While lawyers argue in the WP Engine versus Automattic litigation whether the hyperbole should be believed, the continuing battle of words, almost all nasty ones, is starting to raise doubts how much an enterprise should rely on open source. And even if open source can be avoided at all in late 2024.
The latest legal documents came from Automattic, which argued that its people did nothing wrong and that the blame lies solely with WP Engine. This arrived after months of a wide range of heated comments from both sides.
One key point of disagreement involves WP Engine being denied access to WordPress.org. WP Engine has argued that the denial blocked it from getting work done, but Automattic (which controls both WordPress.org and WordPress.com) argues the move didn’t meaningfully hurt WP Engine.