugins for the CMS. There is a vast ecosystem of plugins from countless vendors, but WordPress.org is the primary source for these resources.

Many WordPress users rely on various plugins. Therefore, blocking WP Engine users’ access to plugin updates is a serious issue, as it means users may not be able to update plugins for security issues or other fixes.

Matt Mullenweg, co-founder and CEO of WordPress, recently referred to WP Engine as “a cancer,” accusing the company of profiting from WordPress while not contributing enough to the CMS’s development. Mullenweg attempted to demand that WP Engine pay trademark licensing fees, believing this step would represent a financial contribution proportional to the benefits WP Engine receives from the project.

WP Engine does not want to pay this fee.

Mullenweg argued that if WP Engine does not pay, they should not benefit from WordPress.org’s resources.

“WP Engine wants to control your WordPress experience. They need to manage their own user login systems, update servers, plugin directory, theme directory, pattern directory, block directory, translations, photo directory, job listings, meetups, conferences, bug tracking systems, forums, Slack, Ping-o-matic, and showcases,” Mullenweg stated in a post on WordPress.org announcing the ban. “Their servers will no longer have free access to our servers.”

The service blockade that followed the mutual cease-and-desist letters was logged in WP Engine’s event journal. “WordPress.org has blocked WP Engine customers from updating and installing plugins and themes via WP Admin,” the initiative-backed web hosting provider stated on their status page.

In the announcement of the ban, Mullenweg directed WP Engine customers to contact WP Engine support if they were experiencing issues with their WordPress sites.

WP Engine did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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