The feud between WP Engine and Matt Mullenweg, WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO, recently came to a head when the web hosting, Mullenweg said his opponent's attacks on him and his company have been effective enough so that "a good chunk of Automattic colleagues disagreed with actions." As a response, he created a "buy-out package" that offered employees $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher, if they resign. A total of 159 people, or 8.
Most of the employees who left came from the company's Ecosystem / WordPress business, while the rest came from the division working on apps like Tumblr and Cloudup. Asnotes, Mullenweg gave the event a positive spin and exclaimed that "the other 91.6 percent gave up $126 million of potential severance to stay!"
Mullenweg called WP Engine a "cancer to WordPress" and accused the company of violating WordPress’ trademarks. He said theyto "pay a direct licensing fee, or make in-kind contributions to the open source project," but the company refused. WP Engine argued that its use of the WordPress trademark was legal.
WP Engine accused Mullenweg of demanding eight percent of the company’s monthly revenue as royalty and of libel, slander, as well as of violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and IRS fraud. In a, Mullenweg said he stayed up all night reading the complaint and found the whole thing "meritless." He added that he's looking "forward to the federal court’s consideration of lawsuit.