Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg offered employees $30,000, or six months of salary, to leave the company if they didn't agree with his battle against WP Engine. In an update on Thursday night, Mullenweg said 159 people, making up 8.4 percent of the company, took the offer.Automattic, which is in charge of WordPress.com and its commercial services, has been involved in a public dispute with WP Engine after Mullenweg called the third-party hosting service a cancer" to the WordPress community and banned it from accessing WordPress.org.Mullenweg has claimed WP Engine is violating the WordPress trademark and criticized the company for not giving back to the WordPress open-source project. On Wednesday, WP Engine, which is owned by the private... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge WP Engine is asking a court to put a stop to Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg's public campaign against the company. In a motion for a preliminary injunction filed against Automattic and Mullenweg on Friday, the third-party hosting platform requests that the court restore its access to WordPress resources and allow it to regain control of its plugin that had been taken over.In the filing, WP Engine claims it's facing multiple forms of immediate irreparable harm" as a result of Mullenweg and Automattic's actions, including loss of customers, market share and goodwill." The company also says it saw a 14 percent increase in cancellation requests from September 26th to the 30th - just days after Mullenweg called WP Engine a cancer" to the... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, is scaling back its contributions to the WordPress open-source project, according to an announcement on Thursday. The company says it's decreasing contributions to match" the amount of time companies like WP Engine spend on the ecosystem, further escalating the tension between Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and the community.Now, instead of spending 3,988 hours per week developing the WordPress project, Automattic says it will now contribute around 45 hours as part of Five for the Future - a program that encourages companies to give back five percent of their resources to WordPress.org. These hours will likely go towards security and critical updates," Automattic says.Mullenweg, who also co-founded WordPress, criticized the third-party host WP Engine for contributing 40 hours a week to the ecosystem and called it a cancer" to the community. On the Five for the Future page that tracks contributions, the number of hours contributed by Automattic is already dwindling.Automattic blames the cutback on the significant time and money" related to the ongoing legal battle with WP Engine. It also points to the intense criticism" it has faced from members of the community' who want Matt and others to step away" from the WordPress project: