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Days after 159 people accepted Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg’s offer of a six-month severance package for employees who want to leave, the company rolled out a new offer late on October 16 of a nine-month severance package for anyone who resigned immediately. . Employees had four hours to decide if they wanted to accept the deal.
In a Slack message seen by TechCrunch, Mullenweg posted that people who accepted the offer would lose access not only to Automattic but also to WordPress.org. This effectively means that people who leave will not be able to contribute to the open source project – at least under their current ID. This also means that they will effectively be banned from the WordPress community. News of the deal was reported earlier 404 media.
Aside from being the CEO of Automattic, Mullenweg also owns and controls the open source website WordPress.org.
Mullenweg only gave four hours’ notice and told people who wanted to accept the offer to message him directly, “I’m resigning and would like to take up the 9-month buyout offer.”
“You don’t have to say any reason or anything else. I’ll say ‘thank you.’ Automattic will accept your resignation, and you can keep your office stuff and your work laptop. You’ll lose access to Automattic and Worg,” Mullenweg said.
“I think some people were sad because they missed the last window,” he said, and so he introduced this new short window.
Automattic had not commented on the story as of press time. It is not clear whether any employees have accepted the new offer. The company currently has 1,731 employees, according to its website. A few hours ago, it reached 1,732.
The WordPress co-founder’s first offer was aimed at people who didn’t agree with his views on Automattic’s battle with hosting provider WP Engine. The first batch of people to leave Automattic included some of the company’s most senior people, including the president of WordPress.com (Automattic’s commercial WordPress hosting arm), Daniel Bachuber; Head of Programs and Contributor Experience Naoko Takano; Principal Engineer of Artificial Intelligence, Daniel Walmsley; And CEO of WordPress.org Josepha Haden Chimfusi.
The battle began nearly a month ago after Mullenweg called WP Engine a “cancer for WordPress” and accused the independent company of not contributing enough to the open source WordPress project. Over the past few weeks, the battle has included cease-and-desist letters, Automattic accusing WP Engine of trademark infringement, a lawsuit from WP Engine, and WordPress.org blocking WP Engine’s access and seizing a plugin it was holding. .
Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that Automattic was preparing to defend its trademarks by engaging “nice and not-so-nice” lawyers, according to an internal post published earlier this year by the company’s then-CEO.
You can contact this reporter at im@ivanmehta.com or on Signal: @ivan.42
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