Updated (at bottom) 9/25/2024
This is going to be a post that will grow and be added to as my thoughts come together around what happened at the Q&A with Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of the WordPress project and CEO of Automattic.
I can say one thing for certain it was uncomfortable to watch and definitely wasn’t as cheery as his past forums.
Here’s some background. It’s a post where he openly threw WP Engine under the bus for not contributing back enough to the open source project. He compared their hours to those of Automattic, who pretty much runs the freaking project. Not a fair comparison.
So as if the blog post wasn’t enough. He went on a tirade against WPE and their new owners in the Q&A and pretty much told everyone to leave WPE.
For a guy with a lot of staying power and just plain power in the project and ecosystem, this was irresponsible, unkind, and malicious at worst.
Look I’m not a fan of WPE. I used to love their subsidiary Flywheel, prior to the purchase by WPE. And I quickly moved to Rocket.net once I met the owner of Rocket Ben at WCUS 23 in Washington DC.
And what’s more WPE was a major sponsor to WCUS!!!! Geezus!
But regardless of my feelings about WPE, how Matt went about making an example of them is horrible. It was like a public flogging, followed by making them walk through the conference naked. Granted in Matt’s case it was all verbal. Can you imagine the other way? Geezus.
I love the WordPress software. I love almost everyone I know in the community. I give back where I can. Especially to the Photo project and local WordCamps.
But Matt’s outburst, anger, vitriol, public shaming has put a really bad taste in my mouth and makes me question my contributions to the WordCamps and the Photo project.
Now if this was the first time Matt went off the rails, I could count it as a bad day. But this is not even close to that. He’s done this quite a bit. I’m starting to think it’s his management style. Not good.
Here’s a thought. Maybe let Josepha Haden Chomphosy, who is the executive director of the WordPress open source project do the keynotes and Q/A from now on. Matt is too emotional and toxic.
Do you have thoughts? I know you do. I want to hear them!
WordPress.org’s recap of WCUS 2024 << A good run-down. They call the Q&A spicy. I understand why. But I call it toxic.
More from Matt about the whole WPE thing. I think it’s right to point this out. But not like he did. I’m not a fan of WPE and what they necessarily do. Let me make that clear. But Matt’s delivery and choice of venue was really a bad one.
There is also a trend here.
A good take from Andrew Palmer over on FundWP.
An interesting thing found on the WordPress Foundation Website:
The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.
WordPress Foundation Trademark Policy
Looks like WordPress, the open source project, might lose some people over Matt’s actions. That’s not good.
There are some calls for Matt to step back from the open source project after this whole debacle.
Another good post about how the end keynote should have happened.
Oh, here we go:
This is going to be a shit storm. 😵💫🍿
Now it looks like there are lawsuits flying all over the place.
A good post from Michelle Frechette at Post Status, the WordPress community.
Comments
17 responses to “On Matt Mullenweg And The Q&A At Wordcamp US 2024”
@seth storm in a teacup.
You and the Britishisms. It was more like a storm on the sea. But I get what you mean! LOL
Josepha was originally there, but had to leave town early for personal reasons.
That’s fine. Matt shouldn’t give these talks. That’s what I’m saying.
@seth toxic is the right word
Yep. Cult of personality as well. IMHO.
Matt is the CEO of Automattic. Who uses WordPress.org for WordPress.com. Yes, he’s the co-founder of the project. But Josepha is the Exec Director. Have her do the endnotes(*keynotes at the end. LOL)
@seth yeah, I resonate a lot with what you are talking about. It really seems to me that Matt is pretty hostile to anything in the WordPress community that he can't control or feels threatened by. I have seen so many well known and huge supporters of WordPress slowly leave the WordPress world the last 5 years. The WordPress community of today is not the WordPress community I fell in love with many years ago.#WordPress #WCUS
Somewhat true. I think WPE isn’t innocent here. But it’s where Matt chose to do it that gets me all bothered.
@seth I'm perplexed by all the negative response. I worked at A8C from 2014-2016. I have a pretty good understanding of Matt's shortcomings. I've disagreed with him vehemently in the past.But this particular talk seems to have a lot of truth in it. Aside from just criticizing Mulllenweg's ego, I'd be interested in exactly how people think he's wrong.The dynamic he describes is real and demonstrable. It sounds like he's trying to warn people that Wittlinger is a Gordon Gecko.
Look, it’s where he did it that really gets me. He could have done it publicly, as he’s done in the past, but not at WordCamp US. Where they are there as a top sponsor. Just not a good look and made lots of us feel icky.
He could have also make it a point to compare WPE to someone other than his own company. Which was also a bit self serving. Look at me! Look at me! Kind of move. Whether intentional or not.
@mizkirsten @seth of Matt had such major problem with WP Engine he should have never allowed them to sponsor WCUS to begin with. Taking money from someone and then bashing them in a stage at the very event they sponsored is not OK and pretty two faced if you ask me. From what I've seen Matt is destroying the WordPress community not helping it. Doing this sort of garbage is just going to turn away more hosting companies from sponsoring anything WordPress related.
Totally agree with you on this.
@seth Is that link supposed to be JSON instead of HTML?
I thought I fixed that. Thanks for sharing that.
@seth FYI, something seems to have gone wrong with this post; it’s returning raw XML
Strange bc. It isn’t for me. Hrm…..
I’ll figure it out! Thanks for letting me know!