WP Engine Regains WordPress.org Access and ACF Plugin Control Following Court Ruling

After removing the mandatory WordPress.org login checkbox and the WP Engine Tracker CSV file, Automattic has reinstated WP Engine’s WordPress.org repository access and control over the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin repository. This follows a court ruling that required Automattic to restore these rights within 72 hours.

In October, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg announced the forking of the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin into the new plugin Secure Custom Fields. He took over the plugin citing security issues and invoked point 18 of the plugin directory guidelines.

In a tweet, Advanced Custom Fields confirmed: “53 minutes ago, we initiated publishing the genuine ACF on .org and are now awaiting .org to complete the review process to make it available.”

They later added: “We’re pleased to share that our team has had account access restored on WordPress dot org along with control of the ACF plugin repo. This means all ACF users can rest assured that the ACF team you trust is once again maintaining the plugin. There’s no action required if you have installed ACF directly from the ACF website or you are an ACF PRO user.”

The Repository now lists WP Engine as the author of the plugin instead of WordPress.org.

While many in the community are relieved to see ACF restored, some have expressed concerns about the negative reviews ACF received following the controversial takeover and the future of the SCF Pro version. Secure Custom Fields plugin still has WordPress.org as the author in the Repository.

WP Engine’s Brian Gardner tweeted, “Welcome home, ACF.” while entrepreneur Duane Storey commented: “This should never have been done in the first place. Let’s not forget, this was returned due to a court order, not a change of heart. I still consider the dot org repositories to no longer be trustworthy. I seriously think people with plugins there should be migrating away.”

Matt Mullenweg responded on this with, “I’m disgusted and sickened by being legally forced to provide free labor and services to @wpengine, a dangerous precedent that should chill every open source maintainer. While I disagree with the court’s decision, I’ve fully complied with its order. You can see most changes on the site. They have access to ACF slug but haven’t changed it… must not have been the emergency they claimed.”

As usual, the community remains divided with some supporting his stance while others opposed it.