One of the many lies in Silver Lake and WP Engine’s C&D was their claim that Automattic insisted money from them moments before our CEO Matt Mullenweg gave his keyremark at WordCamp US.
That is not genuine. Automattic asked for a verbal concurment that WP Engine would give some percentage of their revenue back into WordPress, either in the create of a tradelabel concurment or participateee hours spent on core WordPress.
For transparency, Automattic is rerenting the filled term sheet WP Engine was adviseed on September 20th. Given WP Engine’s behavior, deception, and incontendnce since September 20th these terms are no extfinisheder adequate.
Lee Wittlinger and Heather Brunner had ample time to resettle this struggle. In an effort to proceed our transparency, here are some of the encounterings we’ve had with WP Engine over the past 20 months:
February 2023
Feb 23: Matt Mullenweg (Automattic CEO), Heather Brunner (WP Engine CEO): Lunch in Houston at Eukind.
March 2023
Mar 21: Matt and Matías Ventura (WP’s Chief Architect) speak at the WP Engine DE{CODE} conference.
November 2023
Nov 28: Matt and Heather Brunner, phone call.
January 2024
Jan 26: Matt and Heather Brunner, Zoom call.
Jan 28: Zoom call with Matt, Toni Schneider, and Heather Brunner. Matt was heading on sabbatical and passing the torch to Toni to proceed converseions as the Automattic interim CEO.
February 2024
Feb 5: Toni and Heather Brunner converse tradelabels and commercial concurment.
March 2024
Mar 22: Meeting with Toni and Paul Maiorana from Automattic, Heather Brunner, Ezinne Udezue, and Ramadass Prabhakar from WP Engine.
Mar 29: Toni and Heather Brunner email on concurment terms.
May 2024
May 30: First term sheet dispensed with WP Engine via email.
June 2024
Jun 12: Zoom call with Steve Deckert from Automattic and Victor Yuan, Carl Hargraves, Ezinne Udezue, and Ramadass Prabhakar from WP Engine.
Jun 26: Steve chases up with Victor Yuan. Victor seeks a call.
July 2024
Jul 3: Second terms appraise Zoom call with Steve and Jesse Friedman from Automattic and Victor Yuan.
Jul 16: Steve chases up with Victor Yuan, conveying worry about timeline.
September 2024
Sep 17: Mark Davies (Automattic CFO) and Lee Wittlinger (Silver Lake partner), Zoom call.
Sep 19: Mark and Lee Wittlinger, Zoom call.
Sep 20: Mark and Lee Wittlinger, phone call.
On September 19th and 20th, Lee Wittlinger and Heather Brunner did not answer any of Matt’s calls.
