WordPress.org has now lifted its ban on hosting provider WP Engine temporarily until October 1. Earlier this week, they officially banned WP Engine from accessing its resources.
This ban prevented several websites from updating their plug-ins and themes and exposing them to potential risk.
The co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg blamed WP Engine’s private equity investor, Silver Lake. He said on his blog “I’ve heard from WP Engine customers that they are frustrated that WP Engine hasn’t been able to make updates, plugin directory, theme directory, and Openverse work on their sites. It saddens me that they’ve been negatively impacted by Silver Lake‘s commercial decisions.”
“WP Engine was well aware that we could remove access when they chose to ignore our efforts to resolve our differences and enter into a commercial licensing agreement. Heather Brunner, Lee Wittlinger, and their Board chose to take this risk. WPE was also aware that they were placing this risk directly on WPE customers,” he added.
After Mullenweg banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org resources, many people from the WordPress community criticized his decision to ban the WP Engine. This ban has affected several websites, which is not ideal for anybody.
There has been a back-and-forth going on between Mullenweg and WP Engine in the past week. Mullenweg even called WP Engine “Cancel to WordPress” and called them out for their lack of contributions to the WordPress ecosystem.
After that, WP Engine sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic – the company that owns wordpress.com and has exclusive commercial license to the WordPress trademark. In that letter, they asked Mullenweg to withdraw these comments. In reply to their letter, Automattic also sent its cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine that accuses them of trademark infringement.
According to the community members, this fight impacts a larger ecosystem as WordPress technology is open source and free. WordPress powers around 40% of the websites on the internet.
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