One piece of Matt Mullenweg’s attempted extortion against WP Engine, which has serious security implications, is the WordPress trademark. What hasn’t been clear is the situation with the trademark is. It is well known that previously belonged to Matt Mullenweg’s Automattic and now belongs to the WordPress Foundation, which Matt Mullenweg clearly has control over. But beyond that, the extensive nature of Auttomatic’s ability to use the trademark hasn’t been disclosed by Matt Mullenweg.

Matt Mullenweg announced the transfer of the trademark in September 2010. In his post on his personal website, he made no mention of Automattic still having anything to do with the trademark. In the comments, though, he wrote this: [Read more]

With the ongoing attempted extortion of WP Engine by Matt Mullenweg and the security risks that pose for WordPress, a central issue in that is Matt Mullenweg’s role in several ostensibly separate entities and using his role in one to benefit another. He isn’t the only one with roles across more than one of those. While looking at another aspect of the WordPress Foundation, we noticed that its News blog is being exclusively written by employees of his for-proftit company Automattic. Here are the dates and post authors of posts from last two years for that:

• June 18, 2024: Julia Golomb
• April 18, 2024: Julia Golomb
• February 9, 2024: Reyes Martinez
• June 29, 2023: Julia Golomb
• May 10, 2023: Julia Golomb

On the WordPress website, Julia Golomb lists her employer as Automattic and it says that “Automattic sponsors Julia Golomb to contribute 40 hours per week to the Community team.” [Read more]

As part of Matt Mullenweg’s extortion attempt against WP Engine (and with his latest action, the wider WordPress community), he has claimed that there was confusion between WordPress and WP Engine. As many have pointed out, there is much more confusion between WordPress and his company Automattic’s WordPress.com service. That isn’t the only place where there is confusion. Take this recent attempt at an explanation of the structure of WordPress, including the WordPress Foundation:

WordPress’s structure works similar to the Mozilla Foundation, with a small exception that Matt is a majority stake on both sides (Automattic and the WordPress Foundation). Mozilla’s board does have some cross-over between the Foundation and Corporation, but with larger boards that influence is diluted. [Read more]

With Matt Mulleneg’s continued expansion of attempted extortion of WP Engine and the security threat posed by that, the WordPress Foundation has come in to more focus. Notably, the WordPress Foundation owns the WordPress trademark, but as a letter from Automattic’s lawyers put it, Automattic has “exclusive commercial rights to the world famous WORDPRESS trademark.” Probably connected to what is going on there, in July, the WordPress Foundation filed trademark registrations for MANAGED WORDPRESS and HOSTED WORDPRESS. The foundation doesn’t have any obvious need for those trademarks, since they are not involved in hosting WordPress websites (not WordPress’ own website). The question raised then is the WordPress Foundation functionally operating as an arm of Matt Mullenweg and is that legal?

Here is how an Automattic employee writing in a post on the WordPress website about the foundation, explained how the foundation is supposed to operate: [Read more]