The recent interview that Matt Mullenweg did with The Verge highlighted his focus on WP Engine having not donated to the WordPress Foundation. It is an odd focus since the WordPress Foundation does almost nothing and he hasn’t explained why it would need more money. There is also an issue that the foundation appears to largely operate as an arm of Matt Mullenweg’s for-profit company, Automattic. That is the entity he has been trying to extort WP Engine through.

As we noted before, the foundation’s blog is being written exclusively by Automattic employees. Those employees claim that they are spending 40 hours a week working on WordPress, which is separate from the WordPress Foundation. They are not alone in that.

In July, the WordPress Foundation filed applications filed for trademarks for “HOSTED WORDPRESS” and “MANAGED WORDPRESS.” The foundation hasn’t provided any explanation for doing that. It does overlap with Automattic’s claimed efforts to get WP Engine to pay them for using trademarks for their hosting service.

The signatory of the applications is listed as the Chief of Staff of the WordPress Foundation. Their name is Chloe Bringmann. The WordPress Foundation doesn’t provide any listing of staff and we can’t find any other reference to someone that works for the foundation. There is a Chloe Bringmann who is an employee of Automattic with that name. Like the other Automattic employees, they claim to spend 40 hours a week on WordPress as part of Automattic’s Five for the Future pledging. Are they working on the WordPress Foundation during the time they are supposed to be working on WordPress? That seems like should be vetted by the team managing the Five for the Future program, which appear to all be Automattic employees.