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Why WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has gone 'nuclear' against investing giant Silver Lake

Matt Mullenweg, who founded WordPress more than two decades ago, finds himself in a legal battle against Silver Lake over the firm's ownership of WP Engine.

The typically quiet but extremely important part of the internet — WordPress powers roughly 40% of all websites — has suddenly emerged as a major source of tech industry drama, threatening to upend an ecosystem that's long been viewed, from the outside at least, as collegial, thanks to its longevity and the various fun-loving camps and learning sessions it hosts every year. "The misconduct at issue here is all the more shocking because it occurred in an unexpected place — the WordPress open source software community built on promises of the freedom to build, run, change, and redistribute without barriers or constraints, for all. WP Engine accuses Mullenweg of slander and libel due to his public comments and says the WordPress founder has numerous conflicts of interest in how he runs the community and his company, give the open-source nature of the technology.

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