The internet is filled with things. Here is one of them.
Wordpress Leadership Explosion2024 Dec 20
Slowly exploding in front of the world since September is WordPress's leadership. WordPress, for anyone who doesn't know, is software used to make and run websites. A lot of websites. Something like 43.3% of the websites on the internet. Everyone from your neighborhood cafe to the State of California to Sony Music. (the brandensite does not use WordPress – I find it bloated and burdensome.) And while WordPress is an Open Source project, it's de facto controlled by its creator, Matt Mullenweg. This hasn't mattered outside of project leadership – Matt's direction has rarely courted controversy – until recently.
Because recently, Matt decided that one of the big for-profit WordPress hosting companies, WP Engine, even though they were obeying their contracts and agreements, still wasn't contributing to the WordPress project enough money, wasn't giving back enough to the community. So he used his control over the WordPress project to throw a public tantrum and shut down their link to WordPress, stranding all their customers' websites. WP Engine responded like the adults in the room, with a PR-crafted letter and lawyer-crafted lawsuit, and the courts have since forced WordPress to play fair. So Matt, who is worth somewhere around $400m, in turn threw another public tantrum and shut down all WordPress.org account registrations.
Which is what spurred Joost de Valk, probably the second-biggest name at WordPress, to write the linked blog post, where he basically says (in polite words) that it's time for WordPress to get rid of Matt Mullenweg and move to proper board-of-directors-style leadership, and oh yes also that he's actually already taking the steps to do so. Matt commented on Joost's post:
I think this is a great idea for you to lead and do under a name other than WordPress. There’s really no way to accomplish everything you want without starting with a fresh slate from a trademark, branding, and people point of view.
Which I read as a very polite "fuck off."
Of course, if you check on Matt Mullenweg's website yourself, this is all a smear campaign and Matt's of course being a completely reasonable dictator and all his dictatorial actions are justified. Naturally.
Yet still, you can't tell me it's better for this software that's so massively important to the web to be under the control of one person, especially one person who acts like a spurned child on a playground lashing out against the people with whom he's offered to share his toys when they play with his toys in a way he doesn't like.
Slowly exploding in front of the world since September is WordPress's leadership. WordPress, for anyone who doesn't know, is software used to make and run websites. A lot of websites. Something like 43.3% of the websites on the internet. Everyone from your neighborhood cafe to the State of California to Sony Music. (the brandensite does not use WordPress – I find it bloated and burdensome.) And while WordPress is an Open Source project, it's de facto controlled by its creator, Matt Mullenweg. This hasn't mattered outside of project leadership – Matt's direction has rarely courted controversy – until recently.
Because recently, Matt decided that one of the big for-profit WordPress hosting companies, WP Engine, even though they were obeying their contracts and agreements, still wasn't contributing to the WordPress project enough money, wasn't giving back enough to the community. So he used his control over the WordPress project to throw a public tantrum and shut down their link to WordPress, stranding all their customers' websites. WP Engine responded like the adults in the room, with a PR-crafted letter and lawyer-crafted lawsuit, and the courts have since forced WordPress to play fair. So Matt, who is worth somewhere around $400m, in turn threw another public tantrum and shut down all WordPress.org account registrations.
Which is what spurred Joost de Valk, probably the second-biggest name at WordPress, to write the linked blog post, where he basically says (in polite words) that it's time for WordPress to get rid of Matt Mullenweg and move to proper board-of-directors-style leadership, and oh yes also that he's actually already taking the steps to do so. Matt commented on Joost's post: Which I read as a very polite "fuck off."
Of course, if you check on Matt Mullenweg's website yourself, this is all a smear campaign and Matt's of course being a completely reasonable dictator and all his dictatorial actions are justified. Naturally.
Yet still, you can't tell me it's better for this software that's so massively important to the web to be under the control of one person, especially one person who acts like a spurned child on a playground lashing out against the people with whom he's offered to share his toys when they play with his toys in a way he doesn't like.