Well, according to WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, who spoke at the WordCamp WordPress conference in September, WP-Engine is squeezing out every last bit of money from the WordPress business, and "for open-source communities, it can be fatal." Mullenweg went on in a blog post: WP-Engine is "a cancer to WordPress."

Wow. He went there. The most famous example of cancer and open source being mentioned together is when former Microsoft bigwig Steve Ballmer went off on Linux. Is this really where Mullenweg wanted to go? Yes, it is.

By his lights, "Lee Wittlinger at Silver Lake, the private equity firm with $102B assets that owns WP-Engine, is hollowing out the WordPress open source community by not including some WordPress features, such as its change revision system -- and the company only contributes back 40 hours a week. Meanwhile, Automattic, Mullenweg's for-profit WordPress company, "is a similar size and contributes back 3,915 hours a week." (He also accused WP-Engine of violating WordPress's trademarks.)

WP-Engine was not amused and fired off a cease-and-desist letter to Mullenweg and Automattic demanding they withdraw their comments. The company also revealed in its words that Mullenweg would take a "scorched earth nuclear approach" against WP Engine unless it agreed to pay "a significant percentage of its revenues for a license to the WordPress trademark." Specifically, it claimed Mullenweg had demanded 8% of its gross revenues. That went over just as well as you'd think.