>> "Stunningly, Automattic’s CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic – his for-profit entity – a very large sum of money before his September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, he was going to embark on a self-described “scorched earth nuclear approach” toward WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond. When his outrageous financial demands were not met, Mr. Mullenweg carried out his threats by making repeated false claims disparaging WP Engine to its employees, its customers, and the world. Mr. Mullenweg has carried out this wrongful campaign against WP Engine in multiple outlets, including via his keynote address, across several public platforms like X, YouTube, and even on the Wordpress.org site, and through the WordPress Admin panel for all WordPress users, including directly targeting WP Engine customers in their own private WordPress instances used to run their online businesses."
If he tried to extort them and was dumb enough to put it in writing they should just release it instead of making claims he did so. Extortion is pretty illegal. Let’s see the evidence.
They claimed the actual extortion took place over the phone. The closest he gets to acknowledging it in those texts is mentioning %. I would be curious if that is enough evidence. Pretty stupid behavior, either way.
WCUS took place in Oregon where both sides of that phone call would have been located. As far as I know while Oregon is two-party consent in most cases, only one party needs to consent to record a phone call.
Given the apparent escalation, I would be surprised if the WP Engine people hadn't consulted with legal and started recording calls during the event if it was legal to do so.
The plot thickens.