With the ongoing attempted extortion of WP Engine by Matt Mullenweg and the security risks that pose for WordPress, a central issue in that is Matt Mullenweg’s role in several ostensibly separate entities and using his role in one to benefit another. He isn’t the only one with roles across more than one of those. While looking at another aspect of the WordPress Foundation, we noticed that its News blog is being exclusively written by employees of his for-proftit company Automattic. Here are the dates and post authors of posts from last two years for that:

• June 18, 2024: Julia Golomb
• April 18, 2024: Julia Golomb
• February 9, 2024: Reyes Martinez
• June 29, 2023: Julia Golomb
• May 10, 2023: Julia Golomb

On the WordPress website, Julia Golomb lists her employer as Automattic and it says that “Automattic sponsors Julia Golomb to contribute 40 hours per week to the Community team.”

On the WordPress website, Reyes Martínez lists her employer as Automattic and it says that “Automattic sponsors Reyes Martínez to contribute 40 hours per week to the Marketing team.”

So both are involved in Automattic, WordPress, and the WordPress Foundation.

Are they were writing that on time that was claimed to be spent doing work for WordPress, not the WordPress Foundation?

It would be for the lawyers and possibly courts to decide if this the kind of thing that would mean that Automattic and the WordPress Foundation are commingled entities that, say, suggest that foundation isn’t independent of Automattic. Which would seem to be a problem. WP Engine’s lawyers would already seem to be aware of the crossover as in their cease and desist letter they wrote:

The duty of preservation applies to Automattic, WordPress.com, as well as WordPress Foundation
which employs Automattic staff.

Automattic’s follow-up cease and desist letter (which we are not linking to exposing a bunch of people’s email addresses) has section headed “Violations of Our WordPress Foundation Trademark Policy” despite the letter stating that lawyer writing stated that they ‘represent Automattic Inc. and WooCommerce, Inc. (collectively, our “Client”).’