If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed

Given the age and ubiquity of Wordpress, I am shocked at the relative immaturity of Matt's communication skills.

He thinks the world has all the historical understanding and nuance of the situation. Why would they?

This looks like a world record speedrun attempt (any%) at destroying a legacy.

It's worth noting that WPEngine looked like this all the way back in 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20110112043959/http://wpengine.c...

They have never pretended to be anything else.

Why now, Matt?

I hope, for the good of the community, that Matt will choose either nonprofit leader or tech CEO. It’s become clear that both roles cannot live within one person.

If he were just the leader of the WordPress foundation, this whole thing would just be an embarrassing PR failure. As it is, I wonder if his actions will rise to the level of criminal.

After watching his interview with The Primeagen, it seems like he is mentally wearing the clothes of a righteous prophet…the misunderstood advocate of a disrespected organization.

Unfortunately, he’s ignoring the fact that he invested in WPE years ago, is CEO of a direct competitor, has publicly said he hopes WPE loses billions of dollars as a result, apparently has no proof in writing, and is pulling thousands of innocent developers into his petulant crusade.

From Mullenwegs personal website (https://ma.tt)

> Afterward, I also privately shared with [ThePrimeagen] the cell phone for Heather Brunner, the WP Engine CEO, so she can hop on or debate these points. As far as I’ve heard she hasn’t responded. Why is WP Engine scared of talking to journalists live?

this is not normal.

Very informative article. Matt is definitely in the wrong here.

I also loved how this was formatted, it was quite long but easy to read with a nice font.

Hmm. Maybe this is a bit of an outlandish take, but although his decisions do seem at least superficially sus, I have a hard time agreeing with Josh's take. He chooses to make a lot of highly agreeable comparisons, but to me it seems more like a city (or some level) of government severely turning up the temperature on a particularly egregious contingent of landlords, landlord, or demographic, who've been abusing the system we've all been chill with until it's just not cool anymore. You could crank up property tax by double or triple the next year, and not offer the ability to vote on the issue of zoning anymore, or you could do the thing that no politician has the balls or the power to do and fundamentally change the system in a way that takes those issues off the table entirely, making the whole system more equitable in the future. The repercussions could be dire for some people, but it is what it would take to give a giant fuck you to the people who hold the reins. If the landlords can always hold the poor vulnerable freelancers that live in their basement suite over the heads of anyone who could otherwise theoretically change the rules, nothing will ever really change, and the people who've been along for the profitable ride won't want it to. But if you don't do it, you might risk your future hypothetical economy.

Now, I know that's all a bit of a reach, but it's hard for me to not think asking for Matt to be removed for this reason is just like all those people who ostensibly would want public transit to be funded for all those other people who can't afford cars, until they finally got around to ripping up the street you use to drive to work every day and jacked up your taxes by $50.

But, all that said, I've also never liked WordPress at all and don't have a dog in the fight, this is just a thought experiment. However, if I had to move because my landlord eventually got screwed for not reporting my rent on their income tax, I'd be like "well sometimes that happens, was nice while it lasted but my place was a shithole, they weren't competing fairly, and they were constantly showing up to city council meetings trying to block a mid-rise from going up while I was at work paying their mortgage".

The general consensus of commentators seems to be that Matt is wrong in the way he approached this matter. Going by the wisdom of the crowds, maybe that's true.

However, my question is this: has WPE given a factual rebuttal to Matt's claims? Especially, considering that their entire business is dependent on WordPress?

I am concerned that in the eagerness to judge Matt's conflict of interest, we should not throw out the baby with the bath water.

Many techies hate it when CEOs are boring and only say comms that are vetted by their companies PR and legal teams...

But this whole debacle is what happens when a CEO doesn't do that. There can be unexpected, company-ending results.

This was a really good article, something that jumped out at me was that there might be a serious legal issue with the IRS.

WordPress, the for-profit company, may be too intertwined with WordPress the 501c3 foundation. I'm not a lawyer, but a nonprofit is supposed to be very careful about how it operates. Matt's post on wordpress.org is clearly crossing the line by blending the for-profit company, with the nonprofit foundation. Perhaps it's not illegal, but it is certainly unethical.

I watched the video/stream he did, and have very little good to say about it. while he may be right about it, cool; trademark infringement, yeah, they didn't give back, there's a feud; I'm sure it goes deep.

He disabled millions of wordpress sites from being able to update/access things. Plugins.. functionality.. Sure, they don't deserve to get free API access and all that; none of that matters.

What about non-profits for animal shelters, programs like st judes, things where livelihoods depend on it and they don't even know what an API or domain name is let alone what all this stuff is about and their whole stream of operations comes crumbling down because they paid somebody to set it all up for them and all they know to do is long in to wp-admin and press 'update' and make blog posts and check their 'payments' etc and modify/add things like their woo commerce plugins?

We're smart, we know what all this means, a lot of people I come across in the real world can utilize wordpress because it's easy for them, but if I explain in depth how things work they look at me like I'm speaking a foreign language.

He doesn't care.

I don't need that question answered. I already know.

I don't have an opinion on it, but when 75% of the internet is running wordpress, have some tact.

In the Prime interview it sounded like there were attempts in the past to ensure the trademark was not violated and he expressed the feeling like they were stringing him along. If he had only hired lawyers, not made that talk with his accusations, and let the lawyers handle it would more people be on his side?

Author assumes contribution data from wp engine is distorted simply because they don't agree with Matt's communication / response from the trademark dispute. That doesn't seem to fair?

If they worked there for that long perhaps they can provide insight into the upstreaming of issues strategy or if it was an org focus or an afterthought?

@photomatt answers to some questions in this subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41676411

This man is having a breakdown disguised as a legal battle.

Matt is just using WordPress and the WordPress foundation to justify his personal vendetta, the same way Musk uses Twitter against people he doesn't like.

And this is not the first time he does it, so this is nothing new and he is not the only one.

Rich people and big companies do this all the time, but Matt is doing in public.

"WordPress powers 43.5% of all websites as their CMS. Around 478 million websites are built on WordPress" Thanks to Matt Mullenweg's leadership and now you want him removed because he has flaws?

Let me guess you want another Mark Zuckerberg in there?

What's wrong with you people? He needs a stern talking to, not complete removal. This is another re-occuring case of "create hero, destroy hero" where the public likes to build someone up, find a flaw with them, act like they are irredemable, act like you're so distraught and hurt by their behavior, cry your tears, and destroy the hero you once celebrated.

Is that why it's named "Automattic", because the founder's name is "Matt"? Cute.

EDIT: Yep - https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/19/automattic-tc1-origin/

Matt has effectively threatened the businesses of companies whose web presence is hosted via WPE/FW.

He’s got to go.

Lightly off-topic, but:

>Five for the Future asks that if you benefit from WordPress, you give back 5% of your time directly to that open-source project

As someone that semifrequently has to support WP installs, I would definitely make a case for it not being a benefit in my life

The fact that he invoked Primeagen, even without the appalling context of the conversation, tells me everything I need to know. And already suspected.

In this thread nervous freeloaders trying to calm their nerves about shaky foundations by panicking in choir.

Let it die.

You would think that a company as invested in WordPress as WP engine is would invest more in the community and contribute to the software and also want to contribute to get features that would help it save money.

If wordpress is to survive it needs to not be wordpress

I've had some personal issues with Matt and Automattic and I would say there's nothing new in his attitude. But he's not so much different than DHH, Linus Torvalds, and Stallman - he's done a lot, a lot more than most of us, so, he's entitled to strong opinions. And all this looks worse than it is because he's a public figure. We all do stuff like this in our lives, it's just not getting public, but this doesn't mean any of us is so much better and smarter than Matt! And he is right that WP Engine is NOT WordPress.

The word 'press' in wordpress suddenly got another meaning, what a mattfia....

WordPress will survive all of us.

On this issue, there's been a lot of discussion along the lines of "the trademark for an open-source project should work the way I prefer which is…" or "if I was in a decision making position I would simply…" or "in a perfect world…". Others, like this post, unwisely include appeal to motive. It would be better for us to stick to discussion that is able to limit itself to the substance of both parties' claims.

The first thing I think cannot be neglected to be mentioned in posts about the dispute is that (1) Matt created the project (yes, a fork counts), (2) his friend coined the name, (3) Matt's company originally registered the trademark. Then (4) Matt's company donated the mark to a foundation to make it widely available for noncommercial use while they retained the exclusive commercial license to the mark. No mention of this in this presentation.

To be fair to commentators, part of the trickiness surrounding this dispute is an old issue regarding open source projects: do the open source software licenses imply a trademark license? The answer is generally understood to be: no. Having a license to software does not grant you a license to a trademark. For more on this I found illuminating the 2009 article in the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review by Tiki Dare JD (Director of Trademarks at Sun Microsystems, Inc.) and Harvey Anderson JD (General Counsel of the Mozilla Corporation) titled "Passport Without A Visa: Open Source Software Licensing and Trademarks": https://www.jolts.world/index.php/jolts/article/view/11/37

As one is not given a license to the trademark, a common understanding is that one can:

– limit one's use of the trademark to nominative or descriptive fair use (A)

– use the mark under supplemental guidelines from the trademark owner (B)

– acquire a dedicated license to the trademark (C)

At https://wpengine.com/plans (take your screenshots now) they have titled services they offer simply "Core WordPress", "Essential WordPress", and "Enterprise WordPress". It could be claimed this branding exceeds nominative use. It is far beyond the mentioned descriptive use of a "managed WordPress hosting company". If this branding exceeds fair use, it needs to comply with justifications (B) or (C). It very clearly does not comply with the published guidelines, both before and after recent modifications, that read "All other WordPress-related businesses or projects can use the WordPress name and logo to refer to and explain their services, but they cannot use them as part of a product, project, service, domain name, or company name…". You can also see examples of use (current/cached and perhaps somewhat inadvertent) of "WordPress Engine" itself at https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awpengine.com+%22wordp...

Many commentators seem hung up on the fact that using the letters 'WP' was and remains an allowed practice according to (B). However, with regard to any trademark guidelines it could safely be assumed that a mark owner is not suggesting that one may use protected marks in ways that cause confusion as this is counter to the purpose of trademarks. Commentators are likewise hung up on the idea that the guidelines were subject to change or are despairing about the recent edits that clarified that the use of 'WP' under (B) must avoid uses that could imply the product or service were synonymous with WordPress itself. For similar open source software trademark guidelines and as a useful point of comparison, I think commentators should take a look at Red Hat's public guidelines, which explicitly remind users that guidelines like these can be changed: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/trademark-guidelines-and-pol...

Other commentators are focusing on the length WP Engine had 'WP' in their name. With use since 2010, some have implied that a statute of limitations has passed but the Lanham Act has no such time limit. These commentators don't seem to be considering Automattic's confusion claim. WP Engine has claimed in their materials that they are "The most trusted WordPress platform" and "The Most Trusted WordPress Tech Company". 'Trusted' can be read with the meaning 'seen as trustworthy' rather than the meaning 'utilized' which could be found to be creating confusion. The most [seen as trustworthy] platform would presumably be the project itself (in an expansive understanding of 'platform' that a non-technical user might perceive). If CNET started calling itself "The Most Trusted Firefox Source" I would expect The Mozilla Foundation to ask them to stop. Many commentators appear to be suggesting there should be no enforcement of the WordPress mark, which seems an unusual position, or otherwise seem to take issue with Automattic's original trademark registration in the first place.

Regardless, if WP Engine's uses of the marks exceeded rationales (A) and (B), they needed a license. This is what Matt was seeking, even allowing such a license to be paid in kind. At this point, a court will likely decide if their use exceeded (A) and (B). Calling for Matt to have a role change is one thing but to likely libel Matt with the term extortion, a criminal offense, especially after only moments before admitting "maybe there's validity there" (regarding infringement of Automattic's WooCommerce mark) is absolutely reckless and it's disappointing to see this unserious blog post promoted here. To see uncareful defamation coming from someone who made their living for many years off the software their target of ire created is especially bleak.

While Matt comes looking "not good" and his apparent impulsiveness and "less than optimal" communication skills are doing more damage than good, I find it "interesting" most of the people attacking him either choose to ignore of gloss over the absolute trash WPEngine management people are.

It's rich coming from people demanding a high standard for Matt but not for the WPEngine people.

In the end all of it will get "solved" because there's way too much money in this to go any other way.

As Danny Glover famously said: "I'm too old for this shit"

Please, for the love of god, let it die. WordPress's horrible security, annoying maintenance, and cookie cutter sites have filled the internet with malware and garbage content. It's so annoying to maintain that we have to find these managed hosting places that provide very little value. And despite them, you still need to add a bunch of extra stuff to make a reliable site. Time to create something modern.

This guy clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

I realise it's high drama o'clock, and therefore time for everyone to jump in and try to get in on that sweet drama traffic, but this is the epitome of an article that really could just have been a Tweet.

There's not really any new information here, nor does the article offer some unique third-party take that hadn't been explored before. It's a lot of armchair psychology, third-hand anecdotes, and unfounded sweeping generalisations. TMZ: Tech Bros.

I like Matt, he's both a caring guy and a sensitive guy. As a sensitive and caring guy myself who tried the CEO thing, I think sadly, those are not particularly useful "top qualities" for that job.

Matt just needs to let copyright and license go. A long walk could cure him of his blindless.

Then Wordpress will be fine.

In general, anyone who doesn't wake up to E=T/A! will go extinct.

Copyrights are for cons. Patents are for parasites. Licenses are for losers.

You can only ignore nature for so long.

“So this post might be a lot of things, but I can assure you it’s not me defending my old company just because I used to work for them. I’ve got literally no reason to do that.”

by all means this guy is not the best one to call removal of Matt. this also reminds me those VC that got rid of the founders because founders have some flaws, and VC forgot that,without those flawed founders there will be nothing to start with.

This reads like part of the smear campaign predicted by Matt in his interview with Michael Paulson.

Also note that the author doesn’t disclaim any financial stake in the company he used to work for, WP Engine, after his company was acquired. He merely claims that he isn’t a “fan of either party”, so we should value his opinion and trust that it is impartial.

As for myself, I’ve never used WordPress or any CMS, I’m a lowly embedded software engineer. If Matt, the progenitor and steward of one of the most successful open source products in the world, asserts that an entity in the ecosystem is a leech, I’m inclined to believe him.