There is turmoil in the WordPress hosting community being discussed on LinkedIn here.
And WPEngine posted their Cease-and-Desist letter here.
Michael Willman, CEO of WordPress development specialists Redev wrote in that LinkedIn thread:
We are actively pushing our clients away from all Automattic services due to this.
Any thoughts?
Yes, I lot of us have been following this. I am sure CP will benefit from the chaos as it trickles down. A lot of agencies and devs right now are rethinking their continued use of WordPress and WooCommerce after this. Right or wrong, Mattâs temper-tantrum is not serving WordPress well.
I know designers who loaded all their clients on WP Engine and Flywheel. I know agencies that are using WP Engine - some of these are brand names. I am sure this is an incredible stress for them. They are stuck, but the companies they represent have big pocket books to redeploy - and I am sure they will be asking what alternatives exist.
So yes, I think its good for ClassicPress.
I do believe that WP Engine will face some backsplash and lost customers, it[s normal. But will CP sudden see a spike? Maybe, if we can promote it properly and get the community aware about it, we do have chance.
Here is a great summary article on the details (and I pulled a quote that applies to a lot of us in the business - have some pages to edit now).
FYI
âThe WordPress Foundation, which owns the trademark, has also filed to trademark âManaged WordPressâ and âHosted WordPress.â Developers and providers are worried that if these trademarks are granted, they could be used against them.â
Iâd say so! Iâve been a WordPress user and developer for many years. I ended up here because of that.
Welcome to ClassicPress! Let us know if you have any questions or comments. This is a very friendly community!
So, Iâm curious how this open dispute against WPE will affect future development of CP? That is, I get the latest CP release is based on the latest WP release⌠Given the legal, and overall situation⌠Will CP completely diverge from WP at this point going forward, therefore no longer being based on WP such as projects like âValkeyâ did with âRedisâ and âMariaDBâ did with âMySQLââŚ
I ask this as we host many WP sites, and well, this whole mess has left us in a place where (while we may not be sought after legally anytime soon) the premise of this dispute and how itâs being handled mostly from WPâs end is quite frustrating, and disappointingâŚ
In a nutshell, while I know our customers like WP for its functionality, I feel for nearly every other reason a âswitchâ is now necessary.
We donât mind supporting open source in whatever way we can, but this whole dispute and now legal matter feels more like âwe donât like that youâre making nearly, if not more then us, so weâre coming after you to put you out of businessâ type of tantrum.
This frankly, is not a mature way of dealing with the matter since they as many have already posted, are putting the whole ecosystem at risk and punishing the users in spite of a âpotentialâ legal matter with WPE.
So, yeah, where does this leave the CP project which presently is based on WP (similar to Ubuntu is based on Debian as I understand). Naturally while I believe CP hasnât broken any laws or the GPL license with which WP licensed, what if CP does grow in popularity, would this subject it to the wrath of Matt? Also, if like me you believe this whole dispute situation is quite âsillyâ, perhaps diverting away from the project which is making waves might be a good idea at this point.
In a way yes, that is exactly Automattic point, defending their spot and their money.
Side notes:
CP has its own ecosystem, and a directory (not a repo) that lists plugins and themes that devs host on their own GitHub. This means that you can either access the theme/plugin directly from GitHub OR use the directory integration CP plugin to have an easy way to install them from your dashboard.
At present we offer the WP repo access on the dashboard, yes. but in no way we are misusing their trademarks so we should be safe on that regard (they should not have reasons to remove our ability to access them). Alongside the WP repos we offer access to the directory via a directory integration plugin, so you can have both at the same time.
In the future when our directory will list enough themes and plugins to cater to the needs of the community we might include the directory integration plugin in core, and start deprecating the WP repo pages (so that you can âdisableâ them in setting and decide to only show the CP directory pages to install plugins and themes or continue to show both or only WP repos) and after some other time we could in the end remove access to WP repos.
This however wonât hinder usersâ capacity to upload WP/CP plugins and themes that you downloaded elsewhere and wonât damage users because the directory is going to list many more plugins and themes so that the users wonât really need WP ones anymore.
A word of warning: This is a LONG process, itâs not something that can happen right away. we need to give developers time to learn to develop according to CP standards, and to fill the directory with listings of their plugins and themes.
Also all that is a breaking change requiring a major version.
This means it could take CP up to one or two years to completely shift from WP repos + plugin to integrate directory to directory only. It might seem a long time, but itâs needed.
I personally feel that this is a reasonable time to allow CP to overcome the technical challenges that this shift brings on the table, and to give devs time to list their plugins and themes and for CP to gain more users in the process. Good things do not need to be rushed. Letâs take it one step at the time.
For now CP is reasonable safe, we are not in danger because the directory is already there and active and people are developing for CP and listing their software there. Even if for some reason WP repos are suddenly forcibly cut off this would only mean that CP directory is going to have a boost and more software is going to be uploaded there IMHO.
We have the time to do our thing the right way and without fear. We are in a good place since CP is really gaining momentum.
I guess my concerned surrounding things was based on the evolution of WPâs beef with WPE.
From what I followed on the topic, they went from âtheyâre not contributing enoughâ case whereby this was sort of baseless given open sources does not have any immediate ârequirementsâ to give back either in terms of development or financially.
When this matter was essentially squashed, they pivoted to the trademark violation claimâŚ
Essentially, my point is that it seems Matt from what Iâve read both past and present is known for making a mess of things when he wants to be right on a topic, trolling a former company in the past, trying to get people to leave WPE in the presentâŚ
So, to clarify my concern is focused on, âwhat if CP gets popular and is still heavily based on WP codeâ⌠Would Matt whether having a legal case, go after CP for taking WP customers away from his highly profitable business⌠Even if he didnât win, he might throw money at making life difficult⌠Seems to me as a multi millionaire himself, heâs become a bit greedy despite claiming heâs doing it for the greater good.
*** Thanks for the reply BTW ***
we are reasonably safe.
like I said we never marketed as âwe are WP without GBâ really, but as an independent CMS that is a FORK OF WP (that is different than what WPE and similar companies do - they do not really communicate clearly that their WP is a clone/fork they maintain with differences from the original that you can download from wp.org).
Moreover, should Automattic attack CP, we are well into the constraint of GPL2 - having respected the license.
They could try to make things worse for us, yes. But they wonât because CP Initiative is a no profit org. So basically the only ones profiting from CP are the devs who make sites with it or develop plugins and themes for it (that is totally legal).
Moreover, should they try to block access to repos, we do have directory that is up and running.
That all means we could already be self-reliant, and that we are basically safe.
We decided to go from WP repos + directory integration to directory only in stages, taking our time to do so, because we are safe to do so and we can totally do that without causing problems with our users in doing so. We do not want a repeat of GB in WP5 debacle. It is wrong to force thing to go fats and throw a change upon the community when you totally have the time to do it smoothly and safely.
If a problem arises I know for a fact that the community is totally able to go the self-reliant route in a shorter time than the one I mention above because we already have the integration plugin and we have an idea of what it would take to deprecate WP repos if that makes sense. I am not scared by what Matt is doing (and yes, he is managing a company like a man-child throwing tantrums when he thinks his company is in danger of losing the upper hand)
Mattâs legal case is based on trademark infringement. But we donât use WordPress (or WP) for anything at all except accurate description. We are called ClassicPress (or CP) and thereâs no risk of confusion. We also donât do hosting, so arenât competing with Automatticâs wordpress.com.
Once again, appreciate the clarify on things, and am in the process of exploring CP before rolling it out to our users. Glad to be part of a humble, and friendly community here. Look forward to where we can go with CP moving forward 
Yes, I have been sending people to ClassicPress.net although the WPE drama is not affecting me personally.
Same here! I didnât do dev for WP, just have been using it on my blog since around 2004 or so. A lot of people on Masto are asking about options on where to move today, and Iâve been pointing them to CP and letting them know that the community here may be small, but friendly and supportive. 
I think itâs definitely an opportunity for CP, and itâs gotten me to think about it again after I basically gave up and finally drank the Gutenberg Kool-Aid a couple years ago.
Unfortunately I see the main CP site is giving the old âError establishing a database connectionâ message right now. Perhaps a surge of traffic in the wake of the latest salvo in this war (WP hijacking ACF in the Plugin Directory).
I think youâre right about the spike in traffic. The site is back up now.
I actually think WP needs ClassicPress, amidst all the WPE drama, to âproveâ its commitment to open source and forks.
The latest in the WPE story is that WP has now taken over the non-pro version of ACF and renamed it âSecure Custom Fieldsâ. It feels like piracy, and I think will further undermine WP usersâ confidence in WP, or at least in Matt Mullenweg. Iâm mostly unaffected, as all but 2 of my sites use the pro version of ACF, and with a developer license I can upgrade those to pro at no cost.
While it never dawned on me in the early days of WP, I believe a key advantage of CP over WP is that there is a properly setup âboardâ (âcommitteeâ) of people overseeing itâs development and setting the rules.
Frankly, if WP had wanted to start going after people for $$$ at some point in their success, it should have been SUPER clear up front thatâŚ
If you reach X amount of earnings from our product, you need to license our trademark or pay some sort of license for the use of the product.
Either that or simply build a dual license for the use of the source code:
In any event, joy so far with CP is that things thus far are on the right path. As our company and indirectly our clients (who we offer technical support for) begin to make use of CP, weâll definitely work out something either in terms of helping (promoting, developing, etc), financially, or both.
Iâm not some fortune 500 company, but Iâm willing to give back when and to the extent I can.
WP Engine also provides a link to their official version, you can download and install one time and then be back on updates provided by their dev team.
Exactly. Slow clap. 
I think things are gong to get worse for WP as more people get turned off with all the Matt antics. Throwing your community and users under the bus never makes for good business.
I can tell you if we didnât have Elementor on a lot of our sites, Iâd already be moving them over to CP by now.
In fact, as we are rebranding, I might just redo my entire web242 site in ClassicPress.