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Mullenweg's Grip On WordPress Challenged In New Court Filing - adtechsolutions

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Mullenweg’s Grip On WordPress Challenged In New Court Filing


The motion to intervene was filed in WP Engine’s lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg, which lists fifteen claims and seeks monetary awards along with changes to WordPress.org’s governance structure.

A motion to intervene is a legal request by a third party who wants to join an ongoing lawsuit and whose success depends on proving that it has a significant interest in the outcome of the case.

Legal notice seeks to take control of WordPress

Among the demands in the legal filing is one that forces Matt Mullenweg to establish a WordPress Oversight Board to oversee the management of the WordPress Foundation, WordPress.org and other related entities.

“D. Ordering Respondent Matt Mullenweg to establish a Management Oversight Committee as defined in the Motion for Contempt filed by Michael Willman;”

Moderator of the WPDrama Subreddit

The person filing the lawsuit is a WordPress web developer and moderator of the r/WPDrama subreddit named Michael Willman (LinkedIn profile), CEO of Redev, a WordPress development and SEO company, who claims Mullenweg banned him, causing him to lose two clients and a significant amount of earnings due to those losses.

Willman contacted Search Engine Journal about the legal claim and offered a background explanation of what happened:

“Near the beginning of this dispute, I lost a large ($14,500) contract as a direct result of Matt banning me along with everyone else who is loosely connected. We just signed a contract a few days ago, and the client just sees all these stories and gives up. Losing that revenue would eventually make us unable to serve our largest client at the time, and we lost them as well.

I took all of this personally and tried to chime in on his #ranting channel on Slack to respond to his nonsensical blog posts and share how his actions had damaged me to the point where I was ready to sue him as well.

He then banned me in retaliation for that, after which he claimed the message saying I was going to Houston to file other legal documents was a “physical threat.”

He has a long history of inconsistent application of the Code of Conduct and I don’t think he can show that his actions here were justified, my own reading of the Code of Conduct implies that some sort of warning in private is the first step. “

That last part about the allegedly false claim that he physically threatened Matt Mullenweg is now part of the new request.

Post on Reddit

Mr Willman posted about his proposal on Reddit, saying he would donate 5% of all prize money to WordPress.

Members of the Reddit WordPress community have been supportive, with one member named JonOlds posting:

“A client who walked away from a signed contract ($14,500) because you were banned created a significant change is the most obvious example of damage from WPE bans I’ve seen so far. Screw MM, and I really hope this is approved.”

Another person wrote:

“Dude, you are my hero ❤

And I’m sorry about everything that happened to you, it’s horrible. I truly admire how well you handled all of this while also moderating this sub.”

Claims for compensation

Section D of the filing lists fifteen allegations, including that Mullenweg’s retaliatory actions terminated existing contracts with clients and the ability to cultivate new clients. It also outlines attempted extortion, defamation and trade defamation among many other claims.

Three claims stated in the request:

“1. Intentional interference with contractual relations
Defendant Matt Mullenweg’s actions, including banning Michael Willman from the Make.WordPress.org Slack workspace and retaliating against him, terminated existing contractual relationships. Some specific examples are a $14,500 website development contract that was canceled because Michael Willman was banned from WordPress.org, the remainder of another contract with Trellis that was lost valued at $5,526.35, and an ongoing relationship with Trellis that included active backers worth $4,700 per month in addition to regular ad-hoc work, the combination of which generated $77,638.65 in invoices in in 2024

2. Intentional interference in future economic relations
By targeting and denying Michael Willman access to essential WordPress platforms, the defendants hindered potential business opportunities. The absence of new website development projects, the loss of existing relationships, and the discomfort expressed by clients about the WordPress ecosystem are direct results of these retaliatory actions.

4. Attempted extortion
During the conversation, Matt Mullenweg offered to refer clients to Michael Willman on the condition that he stop working with WP Engine and join Automattic’s affiliate program. This constitutes coercive conduct intended to disrupt Michael Willman’s business relationships.

6. Defamation
Matt Mullenweg publicly claimed that Michael Willman threatened physical violence, a statement that is objectively false and defamatory. This hurt Michael Willman’s reputation within the WordPress community and beyond.

7. Commercial defamation
Matt Mullenweg’s public statements disparaged Michael Willman’s professional services and integrity, damaging his business relationships and reputation.”

Possible outcome of a new court claim

The request for intervention contains serious allegations of abuse of power by the most influential person in the open-source WordPress project, the worldwide ecosystem of developers, business users, publishers, plugin and theme developers, and thousands of volunteers around the world who contribute to the development of WordPress content management software.

The petition not only seeks restitution, but also asks the court to make changes in the management of WordPress to remove Matt Mullenweg from his position of power at WordPress.

Read the Reddit post and the legal document

A link to the legal document was posted on a Reddit discussion about the filing:

Motion to Intervene and Motion for Contempt filed by WPEngine, Inc. v. Automattic Inc.

Featured Image Shutterstock/Rose Tamani



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