--- title: "On Matt Mullenweg And The Q&A At Wordcamp US 2024" url: "https://sethgoldstein.me/on-matt-mullenweg-and-the-qanda-at-wordcamp-us-2024/" updated: "2024-09-25T21:06:03+00:00" sources: - "https://sethgoldstein.me/on-matt-mullenweg-and-the-qanda-at-wordcamp-us-2024/" --- *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](https://ma.tt/2024/09/ecosystem-thinking/). 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](https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/pdx-wcus-2024-a-recap/) << 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](https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/). 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](https://wptavern.com/matt-mullenweg-identifies-godaddy-as-a-parasitic-company-and-an-existential-threat-to-wordpress-future). [A good take from Andrew Palmer over on FundWP.](https://fundwp.com/the-complex-dynamics-of-wordpress-a-passionate-critique/) --- 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](https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/) --- Looks like WordPress, the open source project, [might lose some people over Matt’s actions](https://sipp.is/will-i-resume-my-contributions-to-wordpress/). That’s not good. There are [some calls for Matt to step back](https://notes.ghed.in/posts/2024/matt-mullenweg-wp-engine-debacle/) from the open source project after this whole debacle. [Another good post about how the end keynote should have happened.](https://www.briancoords.com/the-wcus-closing-i-wish-wed-had/) Oh, here we go: ![WP Engine responds on X to Matt Mullenweg's "attack"](https://sethgoldstein.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/image-8.png)This is going to be a shit storm. 😵‍💫🍿 [Now it looks like there are lawsuits flying all over the place.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fn3mjr/comment/lokzvec/) [I like this de-escalated post from one of the builders of the Ollie Theme (which this site is built on).](https://olliewp.com/we-are-wordpress/) [A good post from Michelle Frechette at Post Status, the WordPress community.](https://poststatus.com/give-back-deeply/) [Regardless of how shitty Silverlake and WPE is, Matt Mullenweg is losing the public PR battle right now.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1fp7h04/anyone_else_frustrated_and_disappointed_with_matt/)