{"id":21432,"date":"2025-10-25T02:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T02:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/?p=21432"},"modified":"2025-10-25T02:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T02:14:10","slug":"matt-automattic-20-counter-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/?p=21432","title":{"rendered":"Matt: Automattic 20 &amp; Counter-claims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s a bit of <a href=\"https:\/\/automattic.com\/\">Automattic<\/a> lore, but although I founded the company in June 2005, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/\">CNET<\/a> asked me to stay on for a few more months to finish out some projects, which I did. Our HR systems have me as the second employee, after <a href=\"https:\/\/odd.blog\/\">Donncha O Caoimh<\/a> (still at the company!) So today is my 20<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary at Automattic! It\u2019s 20 years since I started hacking on <a href=\"https:\/\/akismet.com\/\">Akismet<\/a>, our first product, and on <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.com\/\">WordPress.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-150359\" height=\"453\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ma.tt\/files\/2025\/10\/IMG_0435-1024x768.jpeg?resize=604%2C453&amp;quality=89&amp;ssl=1\" width=\"604\"><\/figure>\n<p>The team gave me a sweet surprise! I\u2019ve been fighting for the open web for 20 years, and hope to do it for at least 20 more. There\u2019s a lot of exciting behind-the-scenes stuff happening inside Automattic that also made this day special, but one significant thing is public.<\/p>\n<p>Automattic has finally had its first chance to file its counterclaims against <a href=\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/\">WP Engine<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.silverlake.com\/\">Silver Lake<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/10\/24\/automattic-files-counterclaims-against-wp-engine-in-wordpress-lawsuit-alleging-trademark-misuse\/\">as reported here by TechCrunch<\/a>. You may recall that last month, <a href=\"https:\/\/ma.tt\/2025\/09\/legal-win\/\">the court dismissed several of their most serious claims<\/a>, and they responded by filing an amended complaint. In our dogged defense of the free, open, and thriving WordPress ecosystem, Automattic responded today with a comprehensive counter-filing, <a href=\"https:\/\/automattic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/automattic-counterclaims.pdf\">which you can read in a 162-page PDF here about all the things WP Engine\/Heather Brunner and Silver Lake did wrong<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve got receipts!<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t think WP Engine employees or investors were aware of the gaslighting they did, hopefully some of this is enlightening. And there\u2019s a lot more discovery to go!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s a bit of Automattic lore, but although I founded the company in June 2005, CNET asked me to stay on for a few more months to finish out some projects, which I did. Our HR systems have me as the second employee, after Donncha O Caoimh (still at the company!) So today is my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysutoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}