Is Matt Mullenweg defending WordPress or sabotaging it?

One important people to keep in mind as they read this post, the linked Google Doc, and tweets from the past day where a bunch of people are receiving unsolicited DMs[1] from Automattic with grammar that matches Matt's:

- Matt, under various guises, is shifting blame to different entities that are effectively himself.

- Automattic is Matt. Matt is the CEO of Automattic.

- The WordPress Foundation is, effectively, Matt.

- The problem is Matt. Maybe he's right about WP Engine, but the way he has and continues to handle everything has been disastrous.

1. https://x.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1846448485979107824

Mullenweg just keeps digging. He is the only person I have ever seen interacting in such a petty manner that he made a company backed by Private Equity look like a victim. If Trademark was the issue, why did it take him over a decade ? Why is he not going after all the other gazillion WP providers that use similar phrase on their website ? We all know the answer. The only company (WP Engine) that beat his for profit company (wordpress.com). He is just salty.

He is absolutely destroying WordPress. I wasn't ever a fan but given that 40% of websites rely upon it, the end users are the ones who will suffer the most here.

If somebody doesn't fork WordPress soon, it will be decades before WordPress is purged from the web and in the meantime a lot of those remaining sites will devolve into bot-net members and malware hosts.

Because that's how Mullenwegs crusade is going to end: With the death of WordPress.

That Google Doc is painful to read. You point at the stars and Matt looks at the finger.

> you can just continue to use WordPress without any impact

That's nice—

> on any other host than WP Engine

That's the whole point, Matt.

My tinfoil hat - this is all semi-intentional self-sabotage.

WordPress is itself a fork of a previous open-source GPL license. Meaning Mullenweg couldn't make it close source even if he wanted to.

He makes it pretty clear that he thinks all of WordPress should belong to him. So he's intentionally closing out the ecosystem by making it as hostile to third-parties as possible.

As some like to say, "the cruelty is the point".

"It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute"

No one with money at stake will allow their Wordpress install to be subject to random sabotage by the whims of unhinged behavior. I don't know if a fork is the solution, but Matt can't have admin access to so many installs.

What I am not seeing in any of the discussions about this is the connection with various database products that used to be Open Source but then changed their licenses because they didn’t like AMZN and the like offering hosted versions of their products without paying anything. It’s a similar situation.

As an open source creator, I can understand Matt's position to some extent and the frustration behind seeing some competitor profiting from his work. He is clearly eccentric. The part about him asking WP Engine for revenue-sharing in exchange for changing words in his speech made me chuckle. What I don't understand is why he cares so much. He is probably one of the wealthiest OSS people of all time so it seems petty in that context.

Creating uncertainty (both for users and ecosystem developers) means he’s sabotaging it.

It doesn’t matter what he thinks he’s doing (my belief is that he’s just frustrated that someone else is profiting more than he thinks is “fair” and is using everything else as a cover, but maybe he does actually believe WPE is causing harm).

But here’s the problem I have with the whole position he’s taken. If this were actually about “Wordpress the project/community” the payment would be to the non profit not his personal for-profit company. If it was about trademarks, he should not have made the prior claims that the trademarks were not the property of his for profit when they functionally are. He would have not misrepresented the non profit as an independent entity (a fiction demonstrated clearly by the requirement to compensate his for profit).

if WPEngine is not contributing a “fair” amount to an open source project that sucks, but that’s always a risk if you want to build a for profit business on an OSS basis. But you can’t then unilaterally and retroactively change the rules later on, and act like it’s a “protecting the community” nonsense. You sure as shit don’t get to just engage in explicit extortion.[1]

Again, maybe wpengine was not contributing a fair share back to “the community”, but that’s just how OSS works, not everyone is a contributor.

[1] something I’ve found myself wondering about: my understanding is that under the law a contract signed under duress is not valid. Given the threats Matt was making, if WPE had signed it, would they be able to then go to court and say it was not enforceable due to the threat being leveled at them?

Last year, I was contacted out of the blue by an Automattic recruiter who encouraged me to apply for an engineering position there. I was intrigued for a few minutes because I recognized the company and knew they did some really terrific open source work once upon a time.

But then I regained my senses... I don't have any kind of reputation or extensive proof of accomplishments or character outside of my resume and real-life social circle. Any company that would cold-contact someone like me is 100% dealing with either abnormally low offer acceptance or abnormally high employee turnover, or both. I also remember reading (on Reddit and such) from previous employees that the CEO was best described as "mercurial."

There were enough bright waving red flags that I did not bother to respond.

There was a shift at some point in the tech industry from CEO-as-professional-career-administrator-type to CEO-as-visionary-weirdo-founder-type. I think over the last few years, we are increasingly seeing the consequences of this.

(Not that the previous model was foolproof, but they were usually a lot easier to get rid of when they went rogue; for instance see Léo Apotheker.)

As someone very interested in open source being sustainable, I'm sympathetic to the challenges, and very interested in solutions.

But, obviously, this is currently looking like a disaster of PR and community.

So, hopefully they can figure out:

* solutions to the open source sustainability challenges,

* a solution to the harm done by recent mistakes, and

* how to try to prevent mistakes like that from happening again.

The article update links to a Google Doc in which Matt takes issue with the following remark from the article: > he's a wealthy CEO of a for-profit corporation that is attacking a competitor

Matt responds: > WP Engine is a “competitor”, but so is every other web host in the world. Automattic and WordPress.org have had good relations with all the others for 21 years. WordPress.org recommends a number of hosts.

It seems Matt is forgetting his "friendly" spat with GoDaddy a few years ago.

Matt continues: > His criticism of certain practices focuses on maintaining the platform’s integrity and open-source commitment to ensure the community can grow further with sustainable investments.

Let's assume this is all true. It doesn't change the fact that he's attacking a direct competitor.

Matt continues: > Silver Lake is far wealthier than Matt or Automattic.

This is how you know that Matt wrote the response. It's the same ego defending behavior that he used when responding to DHH.

Matt is very, very bad at PR. It's really time he learns that and lets others take over those roles. And it's time he learns to shut up. He hurts more than he helps.

Matt’s response to DHH was really some of the pettiest stuff I’ve seen from a major public figure in the tech world

Maybe its a newfound persona, maybe its a new marketing angle, or maybe its just someone going a little unhinged. But all isn’t right in the WordPress world

Serious question: did Matt get divorced recently, or suffer some other family trauma? He seems very angry.

Anyone has Mathew's Mastodon link? I wanted to follow him but the link at the end of the post is broken.

Both.

he is def fucking it up.

I just read his response to DHH, and I find it interesting how he's both out of line, and really right at the same time.

If you don't like it, fork it.

The Google doc linked in this post is theoretically a way for a corporation to harvest the Google usernames of people accessing it. They probably wouldn’t be able to see IPs but that doesn’t prohibit Google from writing your username into their audit logs for them. Use appropriate precautions when accessing.

Way too early to tell, but the way everyone is piling on this guy and saying he has mental problems makes me believe he will end up being in the right on this