Federal judge slaps down Automattic, granting temporary injunction to WP Engine in ongoing WordPress squabble

The battle between WordPress owner Automattic and WP Engine seemingly struck US federal Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin as rather one-sided, as she ruled against Automattic on Tuesday and granted WP Engine the preliminary injunction it sought.

“Judge Martinez-Olguin’s ruling clearly explains why [Automattic founder] Matt Mullenweg’s campaign against WP Engine has been so misguided,” said IDC research manager Michele Rosen. “By going to war with one vendor that is engaging in a common business practice, Mullenweg caused irreparable damage to the WordPress ecosystem.”

The ruling

Martinez-Olguin ordered Automattic to reverse many of its actions against WP Engine, and gave Automattic 72 hours to:

• Remove a list of exiting WP Engine customers that Automattic was publicizing to show how many of WP Engine’s customers were leaving.
• “Restore WP Engine’s and Related Entities’ access to wordpress.org as it existed as of September 20, 2024, including: reactivating and restoring all WP Engine employee login credentials to wordpress.org resources (including login credentials to login.wordpress.org) as they existed as of September 20, 2024.”
• Disable “any technological blocking of WP Engine’s and Related Entities’ access to wordpress.org that occurred on or around September 25, 2024, including IP address blocking or other blocking mechanisms”
• “Restore WP Engine’s and Related Entities’ access to wordpress.org in the manner that such access existed as of September 20, 2024, including:
  • functionality and development resources;
  • data resources (WordPress Plugin, Theme, and Block Directories, repositories, listings, and other password-protected resources within wordpress.org);
  • security resources (login.wordpress.org);
  • support resources (trac.wordpress.org and slack.wordpress.org);
  • removing the checkbox at login.wordpress.org that Defendants added on or about October 8, 2024 asking users to confirm that they are ‘not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.’”
• Return and restore “WP Engine’s “access to and control of its Advanced Custom Fields (“ACF”) plugin directory.”

The judge further ordered Automattic to:

• Stop “blocking, disabling, or interfering with WP Engine’s and/or its employees’, users’, customers’, or partners’ access to wordpress.org.”
• Stop “interfering with WP Engine’s control over, or access to, plugins or extensions hosted on wordpress.org that were developed, published, or maintained by WP Engine, including those that had been published, developed, or maintained by WP Engine as of September 20, 2024.”
• No longer interfere with “WP Engine’s and Related Entities’ WordPress installations (i.e., websites built with WordPress software) by using auto-migrate or auto-update commands to delete, overwrite, disable, or modify any WP Engine plugin without the express request by or consent of WP Engine and/or its users, customers, or partners.”
  However, she added, “The above does not preclude wordpress.org’s ability to ensure the security and operability of its site consistent with procedures and policies in place as of September 20, 2024.”

In her detailed decision, Martinez-Olguin reviewed every claim that WP Engine made against Automattic, and found for WP Engine in just about every instance, arguing that WP Engine “is likely to succeed on the merits.”

For example, Automattic had argued that there were no contracts between WP Engine and key customers. 

Although Automattic representatives “press WP Engine to identify specific contracts, there is no credible argument that contracts do not exist between WP Engine and its customers,” Martinez-Olguin wrote. “At a minimum, by seeking to entice WP Engine customers to move away from the company … defendants at least acknowledge that WP Engine has existing contracts with the customers Defendants are targeting.”

Additionally, she said, Automattic’s argument “that the interference WP Engine alleges consists of acts they had a right to take fares no better. They insist that Mullenweg was under no obligation to provide WP Engine access to some or all of the sources on the Website and that he had a right, under the Website’s developer guidelines, to fork the ACF plugin as he did, including to address outstanding issues.

“Mullenweg’s statement that he had the right to disable WP Engine’s account access and to make changes to the ACF plugin for the sake of public safety is belied by the declarations of WP Engine’s executives stating that the claimed vulnerability was minor, patched well before the fix-it window set by industry standard, and showing that Defendants tried to pass off the rating and reviews for the ACF plugin as those for their new purportedly forked SCF plugin.”

WP Engine ‘wins a battle but everyone continues to lose the war’

Automattic responded with a statement saying that the ruling “is a preliminary order designed to maintain the status quo. It was made without the benefit of discovery, our motion to dismiss, or the counterclaims we will be filing against WP Engine shortly. We look forward to prevailing at trial as we continue to protect the open source ecosystem during full-fact discovery and a full review of the merits.”

WP Engine also shared a statement on X (formerly Twitter), saying, “We are grateful that the court has granted our motion for a preliminary injunction that restores access to and functionality of wordpressdotorg for WP Engine, its customers, and its users. This ruling provides much-needed stability for the WordPress ecosystem. We deeply appreciate our customers for their continued trust and support. We remain committed to serving them and their sites with the performance, availability, and integrity they deserve, while collaborating to ensure a vigorous, thriving and stable WordPress community.”

The case has concerned many in the open source community, as the acrimonious war of actions and words between Automattic and WP Engine scared various open source companies, along with enterprise CIOs, who worry that these companies might become too toxic and they might need to keep their distance. 

One open source executive read the judge’s decision and said he was concerned that the ruling might have come too late to halt the damage done to the open source community.

“WP Engine wins a battle, but everyone continues to lose the war. WP Engine has had (about a) 15% increase in cancellations in the last few months, and 159 WordPress employees have quit. No doubt these distractions will negatively impact the innovation and evolution of the WordPress solution for months, if not years to come. It’s not hyperbole to say 40% of the internet is and will be losing in some way,” said Michael Sonier, general manager at ButterCMS.

“As a 20-year-old technology, WP remained ubiquitous because of its ecosystem, but now it’s turned on its own. Hard not to see this accelerating the adoption of technologies that are 20 years younger,” he noted. “More broadly, it sets back the open source movement, which was always about community, collaboration, and contribution. Now it’s going to be associated with potential legal battles, finger pointing, and volatility.”