Matt Mullenweg wanted to go nuclear against WP Engine, whose owner is the private equity firm Silver Lake, but perhaps he was not prepared to face the tough legal battle that lay ahead and which, according to him, has prevented the launch of WordPress’s new collaborative features in the recent WordPress 7.0 update.
According to The Repository, Mullenweg used WordPress’s 23rd anniversary to publish a public message addressed to Silver Lake in which he accepted his defeat, stating that Silver Lake has won and that he surrenders. For some time, Mullenweg had been calling for a settlement agreement with Silver Lake, a major company that in Spain we usually call a “vulture fund”.
Mullenweg’s post, after he had remained silent for some time on the advice of his lawyers, is surprising and mixes distress with new accusations: “They have so much money and power, they just got TikTok, the Trump administration loves them, they don’t need to control and take over WordPress too. If they win, they destroy it, and then what? Please have mercy and stop trying to ruin people’s lives”.
There is no doubt that the trial is moving forward and Mullenweg is experiencing it as torture, both for himself and for Automattic contributors to the open-source project. He was recently questioned by Silver Lake and says he answered more than a thousand questions.
According to The Repository, a hearing on Automattic’s motion to dismiss WP Engine’s antitrust claims is scheduled for June 4 and the jury trial will take place in September 2027. We will see whether an agreement can be reached by then or whether Silver Lake really wants to raze the most successful open-source project on the Internet.
* Original article written in Spanish, translated with AI and reviewed in English by Jorge Mediavilla.
