Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]

In a social media post on the platform X, he boasted that as a result of his actions, WPE is now a “distressed asset,” worth just a “fraction” of what it was before, because “[c]ustomers are leaving in droves” – calling into question whether Defendants’ motivations extend beyond mere interference and extortion, and are in fact a thinly disguised attempt to artificially drive down WPE’s valuation in hopes of acquiring it on the cheap

Its not unlikely that the gameplan all along was slander and disrupt them so much that the company would become worthless, then acquire it. He was trying to blackmail/extort WPE's CEO into coming to work for him, after all! (text message screenshots are in the lawsuit too)

Whether those flaws matter or not is irrelevant to the point the parent comment made, suggesting that a prior standard of architecture has been lost apparently due to the hiring of someone non technical for a leadership role.

It's like if someone claimed that McDonalds food is barely food, and doesn't meat the standards of fine dining because the Chairman and President are a lawyer and an MBA rather than trained chefs.

I'm not 100% in the tank for Mullenweg, there's some inconsistencies I find troubling. But WordPress is an incredible, open project. Mullenweg's built an admirable community and business. There are so, so many WordPress hosting sites, and they're doing great. Mullenweg has outlined his issues w/ WP Engine (they turn off history). Does anyone honestly think a private equity firm would do better than he has? Does anyone in all these WordPress threads truly believe a good outcome here is PE firms can do as they like, giving back relatively very little to the community and slowly diluting the trademark? Who thinks this is sustainable? Who in his position would let this happen?

Lawyering is a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Lots of companies fall into the trap of letting lawyers make business decisions instead of being advisors of legal risk/etc to the business.

Done properly, they are advisors 99% of the time.

Which means, to answer your question, there are plentyof situations where the outcome of the lawsuit is not as valuable to the business as the narrative/etc.

For example, there are people/companies whose brand is their most valuable asset. "family friendly" celebrities are a common example, i think.

For them, the narrative and control of it may be way more important than winning or losing.

Now, i would still say - even in that case, the person going off and talking in public without someone helping them know what to say (not necessarily a lawyer) is still often a really bad idea. They are often too close to it, etc, to really be objective about what will make the most sense, even if the goal is "control the narrative" rather than 'win the lawsuit" or whatever.

But in those cases, working with a crisis manager or whatever, if the most important thing is the perception, have at it.

At the same time, people involved tend to be in a bit of a bubble. It often feels more critical, urgent, and well known than it really often is.

So for example, here, i'm sure to lots of employees/Matt it feels like a thing everyone is talking about. But in reality, uh, its not. It isn't carried by any major news site, and even among the general open source or developer community, i would bet 99% of people have no idea about any of this.

Even within their customer base i would imagine it still isn't widespread knowledge (though it likely will be over say the next week).

So in a case like this, you have time to catch your breath, engage your best people, and think about your response. Which you should take.

That isn't always the case mind you (it's like any incident response). But i think it's the case here.

Success with the latter potentially encourages the former.