WPDrama UPDATE - WPEngine Automattic Injunction

After weeks of speculation and heated discussions within the WordPress community, a California district court has issued a preliminary injunction in favour of WP Engine.

But what does this landmark ruling mean for the WordPress ecosystem, plugin developers, and users? Let’s break it all down.

What’s Covered in This Video:
- The ACF/SCF Controversy: A deep dive into the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) takeover, its rebranding to Secure Custom Fields (SCF), and the ripple effects on developers and users.
- Community Impact: How this legal battle is affecting plugin developers, hosting providers, and the broader WordPress ecosystem.
- What’s Next: Automattic’s response to the ruling, their plans to file counterclaims, and what this means for the future of open-source collaboration.

Key Takeaways:
- The court found merit in WP Engine’s claims of irreparable harm caused by Automattic’s actions.

Links & Resources:
- Related videos on the WordPress drama:

Take your WordPress website and skills to the next level!

► The Essential Web Designer's Documents Pack
Looking to take your web design business to the next level? The Essential Web Designers Documents collection has got you covered! With handcrafted, professionally designed documents that have generated tens of thousands in revenue, you'll have everything you need to impress clients, streamline your workflow, and boost your bottom line.

► THE TOOLS I LOVE ◄
If you like what we do and would like to support us, please consider using these affiliate links when purchasing any of the plugins covered in our tutorials. Thank you for your support.

► EXCLUSIVE WPTUTS DISCOUNTS ◄

► MY PREFERRED HOSTING PROVIDERS ◄

► WORDPRESS VISUAL PAGE BUILDERS ◄

► WORDPRESS THEMES ◄

► WORDPRESS TOOLS ◄

► WORDPRESS PLUGINS ◄

► SUBSCRIBE ◄

► LETS CONNECT: ◄

[grizfan]

Must have been a miserable last few weeks for the legal team at Automattic - seems like the judge isn't buying MM's BS, and I'm sure the attorneys for Automattic probably saw this coming and tried to steer things in a better direction. I'm afraid there will be more damage done by the spoiled toddler in charge of Automattic.

[TrevorPhilipsBro]

The Mullenweg argument is so weak. I dont know why he would continue to pay lawyers for a case he is so obviously going to lose and continue to ruin his credibility in this way. His ban didn’t even work, its hilarious. What an absolute clown 😂😂😂

[KariposTheOne]

Matt is wasting time and money on pointless drama. The platform owes its success to third-party developers who created the plugins and themes that made it great, not Matt's leadership. Instead of listening to the community and focusing on essential improvements, he prioritizes his own agenda, leaving WordPress to fall behind.

[oaklandgraphics]

The bigger issue is that if Matt believes that he is entitled to behave this way with one company, it is highly probable that he will escalate his fits in the future and those targets might not have the financial resources to fight. Trust is broken.

[WPAcademyPK]

Let's see how far Matt wanna go with this obvious loss of battle.

[antonichristian]

What a huge blow this must be to Mad Matt's over inflated ego and sense of importance. Mad Matt should have acted professionally from the start but instead chose to act like a big baby and possibly criminally in some cases. So something that could have been totally avoided goes on and on, in the meanwhile eroding the WP communities trust and the open source values and principles. People are already looking for alternatives, nothing good can come of this.

[nickm]

Judge to Matt "stop it, stop it!" Good to see that extortion might not win

[davidklotz]

I said it from the beginning, Matt has no case. He and Automattic are going to get obliterated in court.

[bob-pxj]

It's probably the best thing to ever happen to Wordpress Wouldn't be surprised if they start flogging this story in their marketing...Uncertainty can kill businesses very quickly, look how fast a story can spread on FB, whether it's true or not....

[DavidRisley]

Unfortunately, Matt gave up the high ground on this whole affair early on because he handled it so incredibly poorly. I'm not a WP Engine fan, but whether we like them or not has no bearing on the fact that Matt's handling of this has been the irrational acts of a child.

[iRoybot]

Just here watching, reading comments, enjoying my popcorn...

[kentswan]

My thoughts (1) if a product of a for-profit company depends on access to an open-source repository to maintain compatibility then that product must be open source as well (2) A company creating a wrapper or upgrade from an open-source repository must present that product separately and may not "hijack" by overriding the user selection - effectively that product is an alternate in the marketplace and must install and uninstall with full knowledge of the user because to do otherwise could and probably would lead to either security or operational defects. (3) Given two products which do effectively the same thing where one is an upgraded version of another then automatically updating a user from a currently installed open source repository version to a so-called 'improved' version controlled by a different entity constitutes a fraudulant "high-jack" transaction because it was done without the users permission.

[alexway]

The key point. Megan Fox - from Transformers to Automattic's spokesman. What a fall! What a shame!!!

[elevateyourcreativeness]

I’m on the WP Engine side. That being said, if WordPress as a community is going to thrive, these petty differences need to be resolved in such a way that doesn’t affect potentially millions of users that are using a plugin that Matt gets in a wad about and making it unavailable to the general user base!

[ocratest]

"taking over of ACF" - Nice and safe phrasing 🤣

[buildyear]

You said "bringing in some of the ACF Pro features in SCF". "Some"? Isn't SCF now - at this moment - completely the same as ACF Pro?

[RR-okwz]

It's really sad to see how many people on Facebook, Reddit, and otherwise are standing on the wrong side of the moral argument (9:25). And yes, it's having an adverse effect on the community as a whole. Do I feel like I need to start thinking about switching to another platform? Yes. Do I want to stay on WP? Also, yes, but only because I've invested so much time and energy into it, definitely not because I want to support ANY endeavor that Matt is involved in.

While I still do my best to support devs when thinking about new plugins and such, I often wonder if all these LTD's I just purchase will all be for naught.

Matt needs to be removed. He will never learn his lesson, as is clearly shown by his recent posts on Slack. He's alway the "good guy who's been victimized", or so he likes to portray to the community. Typical egotistical, abuser behavior. I hope the final decisions on this case come down hard on him. He deserves it.

[theplaintech]

Isn't Automatic just simply ignoring the injunction so far?

[martinmcshane]

Matt rage quits (apparently) on the community slack.... According to the latest news articles

[unpremeditated-dot-blog]

I have lost all faith in wordpress and matt mullenweg. It's a relief really. Instead of wrangling with the software, I just focus on content, which is what matters in the end. I had already been wondering why it was so hard to use and imagined how awful it must be for regular users who have less software background than me.