Summary

Matt Mullenweg’s aggressive actions against WP Engine and Silver Lake are not personal but are about protecting WordPress from private equity interests that threaten the open-source ecosystem. This conflict reveals the true cost of maintaining WordPress infrastructure, and it’s a fight for the survival of WordPress’s values and community integrity. It’s uncomfortable but necessary to address the private equity influence that could undermine everything WordPress stands for.

Community members are being blocked. Slack access is being removed. New checkboxes are being added to login screens. What in the heck is going on here? What is Matt thinking? Does he not understand the ‘damage’ he is causing?

I cannot speak on Matt’s behalf, and these thoughts and opinions are my own (not those of my employer Automattic), but I want to start with a bit of a story.

For close to five years I worked at Envato. Envato, for those unfamiliar with the platform, is a marketplace where independent creators can sell their digital assets (music, video templates, stock photos/videos, themes, plugins, graphics, etc.). In my role there, I led communications to our creator community (called Authors). Our mission was pretty simple, keep authors uploading new content.

While the mission was simple, the actual work was quite challenging. We were in constant tension trying to keep authors motivated while also communicating policy changes and commercial changes that would have a very real impact on some individual asset creators.

For example, when we announced Envato Elements, we were met with a lot of fear and discontent. We would offer subscribers everything for the price of a single asset. We knew, internally, that this was going to be a hard pill to swallow for authors who were used to earning on a per-use or per-download basis. We also knew that if we didn’t create Envato Elements, we would slowly bleed customers to other platforms with a subscription model.

For the long-term earnings of our authors, we needed to make a choice that we knew would result in short-term fear, anger, frustration, loss of individual earnings and community turmoil. Can you imagine what it was like to write comms amidst that? To visit authors in person? Can you imagine the kinds of things authors said to me, about me, about the whole thing?

Perhaps because of that experience, I can disconnect from the emotion of what I’ve been seeing over the last few weeks, take a step back, and try to look at the underlying motivations for the ongoing actions.

This was never going to be easy or clean.

The moment Matt’s first post went up, the gloves were off. What we now know had been a lengthy ongoing negotiation behind closed doors had spilled into the more public realm. For many of us, this was the first time we’d ever heard of Silver Lake (even though we probably knew about the investment or could have done a quick search to figure it out).

When that post was released, I knew this was not going to be like past challenges within our community. It wasn’t going to be easy, neat, and tidy, or what we all hope for in the way we interact in the community.

Sidebar: Can I be a bit more honest with you? I’ve been really surprised at the way some folks have given themselves permission to act in a way toward Matt and some others that, in any other situation, would be a violation of the Code of Conduct or their self-professed faith norms. We fuel the ‘drama’ when we engage like-for-like, and it doesn’t surprise me that given the way some folks have acted, Matt has responded the way he has.

This is a fight for the very heart and soul of WordPress, the open source values we believe in, and the attempt by private equity to strip mine the ecosystem, regardless of the human cost. The collateral damage was there before Matt ever posted publicly.

It was there in scaling back contributions to Core, acquiring popular and important plugins, stealing customers from hosts and extenders who play by the rules, making staffing choices and redundancies, and strategically choosing to create alternative events and industry blogs that compete with the community’s official activities.

Every time Silver Lake chose to serve its commercial interests, it did so in a way that took from the community.

So why all these ‘extra’ actions?

I think we have collectively taken for granted just how much Matt personally has contributed to the ecosystem. We’ve taken free access to security audits, free access to one-click updates, free distribution, the project’s infrastructure, and free access to communication tools for granted.

Every single one of these things has a very real cost, whether that is in fees paid or humans involved in managing and coordinating. What we are seeing is the actual systems and infrastructure of WordPress laid bare. We’re all getting a reminder of just how much it takes to keep WordPress going.

Every time Silver Lake or its associates are blocked from accessing one of these resources, the community is reminded just how much it takes to keep WordPress going. Silver Lake is a cancer. A cancer must be removed and that sometimes means the ‘body’ needs to endure some pain and sickness in order to survive.

I know it’s hard. I know it’s unpleasant. I know there are things happening that we all wish wouldn’t. But I also know that this community, this ecosystem, all the companies that earn from WordPress could be lost if we don’t do something.

Silver Lake sent the Cease & Desist first. Silver Lake sued Automattic and Matt Mullenweg (and the foundation/W.org by proxy). They could have sought to negotiate. They could have come back to the table to get a deal done.

Instead, they played up the victim card and have tried to hope that community outrage on their behalf would force Matt to back down. Once again, they are trying to rely on ‘free’ to get out of doing anything of value for the community they purport to work in.

From where I sit, we have to separate ourselves as an ecosystem from Silver Lake. That’s the only way to ensure the values and ecosystem we’ve built can survive. It means there is a cost and that cost is becoming abundantly clear.

If you choose to associate with Silver Lake, you will not have access to the resources of the WordPress ecosystem. Full stop.

That doesn’t mean you cannot keep using WordPress. That doesn’t mean you cannot work on projects you find interesting. Your GPL license isn’t going to be revoked (it can’t). It does mean that the privilege of using the infrastructure around WordPress will no longer be available to you.

Matt is well within his rights as the principal financier of the infrastructure around WordPress to decide who can and cannot access it. He’s usually quite permissive of many things and extends a lot of grace. In this fight for the heart and soul of WordPress, though, he is not holding his punches.

So What’s Next?

The volume will keep getting louder. We need to rescue the humans, our colleagues in community who are being, for lack of a better term, held hostage by the demands of their private equity leadership.

It is not safe for them. They cannot speak freely, and they cannot talk about what’s really going on inside the company. They are stuck, and it’s up to us to stand up for them this time.

It will be messy. We’re going to disagree. We’re going to debate the approach. We’re going to be confronted. Users who don’t care about any of these issues will be confronted by what’s happening. Family issues are being exposed to outsiders (I watch a lot of historical c-dramas, so if you do too, this will make more sense). We’ll lose face, have to explain things and potentially lose out on some business.

The alternative is even worse.

I’ve been through this before. In the short term, this is going to suck for everyone. We’re going to wish it would all go away. But we need to deal with this now before it is too late. Before so much of what is WordPress gets sucked up in ways we can no longer control and we end up losing what has made WordPress so special.

We’re going to have to make a choice. That sucks for some folks. It’s easy just to let it all go on in the background and pretend like it’s not happening. However, you will be confronted more and more with the reality of Silver Lake’s infection within the ecosystem.

Whichever choice you make is totally up to you, but as the volume rises and we see more of WordPress’s hidden infrastructure come to light, the more constrained you’ll likely feel if you choose to side with Silver Lake.

I’ve worked in this ecosystem for 15+ years and met a lot of great folks. We don’t always agree on approach, but we can all agree that WordPress is too important to us and the open web to let selfish commercial interests ruin it. I am for purpose and profit, conscious capitalism, I think Matt calls it and I’m here for the long-haul, I hope you are too.