The buyout offer is the latest development in a bitter feud between Automattic and WP Engine, which has been ongoing for nearly a month. The dispute started when Mullenweg called WP Engine "a cancer to WordPress" and accused the independent firm of not contributing enough to the WordPress open source project. Since then, the fight has escalated, with Automattic accusing WP Engine of violating trademarks, WP Engine filing a lawsuit, and WordPress.org blocking WP Engine's access and taking over a plug-in it had been maintaining.