WP Engine Wins Preliminary Injunction in Fight With Automattic ⇥ tedium.co

Thomas Claburn, the Register:

WordPress hosting firm Automattic and its CEO Matthew Mullenweg have been ordered to stop interfering with the business of rival WP Engine.

California District Court judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction [PDF] against Automattic and Mullenweg, finding that plaintiff WP Engine is likely to prevail in its claims.

Ernie Smith, Tedium:

Mullenweg’s anger about this situation, well-documented at this point, is rooted in the private equity ownership of WP Engine and how he felt it would threaten to damage the open-source community his company had built. And to be clear, the people who own the platforms we rely on? That is a real issue. The idea that a large company can undermine an open-source project? Point to Mullenweg. He has reasons to be nervous.

But I don’t think that’s really what’s been happening here. I think the concern, if we’re really being honest, reflects frustration that Mullenweg has struggled to make Automattic into the firm that WP Engine has become — the first choice for businesses and agencies looking to get a site online. His actions since September — which, mind you, included building a website promoting the number of WP Engine users that had left that platform — have only come to underline that. And despite his claims otherwise, his actions have clearly spoken in the other direction.

To wit, Samantha Cole, 404 Media:

WordPress co-founder and CEO of Automattic Matt Mullenweg is trolling contributors and users of the WordPress open-source project by requiring them to check a box that says “Pineapple is delicious on pizza.”

The change was spotted by WordPress contributors late Sunday, and is still up as of Monday morning. Trying to log in or create a new account without checking the box returns a “please try again” error.

It is still there now.

Nobody seems to know why this checkbox was changed rather than being removed, but this change was not Mullenweg’s doing — at least, not directly. No reason was provided by the responsible contributor. And this is the CMS upon which over 40% of the web is built, in the hands of these clowns?