Summary
Attending WCUS as an Automattician, I reflect on Matt Mullenweg’s bold call-out of WP Engine, the role of the Project Lead, and the tension between corporate interests and open-source ethos in WordPress. Contributions matter.
This is probably going to be a spicy article. That said, as I take specific positions and articulate my reasoning, I hope it remains a safe space for dialogue and mutual understanding.
I attended my first WCUS as an Automattician this week, representing WordPress VIP and connecting with our enterprise customers and partners. It was incredible to spend time with deeply technical folks, excited about WordPress and participating in the community side of the ecosystem (some for the first time).
From me personally, a massive thanks to Vox Media, IDG, News Corp, CNN Brazil, and TIME for attending, speaking and engaging with our community. Your stories and experiences are so valuable as we paint the picture of Enterprise WordPress.
Things Were Said
The week kicked off with Contributor Day. It’s an opportunity for folks who work in the ecosystem to contribute in various ways. This includes WordPress’s core product and also the community that surrounds it. There are a number of very specific ways that people can contribute, and the WordPress Project recognizes these contributions through things like badges and credits in release notes.
One way that Matt Mullenweg chose to contribute was by releasing a Foundation leadership article. In this article, Matt laid out his thinking about WordPress as an ecosystem and gave four specific concepts that embody the ethos: Learn, Teach, Evolve, and Nourish.
I encourage you to read the article. That last one, Nourish, was of particular focus. In Matt’s article, he described the importance of corporate contributions to WordPress’s success and celebrated a number of companies that are contributing.
Matt also called out one organization in particular that by Five for the Future (FftF) metrics, is taking unfair advantage of the open source and contribution-dependent nature of WordPress. WP Engine’s recognized contributions to the WordPress Project pale in comparison to that of other organizations. By almost every metric, WP Engine is underperforming compared to its peers in the ecosystem.
In terms of weekly contributor hours, Automattic is pledging more than 3,900 hours while WP Engine is contributing 40.
The Role of Project Lead
The article was pointed and direct and challenged both WP Engine and all of us to reflect on the value we take from WordPress and how that compares to the value we give in return. If you visit the Five for the Future page you will see many companies that earn far less than WP Engine contributing far more to the project.
While this post was new, it should not come as a surprise to those of us who have been in the community for a while. Contributing to WordPress and challenging those who profit from WordPress to give back to it, is the responsibility of the Project Lead. Matt is the Project Lead, and he has a track record of calling things out in a direct, and sometimes uncomfortable way. Consider Envato, Thesis, Pantheon and GoDaddy who have all experienced a public and disruptive challenge from the Project Lead.
Coincidentally, both of those last two, Pantheon and GoDaddy, chastized publicly, have also gone through some very public restoration. At WordCamp US in Philadelphia, Pantheon paid the event hotel to put their advertising on the elevators. They did that without going through the Foundation and robbed the event and its other official sponsors of the exposure they had paid for.
While not expressly forbidden, it went against the spirit of the event and as a result Pantheon was removed as a sponsor and not permitted to participate in the two-day conference by the Project Lead. That stung. I remember feeling for the Pantheon team and being surprised at such an immediate and seemingly heavy-handed reaction. However, this year, Pantheon was back at WCUS, with their advertising splashed all over the escalators at the venue. This time, they went through the Foundation, working with the organizers and it was great to see them back.
GoDaddy was called an “existential threat” a few years ago by the Project Lead. For those who worked at GoDaddy at the time, it was incredibly challenging. At an individual level, there are many many folks who love the WordPress Project and the Community deeply. In the Project Lead’s blog post this week, in a complete reversal, GoDaddy was held up as an example of an organization that is on the right side of contributing, relative to its size and the benefits it gets from WordPress.
Have you noticed something in this section? When you take out Matt’s name and replace it with the title of Project Lead, we start to see things in a different light. At least I do. This is one of the hats Matt wears and yes, I’ll be the first to admit that he wears it with a fair degree of tension amongst the other hats he wears. Yet, we should not forget that he is the Project Lead and with that comes responsibilities that are different to the rest of us in the ecosystem.
WP Engine ‘Responds’
I’ve worked in communications for many years, and I am pretty good at recognizing spin when I read it. WP Engine responded to Matt’s post with one of their own. You should read it. It is corporate doublespeak to the highest degree.
I don’t personally have any issues with WP Engine. I’m their customer (both directly and through their acquisitions). I know many amazing people who work there whom I respect deeply. I am a HUGE fan of their workplace culture and the effort they have put into gender diversity in leadership.
But even I rolled my eyes as I read their ‘response’. Rather than authentically communicating the investment they bring to the core project and the ecosystem, I saw them twisting their self-serving ‘events’, ‘sponsorships’, ‘publications’ and ‘products’ into something they are not. In my opinion, this actually made the case Matt was making even stronger.
There is a stark difference between de{code} (an event designed to generate leads, sales and fans to profit a for-profit business like WP Engine) and a WordCamp (designed to engage the entire ecosystem). To call these ‘contributions’ to the Project is simply not true.
The WCUS Q&A
Matt, as Project Lead, doubled down on his blog post by reading it out loud for us during his Q&A session. This was not usual. At WCEU, Matt got on stage and gave us 11 things he’s excited about with the future of WordPress. It was inspiring and forward-looking. In that situation, Matt’s leadership of the project was what we all hungered for. It was the carrot.
At WCUS, we got the stick.
I will say this as a leader and someone who has had the duty of caring for people and projects. Sometimes, you need to guide, and sometimes you need to direct. Everyone loves it when you are in ‘guide’ mode. No one really likes it when you are in ‘direct’ mode. But sometimes, as a leader, you need to give up the less confrontational approach to increase the volume and urgency of an issue.
I thought Matt did something with this Q&A session that he hasn’t done in the past. We didn’t have much context with the ‘existential threat’ comment on Twitter. Folks took it personally, and Matt, who is also a human by the way, was not as diplomatic as I think we wish he could be in these situations.
In this Q&A session, though, Matt came with a reasoned argument for why he was calling out Silver Lake, the private equity firm that owns WP Engine. He showed other examples of open source communities that were ruined by private equity investment and stated that if he didn’t see an immediate change in the approach by Silver Lake and WP Engine, there would be consequences, including a ban from sponsoring the community events that have helped WordPress companies thrive.
He has done this before. I know; I worked for a company this happened to, Envato. Can I tell you something else, though? Matt and Collis (the founder of Envato) spoke a lot over the years despite their disagreement on the GPL and Envato’s non-GPL license. They had mutual respect and agreed to disagree. It wasn’t personal; it was Matt, as the Project Lead, doing what he thought necessary to preserve and protect the Project and its community.
The Spicy Bit
Matt is also the CEO of Automattic, the company I now work for and a competitor of WP Engine. Because he also wears that hat, it is easy to see his public call-outs as self-serving. While it’s hard not to see the tension between these two roles, I want to challenge those of you who dismiss his leadership of the WordPress Project and instead only see him as CEO of Automattic.
I think it’s pretty hypocritical to say that Matt is mean or a bully while also saying things like “it’s because Matt wants Automattic to win” or “it’s because Matt doesn’t like competitors to Automattic”. How would you feel if your integrity was constantly challenged like that? By people who see one side of the story or only the resulting action of other work? Especially at a time when the atmosphere is already charged and taking a stand like this will isolate Matt from the community and project he is so deeply protective and proud of.
I heard Matt say multiple times during his Q&A that he didn’t want to give this talk. He didn’t want to publicly call out a company full of people who are passionate about WordPress and who do amazing work every day in the ecosystem.
I also heard Matt say that he didn’t want us, as a community, to villify the people of WP Engine who are manipulated through their paycheck to serve the interests of Silver Lake. A company with no interest in the philosophy of open source and the spirit of our community.
I know what it’s like to work for a company controlled by private equity where the justification for contributing to WordPress is constantly challenged, budgets slashed and the ‘business case’ for participation rejected. Where you are constantly trying to educate the c-suite on what WordPress is all about and them just not getting it. Private equity has a playbook to follow, a pattern that you can see over and over again. It’s not abrupt, it’s incremental. As Matt describes, it’s insidious.
Emotions Can Be A Sword And A Shield
Since the Q&A session ended, there has been a back-and-forth on social media, with emotions being the weapon (or shield) of choice. This is not unusual, given the highly charged nature of what happened. No one really likes conflict when they or people they know are in the middle of it.
As we try to navigate what Matt has said, I think it’s important to do what we can to separate the emotions of the situation from the facts of the situation. Maybe that’s a bit of a hot take for some folks. I am not saying we shouldn’t empathize with folks feeling all the feels. But, if we allow ourselves to react with an emotionally charged sense of justice (or injustice), we amplify the negativity and lose the ability to influence and engage.
I appreciate the folks at WP Engine sharing how this experience makes them feel. However, I would caution against allowing that to act as a shield that dismisses any critique of those influencing and leading WP Engine’s business. Goodness knows we’re all quite liberal with our criticisms of Automattic, we should apply the same critical lens to others, even if they’re all fantastic people individually.
Freedom Isn’t Free
I’ve been swirling that line from Matt’s post in my head for the last few days. As I spoke with large publishers, one of the things they said was that even though WordPress is free, to get it where a publisher wants it to be requires a ton of additional investment.
Folks on the enterprise size face a similar uphill battle convincing their leaders and the key stakeholders in their organizations that WordPress, for all its power, freedom and contributing community behind it, still requires ongoing attention and support.
If that’s true for those building on top of WordPress for WP Engine’s target customer, it’s true for the core project too. Freedom isn’t free and shining a light on those who are taking advantage of WordPress and presenting a false narrative of support, should be called out.
More Hot Takes
That’s the end of my ‘article’ but I wanted to throw out a few hot takes here that don’t quite fit the flow above. I’ll shape it as responses to some of the themes I’ve seen online around this and add more as I’m online this week:
- We don’t need this kind of negativity at WCUS, we should do it behind closed doors or virtually: Matt’s done that in the past and been critiqued for not doing it in person. At least in this situation, not only did Matt present an argument in front of the folks most likely to be in a decision-making position to influence this, he also created space for folks to respond and ask questions directly on the subject. And didn’t shy away from criticism either.
- This does nothing for the community: I think doing nothing is more problematic. Someone has to shore up the defences against those intent on absorbing and tainting WordPress’s open-source ethos and conscious capitalism.
- You work for them, of course you’re going to say this: Yep. Question my integrity and negate the 15+ years of experience I’ve had outside of Automattic. Thanks. I think I’ve earned the right to an opinion that can attempt to separate the emotion from the facts. (This one is super spicy.)
- Automattic says they contribute but I heard they pulled this team off of .org and onto .com: And? Automattic’s ongoing contribution to .org is still 20x higher than the next highest contributing organization.
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