The wording you use “effective for building trust” is a misnomer. As someone who uses ACF, I am suddenly an outcast in the world of Matt/Wordpress.org? And people who I know make money from plugins, are they next in line for the hostile take over treatment?

This IS a violent breach of consumer/user trust. Whatever you thought before of this takeover/stealing, this is what trust gone looks like.

I think the trademark issue is weak in this case anyway. WP Engine has been around for 14 years with that name, and has been part of the Wordpress community.

But absolutely nothing about a trademark dispute excuses the lies, unethical behavior, and just downright personal animus Mullenweg is pouring into this takedown.

Speaking of potential trademark issues, it looks like "Secure Custom Fields" retains some ACF branding:

https://x.com/TDKibru/status/1845178985308881146/ https://archive.is/sjuHl

Ironically, Automattic is actively taking legal action against a premium plugin reseller for trademark infringement on modified WooCommerce plugins: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fqw2eh/automatt...

>If I understand it correctly, the core of the dispute is trademark and that WPEngine somehow implies WordPress affiliation.

No, the core of the dispute is Matt wants either money from WP Engine or for them to contribute to WordPress. He's using the trademark as leverage. However, their usage of WordPress does not imply affiliation instead saying stuff "We bring WordPress to the masses".

The use of WP in their name was them actually following WordPress' trademark policy where they asked people not to use WordPress in their names but WP.