Lawyers for Matt Mullenweg and Automattic filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit from WP Engine, offering a different perspective on the dispute’s underlying causes.
The motion to dismiss claims that the one causing harm isn’t Mullenweg and Automattic but WP Engine, asserting that WP Engine is compelling the defendant to provide resources and support free of charge as well as to restrict the Mullenweg’s ability to express his opinions about WP Engine’s practices.
The motion to dismiss begins by accuses WP Engine of selectively choosing recent events as basis for their complaint. It then fills in the parts that were left out, beginning with the founding of WordPress over two decades ago when Matt co-founded a way to create websites that democratized Internet publishing in the process. The motion outlines how his organization devoted thousands of person-years to growing the platform, eventually getting it to a point where it now generates an estimated $10 billion dollars per year for thousands of companies and freelancers.
The point of the first part of the motion is to explain that Mullenweg and Automattic support the open source WordPress project because the project depends on a “symbiotic” relationship between the WordPress community and those who are a part of it, including web hosts like WP Engine.
“But the success and vitality of WordPress depends on a supportive and symbiotic relationship with those in the WordPress community.”
After establishing what the community is, how it was founded and the role of Mullenweg and Automattic as a strongly supportive of the community, it then paints a picture of WP Engine as a company that reaps huge benefits from the volunteer work and donated time without adequately giving back to the community. This is the part that Mullenweg and Automattic feel is left out of WP Engine’s complaint, that Mullenweg was expressing his opinion that not only should WP Engine should provide more support to the community and that Mullenweg was responding to the threat posed by the plaintiff’s behavior.
The motion explains:
“Plaintiff WP Engine’s conduct poses a threat to that community. WP Engine is a website hosting service built on the back of WordPress software and controlled by the private equity firm Silver Lake, which claims over $100B of assets under management.
…In addition to WordPress software, WP Engine also uses various of the free resources on the Website, and its Complaint alleges that access to the Website is now, apparently, critical for its business.”
Lastly, the beginning part of the motion, which explains the defendant’s side of the dispute, asserts that the defendant’s behavior was entirely within their legal right because no agreement exists between WordPress and WP Engine that guarantees them access to WordPress resources and that WP Engine at no time tried to secure rights to access.
The document continues:
“But the Complaint does not (and cannot) allege that WP Engine has any agreement with Matt (or anyone else for that matter) that gives WP Engine the right to use the Website’s resources. The Complaint does not (and cannot) allege that WP Engine at any time has attempted to secure that right from Matt or elsewhere.
Instead, WP Engine has exploited the free resources provided by the Website to make hundreds of millions of dollars annually. WP Engine has done so while refusing to meaningfully give back to the WordPress community, and while unfairly trading off the goodwill associated with the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.”