With Matt Mulleneg’s continued expansion of attempted extortion of WP Engine and the security threat posed by that, the WordPress Foundation has come in to more focus. Notably, the WordPress Foundation owns the WordPress trademark, but as a letter from Automattic’s lawyers put it, Automattic has “exclusive commercial rights to the world famous WORDPRESS trademark.” Probably connected to what is going on there, in July, the WordPress Foundation filed trademark registrations for MANAGED WORDPRESS and HOSTED WORDPRESS. The foundation doesn’t have any obvious need for those trademarks, since they are not involved in hosting WordPress websites (not WordPress’ own website). The question raised then is the WordPress Foundation functionally operating as an arm of Matt Mullenweg and is that legal?

Here is how an Automattic employee writing in a post on the WordPress website about the foundation, explained how the foundation is supposed to operate:

The organization operates with the welfare of the general public in mind and no business or group of individuals benefit from its existence. This is the main requirement of any public charity.

It’s hard to square that with registering trademarks so that Automattic can try to get 8% of the revenue of web hosts that compete with Automattic.

Based on who the other two members of the WordPress Foundation board are, it seems unlikely they are there to check the possibility of Matt Mullenweg from the using the foundation to benefit his business. It seems more likely that would be addressed in what seems highly likely to be upcoming civil, if not criminal, legal action.