Just got word that the court dismissed several of WP Engine and Silver Lake’s most serious claims — antitrust, monopolization, and extortion have been knocked out! These were by far the most significant and far-reaching allegations in the case and with today’s decision the case is narrowed significantly. This is a win not just for us but for all open source maintainers and contributors. Huge thanks to the folks at Gibson and Automattic who have been working on this.

With respect to any remaining claims, we’re confident the facts will demonstrate that our actions were lawful and in the best interests of the WordPress community.

This ruling is a significant milestone, but our focus remains the same: building a free, open, and thriving WordPress ecosystem and supporting the millions of people who use it every day.

14 thoughts on “Legal Win

  1. I think your legal team may have mis-characterized this outcome in explaining it to you. You should ask them about “dismissed” claims that can be revised/tweaked and reasserted by the other side.

  2. I read the order, and those claims and the laws cited are very specific, and the claims do not align very well with the laws, I see why they were dismissed… with amendment allowed. If WPEngine amends those claims and bolsters them by addressing the specific failures pointed out, this may all flip back to being in play. If they fail to meet those burdens, the case is much less damaging.

    Especially as it relates to copyright use, which is often used under licensing agreements, and so can be hard to portray as leverage or exploitation.

    The ACF takeover being poised as unauthorized access is a tough one, when it’s the reverse… a WPEngine site goes out to get software on Matt’s server, and it’s his to control and change as he likes, they are accessing his server on their own, can turn off updates, can override update origins, etc. That they relied on and some would say took advantage of the good will that was in place, is their own fault. They clearly will not do that going forward, and it doesn’t seem like any real damage was actually done monetarily or otherwise, since it is free software.

    All in all, this may all fall apart, I just really hope both parties have learned their expensive lessons, and move forward less naively in what they are trying to achieve, and how they want to be seen by the community they operate within.

    1. You could look at it that way, and it’s true there will be a lot more turns in the courts with counter-claims, etc, currently going on until 2027, two years from now. So there is a lot more to go, but I appreciated this small milestone.

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