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Matt Mullenweg: Why he picked a fight with WP Engine

Through GPL four freedoms and the trademark fight with WP Engine and Silverlake; he argues WordPress is a movement, not a product, and powers 40% of the web.

Matt MullenwegguestLenny RachitskyhostChristina Cacioppoguest
Mar 2, 20251h 34mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 5:10

    Introduction to Matt Mullenweg

    1. MM

      If you're really open in open source, sometimes you have to stand up to bullies and you have to fight to protect your open source ideals. Please put your hands together for Matt Mullenweg.

    2. LR

      Matt Mullenweg has been making some questionable moves recently. There's a lot going on with Matt and WordPress these days.

    3. MM

      20 plus years of good sentiment burned in days.

    4. LR

      You were like a 100% beloved hero of open source and internet, and now you're like in this, a lot of people don't like you.

    5. MM

      If you were kind of inside baseball with WordPress, there's actually a lot of people who have been unhappy with me over the years. Previously, like one percent of the world thought I was terrible, and now I feel like it's up to like four or five percent.

    6. LR

      People that don't know what the hell is going on, what's just like the high level overview of what's going on?

    7. MM

      There's a company called WP Engine. By 2018, they got bought out by a private equity firm called Silverlake. You know, since 2019, WP Engine has kind of changed a bit. They started using the trademark. They're offering something called WordPress. I refer to it as like a bastardized, hacked up version of it. (laughs) It's diluting our brand.

    8. LR

      Why do you think so many people are looking at you as the bad guy?

    9. MM

      A lie gets around the world seven times before truth has time to, you know, get out of bed.

    10. LR

      (instrumental music) Today my guest is Matt Mullenweg. Matt is the co-creator of WordPress, which powers 40% of websites on the internet today, including whitehouse.gov. He's also the CEO of Automattic, which is valued at over seven billion dollars and owns products like wordpress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, Gravatars, and Pocketcasts. There is a lot of drama these days around Matt and WordPress and within the open source community. So I thought I'd have Matt on to address many of the criticisms head on that he hasn't addressed in other places, and also just get the full story on what's going on. We also chat about what incepted him to spend over half his life at this point on open source and creating WordPress, also why products like LLaMA are what he calls fake open source, and his perspective on AI and open source, also how AI is actually trained on open source code and what that means for the future, and his approach for deciding what companies to acquire within Automattic. If you enjoy this episode, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you now get a year free of Notion and Superhuman and Perplexity Pro and Linear and Granola. Check it out at lennysnewsletter.com. With that, I bring you Matt Mullenweg. This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're building a SaaS app, at some point, your customers will start asking for enterprise features like SAML authentication and SCIM provisioning. That's where WorkOS comes in, making it fast and painless to add enterprise features to your app. Their APIs are easy to understand so that you can ship quickly and get back to building other features. Today, hundreds of companies are already powered by WorkOS, including ones you probably know like Vercel, Webflow, and Loom. WorkOS also recently acquired Warrant, the fine-grained authorization service. Warrant's product is based on a groundbreaking authorization system called Zanzibar, which was originally designed for Google to power Google Docs and YouTube. This enables fast authorization checks at enormous scale while maintaining a flexible model that can be adapted to even the most complex use cases. If you're currently looking to build role-based access control or other enterprise features like single sign-on, SCIM, or user management, you should consider WorkOS. It's a drop-in replacement for Auth0 and supports up to one million monthly active users for free. Check it out at workos.com to learn more. That's workos.com. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, and I am very excited to have Christina Cacioppo, CEO and co-founder of Vanta joining me for this very short conversation.

    11. CC

      Great to be here. Big fan of the podcast and the newsletter.

    12. LR

      Vanta is a longtime sponsor of the show, but for some of our newer listeners, what does Vanta do and who is it for?

    13. CC

      Sure. So we started Vanta in 2018 focused on founders, helping them start to build out their security programs and get credit for all of that hard security work with compliance certifications like SOC 2 or ISO 27001. Today, we currently help over 9,000 companies, including some startup household names like Atlassian, Ramp, and LangChain, start and scale their security programs and ultimately build trust by automating compliance, centralizing GRC, and accelerating security reviews.

    14. LR

      That is awesome. I know from experience that these things take a lot of time and a lot of resources, and nobody wants to spend time doing this.

    15. CC

      That is very much our experience, both before the company and to some extent during it. But the idea is with automation, with AI, with software, we are helping customers build trust with prospects and customers in an efficient way, and you know our joke, we started this compliance company so you don't have to.

    16. LR

      We appreciate you for doing that, and you have a special discount for listeners, they can get $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com/lenny. That's vanta.com/lenny for $1,000 off Vanta. Thanks for that, Christina.

  2. 5:10 – 11:15

    Matt’s career journey

    1. CC

      Thank you.

    2. LR

      Matt, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

    3. MM

      Thanks. It's, you know, big fan, long time listener, so happy to be on.

    4. LR

      I'm a long time fan. I've been wanting to get you on this podcast for so long, and this is such an interesting time to be chatting with you. You're g- there's a lot going on with Matt and WordPress these days, so it's a really interesting, uh, it's almost good that we waited a little bit to talk, so we're gonna get into a lot of that stuff. But I wanna start with just, uh, what is it that you do, Matt? What are all the things you're involved in? Give people a sense of just the things you're working on.

    5. MM

      So first, when I was 19, I co-founded an open source project called WordPress, uh, with Mike Little, and uh, we, uh, started as just blogging software, then became, uh, sort of a full site thing, and then became like a platform that really tons of stuff is built on. And now it's kind of transitioning into like this cool Wasm, can be embedded anywhere or run locally or make mobile apps. It's like really interesting seeing WordPress used as an engine for powering like things, I would say,... don't even look like a website, which is, uh, kinda wild to me. But that's kind of the beauty of open source. People do things with it you don't expect. Ended up dropping out of college, moving to San Francisco, and then, um, worked at CNET for a year as project manager actually. That's how they hired me.

    6. LR

      Yeah, I wanna talk about that, but go on.

    7. MM

      (laughs) And then, um, yeah, had this vision where, you know, instead of, like, downloading the software and setting up a database and everything, we could create, like, a SASS version of WordPress. I pitched it at CNET. They didn't wanna do it, so I was like, "Okay, I gotta do this." So I left and started a company, uh, called Automatic. The idea was to create, um... essentially, like, complement the core WordPress software with some commercial services, things that run in the cloud, like, uh, Akismet Anti-Spam, which is our sort of machine learning, AI, I guess you'd call it AI now, but like, anti-spam system. Or, um, or Jetpack, which is like iCloud for WordPress, you know? It does the backups and the real-time sync and everything like that. So that was 19 years ago. (laughs)

    8. LR

      (laughs)

    9. MM

      So, uh, that's now grown to be, um, you know, over 1,700 people and actually 90 countries. So we've actually been fully distributed and remote and asynchronous from the start, which I think is one of our superpowers. Uh, I actually wasn't the CEO in the beginning, but, uh, in 2014, so I guess 11 years ago, I became CEO. Uh, the original CEO was, uh... Well, I guess I was in the very beginning, but then I hired Tony Schneider to be CEO probably four or five months in. And, um, yeah, so that is a very full-time thing, and Automatic does a lot of products. There's WordPress.com, WooCommerce, which is open source Shopify, which is now over half of our revenue. And then we have some really cool apps. So like Beeper, uh, Day One, Simplenote, Pocket Casts, uh, we're trying to fill up your home screens with open web, open source things that, uh, are very privacy and user-centric. So that, you know, running that company is, is definitely, like, a full-time job. Uh, I still run WordPress.org (laughs) and the WordPress project. So I'm the lead developer there, and so sort of manage all those releases and the community and the, you know, the directories and all the sort of things we do on WordPress.org. We have this cool thing called Openverse we took over from Creative Commons, which is like a, a way you can find sort of open licensed, uh, images and audio and video. So basically, uh, if you notice a throughput through all these things, it's open source. On, like, the nights and weekends or, like, side, a few hours a week, I do some angel investing. So I've done over 100 angel investments through, uh, an entity called Audrey Capital, which is sort of the... If anything's in the sort of WordPress space, I invest in it through Automatic. But if anything's, like, a little more further afield, um, do through Audrey Capital. And I've done, uh, some really exciting investments there, everything from sort of name brands like Stripe and SpaceX, but also like, uh, it was in the seat of calm or, um, a lot of home automation stuff like Ring, August, Smart things, um... Yeah, just check out audrey.co. It's got some fun stuff in there. Daylight Computer, which is one I'm very excited about right now. And I guess finally, I, I, I love San Francisco, so, uh, you know, did... I have a, a co-owner of a cool grungy jazz club in North Beach called Keys, uh, with Simon Roe. And, uh, so if you... You know, Wednesday through Saturday night, you wanna see some awesome live jazz? Uh, check out Keys.

    10. LR

      Wow, okay. You said too much. I get it now. Uh, uh, jazz club, I was not aware of. I, I, I gotta check this out. It's called Keys?

    11. MM

      Yeah, Keys Jazz Bistro.

    12. LR

      Okay, cool.

    13. MM

      It's, uh, yeah, over on, um, Broadway-

    14. LR

      Okay, okay.

    15. MM

      ... in Columbus, kind of right around there.

    16. LR

      Amazing. Okay, that was new. That was news to me. Going back to Automatic, I think people don't get the scale of this thing, so just to mirror back a few things and even add to what you've said, 1,700 people work there, 90 different countries. Um, also, you didn't share this stat. So it was something like 43% of the internet, of internet websites are built on WordPress, run on WordPress.

    17. MM

      Yeah, so when we started, a lot of websites were built on custom CMSs and there was a lot of fragmentation in the space. But now WordPress has grown to be, yeah, over 40% of all websites in the world, which is 10X the number two, which right now is Shopify, um-

    18. LR

      Right. They're like at 4%. I was, I was looking at that list.

    19. MM

      They're around 4%, yeah.

    20. LR

      That's unreal.

    21. MM

      It used to be open source was the top three.

    22. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    23. MM

      Uh, unfortunately, like Jubla- and Drupal- Jubla and Drupal have fallen behind. And so now it's, uh, like, uh, Shopify and Wix, Squarespace are, are the top ones. But WordPress is still, you know... Because we have this flywheel of open source community, its movement, um, you know, it kind of, uh, has this, you know, like any open source, like Linux or Apache or Wikipedia, it, uh, has some positive flywheel effects when it takes off.

    24. LR

      Awesome, okay. And then there's a few other things you didn't mention. I wanna get to this later, but I'll just mention now. You guys own Tumblr. You bought Tumblr, (laughs) which-

    25. MM

      Yeah.

    26. LR

      ... I don't think a lot of people necessarily know.

    27. MM

      Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention that. Yeah, Tumblr.

    28. LR

      No, I s- we're gonna get into that.

    29. MM

      Yeah.

    30. LR

      Yeah.

  3. 11:15 – 17:28

    Bay Lights project and philanthropy

    1. MM

    2. LR

      Okay. Uh, couple more fun facts before we get into some other stuff I wanna chat about. Fun fact number one is you were super involved in the Bay Lights project. I didn't know this. For people that don't know what the Bay Light... If you're in San Francisco, you definitely know what the Bay Lights project th- and I'm sure you love it. Uh, for people that don't know what this is about, what is this project and how, how have you been involved? Why, why, why have you been instrumental into making this a, a thing?

    3. MM

      Bay Lights, uh, you know, there's two famous bridges in, um, in San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge, which is kind of the iconic one. There's actually the Bay Bridge, which is the workhorse of San Francisco. It has like the most... It's one of the busiest bridges in the country, and it's really beautiful from a, like, an engineering point of view. Um, and so kind of a, a vision between Ben Davis and an artist Leo Villareal, who's an amazing light artist, actually kind of started Burning Man, uh, was to put, gosh, I forget the number, I think 18,000 LEDs on the side of the bridge, like, on all the cables. And, um, create this really beautiful, gentle kind of like, uh, algorithmic, uh, light piece, light art piece. And, um-The, uh... Yeah, Ben Davis was, was dating a artist friend of mine. And we were over and having drinks on my patio, and we were looking at the Bay Bridge. And I had this kind of thing where, like, there's some lights at the top of the Bay Bridge. And I was like, "Oh, wouldn't it be cool if those lights were, like, Christmas lights and they could do patterns or something?" You know, it's the lights to keep planes from hitting it. And I was like, "Oh, you could, like, program that." He was like, "Yeah." It was almost like the, the social network thing where, like, a million's cool, but a billion would be really cool. He was like, "You know, that would be cool, but what if we put the whole side of it?" And, uh (laughs) , so that, uh, I was like, "Oh, cool." And, um, sort of made an angel investment in that, um, that thing. Uh, they hadn't raised anything or had ... There was, I don't even think, an entity at that point. But I was like, "You know, to get you started," I forget what it was, 100, 150K. So I gave him that first bit, and then it kind of blossomed into a thing. And then, uh, sort of fast-forward... I don't remember if it was that timeline, but they were kind of at a, a final bit of fundraise and they, they weren't able to close that last bit. And I actually mortgaged my condo and, uh, donated the last, uh, million, million and a half to, uh, to finish out that project. The Bay Lights were online for 10 years. Uh, the technology degraded, and so, like, the environment's very harsh. So actually, we just completed a fund raise and are reinstalling the Bay Lights. They're calling it Bay Lights 360. So now it'll be both sides of the bridge. It'll be visible from also Oakland and the Treasure Island. 'Cause the first version, the city was very worried about the, like, drivers seeing the lights and it might distract them. So we had an angle though, that you could only see it from San Francisco. Which, uh, was a compromise we didn't love. You know, 'cause like, you know, we love the East Bay and everything else like that too. So new version is, uh, coming online, uh, hopefully later this year in the fall. And, um, and also that, that turned into a nonprofit called Illuminate, which I'm on the board of, uh, run by Ben Davis, who I mentioned previously, that does cool public art stuff around the city. So they're responsible for the, you know, the Grace Lights, um, all the JFK Boulevard stuff, where that's been... has the murals and, like, the, the beer garden and all the chairs, that's all Illuminate. So they do fun... Their, their thing is radical public art. So the thing is, it's like art that needs to be free and accessible. And I think that's so important for San Francisco. Like, we have great institutions, you know, the SFMOMA, the opera, et cetera, that have huge budgets, like 100 million a year. And Illuminate for, you know, maybe one-tenth of that, um, has created something that millions of people can enjoy. You know? And I like to think that, uh, anyone along the Embarcadero, you know, you might be going through a tough time. Obviously, we have people who are struggling with, like, mental health and homelessness and everything like that. But, like, maybe seeing a little bit of art can help raise your soul a little bit. And that's how I think about philanthropy as well. Like, you need to work on the base issues, you know, the fundamentals at the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. And then you also have to work on the things that, like, uh, raise your soul a little bit, so art. So I, I, I like that Barbara L. approach to philanthropy.

    4. LR

      Elon has a great quote along those lines. "You can't just work on solving problems all day. You need something inspiring to think about-

    5. MM

      Yeah.

    6. LR

      ... and to work towards." I... First of all, thank you for doing this. It's... Like, if you live in SF, you're like, "This makes the city better just having this around." I didn't realize you were involved in, like, helping come up with the idea itself. I know that you did the... mortgaged your house to make it possible.

    7. MM

      I can't take any credit for the idea.

    8. LR

      Okay. Okay.

    9. MM

      Just that I was exposed to... (laughs) I had a, uh, a- an adjacent idea and they had a way cooler one-

    10. LR

      Okay, cool.

    11. MM

      ... with a real artist and everything like that.

    12. LR

      Got it.

    13. MM

      So I was, I was just happy to be a... It's like being an angel investor. You know? Like, you-

    14. LR

      (laughs) Yeah, totally.

    15. MM

      ... you, you can support the entrepreneurs and the people-

    16. LR

      Yeah.

    17. MM

      ... who, uh, actually really do it.

    18. LR

      Yeah. Okay. And the other funny thing you said is about they were d- worried about the angle of the lights distracting people. What's funny is when I drove... Drive across the bridge, you can only see it when you're driving towards San Francisco looking backwards. So I'm, like, looking in my rear-view mirror, in the mirror, turning around to look at 'em, and that's... It feels more dangerous (laughs) than the lights shining in, in my face.

    19. MM

      You know, they'd call it impossible works of art. There were, like, 13 agencies that had to sign off.

    20. LR

      Wow.

    21. MM

      They were worried the lights would distract birds or seals or environmental reviews. And it was really, uh, a, uh, a lot of, like, public bureaucrats and everyone had to, like... To make that happen, there was, like, 20 places where someone could have said no and it never would've happened. So it's very inspiring to see the city come together. And also, like, 'cause San Francisco, I feel like, is entering a new chapter right now. Like, going from, like, the doom loop to the boom loop.

    22. LR

      Yeah.

    23. MM

      Um, I'm a big believer in the city. So much innovation has come here from, like, food. You know, like, the burrito. (laughs)

    24. LR

      (laughs)

    25. MM

      Fortune cookies, all these sorts of things are from San Francisco. So, like, obviously all the tech innovation that we're all familiar with. Uh, it's kind of the city of the future. And I don't know what it is in the water, you know, from like the '60s till now, like, cultural innovations, things that happen and influence the whole world, Burning Man, you know, Grateful Dead, et cetera. Like, that all starts in San Francisco. So it's exciting to be here.

    26. LR

      SF is so back, as they say on Twitter.

    27. MM

      (laughs)

    28. LR

      Okay. Someone very close to you told me that you're, uh, an excellent rapper. I'm not gonna ask you to rap (laughs) . But if you ever want to answer any questions in rap form, feel free.

    29. MM

      (laughs) Oh, man. That, that would be fun. I've, uh-

    30. LR

      Okay. Okay. Well, let's-

  4. 17:28 – 23:25

    How Matt got involved with open source

    1. LR

      Okay. So, uh, I want to get into the, the all the drama that you're enswirled in right now. But I want to first lay the foundation of how you got into this and where this all came from. So let's talk about just the origin story of you and open source. You've been... More than half your life, you've been working on open source. You've been working on WordPress specifically. WordPress is such a core, uh, community within o- open source community. What's kind of the, the origin story of you becoming obsessed and, I don't know, open source-pilled?

    2. MM

      I was a broke kid in Houston, Texas. (laughs) And, um, my passions were, uh, jazz. You know, uh, Houston has actually amazing, uh, music programs in the public schools. And so I was very fortunate to, to go to some of the best civil arts programs, including my high school, called the High School for the Performing Visual Arts, where, um, Beyonce went, Robert Glasper. A lot of, like, amazing folks went there. And, um, so, uh, music was a big part of my life.... and, uh, and actually economics. So I had this one teacher, Scott Roman, who, um, created... Participated at our school in the fed- Federal Reserve Challenge, which was, uh, run by, you know, the, the Federal Reserve that sets the interest rates and, you know, backs the national banking system and everything like that. Has this competition for high school students. Um, it ended up being the first academic competition this arts school ever won, and, um, yeah. First year we kind of didn't get that far, our second year we went all the way to nationals. So I got to meet Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke was our judge, um, you know, went to DC. So that was, uh, very, very exciting. And so, you know, being exposed to like, also having great liberal arts education, you know, the ideas of, you know, Friedrich Hayek, Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, uh, Thucydides, you know, all these sorts of things. That philosophy really influenced me. And, um, you know, combine that with that, you know, music lessons were expensive so we couldn't really afford 'em. So I, I would barter and trade, I'd build websites for local musicians in exchange for lessons. And, um, some of these websites, I, I would start to put software on like forums or, you know, like different things. And that kind of exposed me to open source. So, you know, my father was also a, you know, a, a engineer. He worked for oil companies and things, but his world was all Microsoft, it was all proprietary. And I was, kind of grew up in, you know, early days of the internet. So it was, uh, slash dots and, you know, Jeffrey Zeldman talked about web standards and all these things like are, are really kind of the, the social maloo and zeitgeist that I grew up in. So I, um, you know, combining all this philosophy I'd studied, uh, thought, felt that like, um, open source was actually the most important idea of our generation. So if, like if the founding fathers were around today, I think they would be open source advocates. Uh, if you think about it, as more and more of our lives are influenced and actually controlled by the software we use, um, if we don't have fundamental freedoms attached to that software, we're, we're not truly free. So, you know, uh, the WordPress is under a license called the GPL, which has four freedoms. Uh, the freedom to use the software for any purpose, so you can use it for anything, whether I agree with you or not. The terms of service is, you could do whatever you want with it. Um, the freedom to see how the software works, you know, open up the hood, see how it works, see every line of code, you can audit it, you can... The freedom to change it, is the third freedom. And then finally, the freedom to redistribute those changes, so you can share them. And the GPL has a fun little hack where if you share them, you have to provide those same freedoms to who you share it with. So it's ca- what's called a viral open source license, as opposed to the MIT license and some of the others that aren't. So, um, yeah, just kind of decided that this was what I was gonna devote my life to. And, uh, so that became getting involved with some early open source projects. WordPress was actually a fork of, uh, abandoned open source project called B2. So the code base actually started with something that was already out there, that I was a, a user and contributor to. Kind of volunteer on the forums and contributed code. And then when it was abandoned, um, and myself and Mike sort of, uh, we're one of like four or five different forks that started, that kind of picked it up and tried to continue it for, for, uh, for our own use, and then later for a larger community.

    3. LR

      It feels like a lot of people are coming around to exactly your world view in... Say, I was just watching a video of Jack Dorsey talking about how we're just controlled by algorithms, and we don't know what's, how... We don't know how they work, how... And we don't, we're not in control of our lives. Have you seen that video?

    4. MM

      No, but-

    5. LR

      Okay.

    6. MM

      ... I actually love that also some people who maybe made their, made their first billion or whatever-

    7. LR

      (laughs)

    8. MM

      ... from proprietary software-

    9. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. MM

      ... uh, they can come back. And it's so cool to see folks like Marc Andreessen or Bill Gurley, you know, be huge advocates for open source. Um, actually remember one of my early meetings with, uh, uh, Andreessen Horowitz and Marc Andreessen. Um, I didn't realize at the time, I thought it was the w-... Tony Schneider and I were sort of fundraising. And, uh, Marc really, like, grilled us. He's like, "How can you build a business on open source?" Uh, "How can you be, like, remote and distributed? Like, look around Silicon Valley, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, every, every great company has had an office. Like, how are you gonna build something that can change the internet with, you know, people all around the world?" And, and just had this long, like hour-long debate, and I was like, we walked out of there, I was like, "Wow. That was the worst meeting ever. They just hate everything we're doing." And then, uh, you know, the next day they were like, "Hey, we're interested." (laughs) I was like, "What happened?" I di- I didn't realize that he had kind of this, like, idea where, like, he wanted to attack the ideas and see how we defended it, to sort of, uh, was how they, hey, battle tested things. I guess kind of like a Microsoft culture or whatever, where you like, really like, uh, grill the idea. I just wasn't familiar with that. But, um, it's so cool now that some of these folks, um, that I have learned so much from are, are such big advocates for open source.

    11. LR

      Yeah. It's so interesting. I was just, I just had the community notes team on the podcast, and, uh, that's an amazing example of community, of s- of open source. Meta is adopting it from Twitter/X.

  5. 23:25 – 27:14

    Why products like Meta’s Llama are “fake open source”

    1. LR

      Speaking of open source, one of the interesting, maybe most common ways people hear about open source these days is, is AI, and AI models. And there's a couple areas here. One is, you wrote this really interesting, uh, post where you talk about how Meta talks about LLaMA as an open source project but it's, it... You called it a false, false prophet. Uh, what is, what is it about LLaMA that isn't open source? What are people missing when they see L- LLaMA and they're like, "Oh, EMETA's amazing. Open sourcing everything."

    2. MM

      LLaMA you can obviously download and run locally and all these sorts of things, right? You don't have to use their SASS service. However, there's a clause in it that says if you're above a certain threshold of monthly active users... I forget what it is. Like, it's big, it's like 750 million so it's pretty high. Um, you, you need a license from them. And so, that does not give you the freedom to use the software for any purpose, right? If at some point-

    3. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    4. MM

      ... you have to ask for permission, you know, you're kind of at the whims of this company, um, who you might be aligned with or you might be an enemy with, you know? And also, how do you define that? So for example-Like, our WordPress, like, our products don't have 750 million monthly active registered users. But we reach billions of people per month in terms of visitors. So is that a, you know, is that defined? So there's just ambiguity there. So I, I still think what they've done is amazing and I like that they're releasing it. Um, I was very confused for why they insist on calling it open source because they... Actually, Meta's been a huge open source contributor. React, uh, you know, they've had incredible improvements to the PHP engine, which we benefit from a lot. So, like, they're, they're actually a big open source contributor. I think Mark Zuckerberg really understands and loves open source, too. My best guess now, I don't have any inside information here, but there's... I think they're calling it open source because there's some European regulation about open source versus proprietary AI models. So I think they're, I think it might be, like, a weird regulatory thing, because clearly they understand this as an open source. So when I wrote the blog post, I was just kind of confused and thought like, "Oh, maybe if I, like, you know, get this message out there, they'll change." And, um, and then when they didn't, I was like, "Oh, there must be something else going on." I think it might be this regulatory thing. We were actually a big part of, um... Actually, many, many years ago, I think it was React that they were doing something with the licensing or, like, a patent restriction on. And, uh, the WordPress community actually got Meta to change that and reverse, uh, something they were doing to lock it down. So, um, yeah, uh, I, I consider my role as an open source advocate to actually be my, my primary thing, you know? And, um, it's, it's very much my, my life mission. You know, I hope to work on WordPress the rest of my life, but also, like, just open source in general. So (laughs) I also, like, you know, support Drupal and, and Joomla. Like, anything else that's open source, like, uh, I'm, I'm gonna be a supporter of because I think when people choose that versus proprietary software, we're increasing the freedom and liberty in the world. And so I, I would love that every sort of... Uh, like, it's incumbent on us that make open source to make a better user experience, to make a better product so that people choose it and then, you know, the world becomes more free, not less free.

    5. LR

      It also feels it's important to you to, uh, I don't know, w- open source washing, like avoid people using the term when it's not true. And it's interesting in this case that, like, the thing that makes it not truly open source is the limit. There's a limit where you can no longer use it the way you want. Is that the issue?

    6. MM

      Yeah. Um, so that, there's a... And there's actually, like, a open source, um, you know, OSI... There's, there's, like, a formal definition for, like, what's make, what makes a open source license, and there's actually many dozens of open source licenses and, um, sort of public domain licenses and other things. Um, so, uh, it's also their stance that this is not an open source license.

  6. 27:14 – 35:25

    The future of open source and how to get involved

    1. MM

    2. LR

      Something else that, uh, I think is really interesting when it comes to AI and open source, you wrote about this and it blew my mind, such a good point, that the code that these models a- were trained on was open source code because that's all they have access to. They're, they don't have, like, W- Windows code, they don't have Shopify code and, uh, what a cool, uh, I don't know, another success story slash I don't know. I guess, how do you feel about that (laughs) ? That all these AI models are trained on code you wrote and, and open source community?

    3. MM

      That's beautiful. It's one of the safest things to train on, right? Because the license of open source, like, very explicitly allows that. You know, I also like to think about, you know, I have some window where my creative output is useful to society, and if you fast-forward, like, 50 or 100 years, I do believe that the utility of proprietary software eventually approaches zero. So like when we're sending people to Mars, the operating system of the rockets and the devices and everything like that is not gonna be built on the Windows NT kernel as amazing feat of engineering that, like, that proprietary kernel is. It's gonna be built on an open source kernel. You know, Linux or BSD or something like that. And so, like, if you want to be, be part of something that sort of becomes the fabric of humanity's foundation, like things that, um, allows a Cambrian explosion of things built on top of it, a renaissance of ideas, you want to be involved with open source. And so I, I really hope that more and more people... I'm a little bit of an evangelist here, you know (laughs) ? I'm a mis- missionary where I, I really want to encourage more and more people to consider at least making part of their time, even if just a few hours a week, you know, contributing to open source because you could be part of something that has a huge impact. And it's fun, especially if you're, like, a younger developer or designer or PM or whatever. Like, um, you can't walk up to Facebook and change their homepage (laughs) or say, "I'd like to change this feature." But you could come to an open source project, you know, some of which have, you know, hundreds of millions of users. You could go to WordPress or, you know, uh, gosh, Bitcoin (laughs) . Or, you know, there's all these things are open source, uh, uh, Chromium, Firefox. Like, and you could actually change, you know, a feature or, or project management things or, or change the design or improve it, and that's, I think, really, really special. And, um, sort of the thrill for me of, of like knowing that code I wrote is now executing, you know, millions of times per second (laughs) in millions of servers around the world. That kind of thrill, that high is, like, kind of... When I first had my first open source contribution, like, such a thrill and I've been sort of chasing that and enjoying that ever since.

    4. LR

      Say someone wants to actually do this, uh, where do they go? What do they... How do they do this? Do they just, like, pick a project, go to WordPress.org and, like, here's how you contribute? What's, like, a next step there?

    5. MM

      Yeah. Pick a project that you use or like. I mean, that's obviously a nice one. Um, for WordPress we have this, uh, it's called make.wordpress.org, you know? It's where we make WordPress (laughs) . And there's, you know, different groups. There's accessibility, there's design, there's the core code, there's, there's plug-ins, there's all sorts of ways. So really, whatever your talent is, there's people who translate, there's people who do support, there's people who write documentation, there is people who organize events, you know, that, that... So whatever you feel like your, your talent in the world is, either that you have or that you want to cultivate-You know, there's so many pe- I mean, I learned how to code (laughs) so-

    6. LR

      (laughs)

    7. MM

      ... while building WordPress, basically. I didn't have as ... too much formal training there. So, uh, it's a great way to, to help deliver your skills as well, and work with some of the best developers and others in the world.

    8. LR

      This also made me think about AI agents are coming out on Devin and all these AI-driven bo- uh, coding agents. Uh, do you have a prediction a- when most of the code contributed to the open source projects will be Devin and AI agent such type projects?

    9. MM

      I think Google talked about 25% of their code or characters committed are, are now sort of AI-assisted, um, and they're probably on the bleeding edge. Um, I don't know how much of WordPress's code right now is AI-assisted or, or something like that, um, but I think over the next five years, it definitely approaches maybe a majority, and, um, I'm actually very, very excited. So, you know, one of the big challenges that we have as a very open platform is we have this open plug-in and theme architecture. So there's 60,000 plug-ins and themes, and the way WordPress works is these plug-ins and themes can modify every single part of the code. So you can really customize everything. However, many of these plug-ins and themes don't have the same sort of robust security and review process that core has. So that's where when you hear about security issues with WordPress, it's very rarely in core anymore. You know, we haven't had a remote exploit in, you know, knock on wood, like I think five years or six years or something. But in the plug-ins it, it can be somewhat more frequent. And so one thing I'm very, very excited about, um, the next year or two is actually more automated scanning 'cause obviously that code base is, is so many tens of millions, maybe over 100 million lines of code at this point. It's impossible for humans to review that. So we, we kind of rely on developers to, to review that and manage. And of course we have like bug bounties and everything do that. So when things get reported, we fix it quickly, but I can't wait for more automated scanning there, and I think that could vastly upgrade the security of open source. The other thing that's really exciting is like right now, you know, you see people building apps and stuff and it's just sort of custom-generated code. Um, but I think the next generation of these models or sort of the next layer there is because, you know, as everyone knows, like just writing the code is, is just one part of it. It's maintaining it that really becomes the, the life cycle of it. And Stewart Brand's new book is all about maintenance, right? Which I'm very excited about. Uh, he's publishing, I think, with, uh, with Stripe, and it's actually kind of open source. He's open sourcing the book.

    10. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    11. MM

      So it's, you can see it being written online. But anyway, to go back, uh, I think that if... And they're starting to do that is when the open source model is you say like, "Hey, build me a website," it actually installs WordPress and then builds on top of that and then customizes on top of that. Then you get for free that core engine that's always being audited and updated and getting, you know, passkey support or whatever the, the new things are sort of continuously, and then your custom stuff can be on top of that, which I think is actually a lot more powerful than sort of building something proprietary or custom from the ground up.

    12. LR

      I love this book concept on maintenance. There's a... My sister's partner had this... has this quote that I've always come back to, "Life is maintenance."

    13. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    14. LR

      You basically... Like everything you acquire and deal with, like you get a generator for your house, you have to maintain that forever now. You get, like, you know, this backpack. Okay, now I get to, like, maintain this thing, make... keep a nice, nice jacket. Like everything is maintenance. Everything in your life is just maintenance.

    15. MM

      (laughs)

    16. LR

      And I wonder if that's what the book's about.

    17. MM

      Well, that's why I think technical debt is one of the most-

    18. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    19. MM

      ... interesting concepts. You know, there's so many companies as well that maybe have like big market caps, but I feel like they might have billions or tens of billions of dollars of technical debt that you can kind of see in the interface or how their products integrate with themselves or things. And I think about that a lot in our own company. You know, we definitely have some products... Always get a little embarrassed coming on because you have, have like such great product people and, like we have some variable quality around some of our things right now. Like if you check out Gravatar right now, I'm actually really proud of it. Like it's, I think, a really great user experience, very slick. Um, but there's like parts of... Well, I always say I'm the unhappiest WordPress user in the world. So (laughs) there's like parts of WordPress and wordpress.com that I'm, I'm a little embarrassed and ashamed of. Like we, we kind of have to... We have a really large surface area that we cover with relatively few people, and so there's some parts we haven't looked at in a little while that, uh, we need to get around to. And it's our big focus for us this year is actually kind of going back to basics, back to core, and, um, improving, you know, all of those kind of nooks and crannies of the, the user experience and also ruthlessly editing and cutting as much as possible 'cause we've just launched a lot of stuff over the past 21 years (laughs) that, uh, that maybe is, is not as relevant today or it doesn't need to be there.

    20. LR

      That sounds like excellent work for your... for this AI agent of, of the future that's coming

  7. 35:25 – 39:12

    Building a successful online community

    1. LR

      soon.

    2. MM

      Yeah.

    3. LR

      There's one other area I wanna mine and that's community, community building, building this ecosystem that you've created around WordPress. It might be the most... one of the most successful, biggest communities on the internet. Uh, I'm curious just what lessons you've learned about what it takes to build a successful community online especially.

    4. MM

      Uh, this is probably influenced by economics and jazz, right? So... And economics is all about systems thinking, right? And, and what are the incentive structures of how you set something up? And, um, and then jazz is all about collaboration, right? So if there's something unique I have for your audience, I would say it's, uh, don't just build a product, build a movement. And to the extent that we've been successful, I think it's that, you know, we give people something to believe in, you know, a philosophy, a worldview, um, even silly things like, you know, h- we had this tagline, uh, in the footer of the wordpress.org when we started, it's still there, it says, "Code is poetry." You know, kind of this idea that we're not just writing code, like we're trying to create something that can have, uh, elements. We name every WordPress release after a jazz musician, you know, for the past 60 releases or so. Uh, so those sorts of things bring in like a little heart and soul...... and some fun into it as well, it doesn't have to be serious all the time. Um, I think, you know, they can give something to believe in and work on and, and aim towards that's, uh, more than just a paycheck or more than just, you know, the utility, the base utility of the software. Um, so it's not just the software, it's also like, how are the meetups, you know, how are people getting together? What events are you running? How do people... Are there forums? How do people contribute? (laughs) You know? Is there office hours or town halls? I, I do a lot of Q&A. So like, you know, what, what are the things you're doing around the software that, that's allowing people to get involved, that's inviting contributions, that's allowing people to build on top of it? You know, I've studied platforms quite a bit, like Microsoft and others, and so our whole ecosystem of plugins and themes is part of what's made WordPress so successful and the moat that we have. You know, the core features of a CMS, you can kind of write with a few developers in a few weeks or something. Like, it's, it's kind of not... You know, it's basically CRUD operations. Um, but to replicate those 60,000 plugins and themes? Gosh, no one's done it (laughs) .

    5. LR

      Hmm.

    6. MM

      That's a huge moat. And, uh, and proprietary services can create platforms, you know, Shopify has a third-party ecosystem and things like that, but it's never a true platform, in that a true platform, it's when your ecosystem makes more money than the core does, and so many times, whether it was the Facebook, you know, platform, I'm putting that in air quotes, or the Shopify platform, you know, companies build on it and then they get the rug pulled out from under them 'cause they're too successful, and then the sort of thing you're building on decides, "Oh, we want that money," or, "We want that growth," and they sort of, uh, change the API or, or remove your access or, you know. There's so many examples of this, especially on, like, I think Facebook and Shopify and others where, where like people got too successful and all of a sudden they, uh, they knock on the door and they say, "Oh, that's a mighty nice app you have there. We, uh, would love to offer you some warrants where we own a bunch of your company," or, "Gonna shut it off," or, you know, those sorts of things. Um, and again, you don't have freedom unless you're building on open source. That's why more and more companies and people are choosing, uh, if they're gonna build a business on top of something else, if you build on open source, you have that guarantee. Even if, uh, you know, I, I grew devil horns and became evil and automatic... Decide to never, you know, whatever, like WordPress would still belong just as much to you as it would to me. People can fork the code, they can still own it, they can still build on top of it, so those things I think are, uh, are

  8. 39:12 – 50:24

    The WP Engine controversy

    1. MM

      really important.

    2. LR

      What a segue to all of this drama that's swirling around you these days. I think a lot of people do feel like there's devil horns that have appeared, and so I'm excited to dig into this stuff. And I think... I find that every time you go on a podcast these days, if, uh, we don't get into this, everyone's just like, "Why is Matt not answering these questions? Let's get into the hard stuff." So I have some... I'm gonna ask you some hard questions. Uh, for people that don't know what the hell is going on, they're like, "What are you even talking about?" Or just have a sense, something is swirling with WordPress and Matt, uh, what's going on, what's just like the high level overview of what's going on?

    3. MM

      Yeah, so to, to set it, um, you can get WordPress from WordPress.com or, you know, us, but also you can get WordPress from dozens of other hosts. The biggest in the world are like GoDaddy, Hostinger, NewFold. Um, it's not the biggest, but it is in the top 10 or something, it has about 700,000 WordPress installs, there's a company called WP Engine. Um, in 2019, WP Engine started as like very WordPress oriented and they contributed a lot to the community and everything like that. They're very respectful about, you know, distinguishing them- themselves from Core, 'cause people really realized it wasn't officially associated and everything. But in 2019, they got bought out by a private equity firm called Silver Lake, and, you know, anyone who follows business, you know, when private equity buys something, there's some of the good ones, but there's also many, many stories about how they can really kind of hollow things out, you know, really optimize for profits, become user hostile, um. Actually recently read a story where one of the reasons there was a shortage of fire trucks in these LA fires was that the fire truck manufacturers have been kind of rolled up by a private equity firm and they've been raising prices and like their supply constraint and things like that. So there's literally like a shortage in fire trucks right now because of private equity. And of course, if you look at healthcare or other things like this, so many examples of where private cr- equity can really, um, I think be one of the darker parts of, of capitalism. So, you know, since 2019, uh, WP Engine has kind of changed a bit, and, um, they really stopped contributing to Core and they started using the trademark, um, in a, uh, you know, a way that was very confusing in the marketplace. And, uh, you know, particularly in the past year, year and a half or so, we, we're just getting a lot... I get a lot of support for requests for WP Engine, and you know, when we do surveys, we find that, you know, 20, 30, 40% of people thought they were officially associated 'cause how they were presenting using our logo and presenting the brand and everything like that was very confusing to people. And as you know, if you don't protect your trademark, you, you lose it. And also, the version of WordPress that they were offering actually wasn't our core vision of the functionality of WordPress. So to save money, they were actually turning off features like revisions. So a cool part about WordPress that actually one of my favorite features is every, uh, change to every single post or page is saved forever, just like Wikipedia. So if you make a mistake, you can always undo it. And of course, as you know, like building a great product, that sort of user safety of a undo is so critical. Um, now obviously you have to store these revisions, so it takes up more database space. Now it's, it's trivial, it's megabytes, so on modern databases it's not that big a deal. But to save money, they actually turned this off. So they broke the undo feature in WordPress to essentially save money. And so you had this thing where they're offering something called WordPress, it's kind of, I think I refer to it as like a, a bastardized, hacked up version of it. (laughs) It's diluting our brand, and um, and then there's also people who think it's official. So even close friends of mine were like, "Oh yeah, I signed up for this thing. I thought I was supporting you." And, um-So it just came to a head. So past 18 months they've also, you know, we kind of contacted them and said, "Hey, you need a trademark license or something like if you're gonna use this, uh, or, or change how you're doing things." And, uh, you know, we kind of tried to negotiate something, and had many different term sheets over the months, offer and different things, and, uh, they just kept kind of stretching it out. And I was like, "What's going on here?" And I think part of what was going on is last year they tried to sell the company. So private equity usually holds things for, for like five to seven years. So they were kind of five years into this, they, they tried to shop it around and sell it. They weren't able to find a buyer. They said, "Well, they don't have any IP, and it feels like they're using your trademark, so they're gonna have trouble with you. They don't have a license," and things like that. So, uh, while they were negotiating with us, it appears they were also, like, preparing this lawsuit against us. So, uh, again, I've been very fortunate in my business career that, um, you know, we've invested in dozens of companies. We've acquired lots of things. Like, uh, uh, by and large, 99% of the time, um, people I've dealt with in business have been ethical, straightforward, honest. Um, I haven't really faced any, like, bald-faced lying or duplicitous behavior. Uh, very, very rarely, you know, people who just, you know, say one thing and do another, or, or are fraudulent in their behavior. But I think that was happening here. And so, uh, so just wasn't prepared for it. I was thinking I was a little naive and kind of didn't realize what was going on for a while.

    4. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    5. MM

      Uh, so it came to a head, and, uh, at WordCamp US in September, I, I was like, "Okay, well, if you're still not gonna, like, even agree to negotiate" (laughs) you know, uh, uh, "I'm gonna give this presentation about how I think both private equity has messed up a lot of open source, uh, projects in the past, and how in particular, uh, WP Engine has done some very bad or evil things." And, um, and they were like, "Okay, go for it." So I did the presentation, uh, I think it was on a Thursday or Friday. It was kind of spicy. People were like, "Oh, can't believe he did that." And, uh, and on Monday, they launched this, uh, with Quinn Emanuel, which is kind of the baddest, nastiest law firm. It's like who Elon uses when he sues people. Uh, uh, launched this big, you know, multi-million dollar lawsuit against both me personally and WordPress.org, so, like, the WordPress community, and Automatic. And, um, and also, you know, they're spending millions of dollars a month on both lawyers and PR. So they're, they're doing, you know, if you read, uh, oh gosh, who was the celebrity that they were recently talking about this, like, the dark PR stuff, where they're like boost things on social networks?

    6. LR

      Oh, Blake Lively and, uh-

    7. MM

      Blake Lively.

    8. LR

      Yeah, yeah, that other guy.

    9. MM

      Yeah, yeah. So all that stuff is, is happening. So there's, uh... And I warned, you know, people. I think i- in the presentation I said, "Hey, there's gonna be a smear campaign against me."

    10. LR

      (laughs)

    11. MM

      And internally at the company, I was like, "Hey, they're gonna dig up everything that's ever happens, uh, anything bad anyone's ever said to me is gonna, like, all of a sudden become like a news item." And, uh, and that has happened. It's been true. (laughs)

    12. LR

      (laughs)

    13. MM

      So right now, uh, there is a portion of the internet that do, does think I have devil horns and, and everything. Um, fortunately, this is not my first rodeo. Uh, I know a lot of people think, like, "Oh, Matt was nice for 20 years and then got mean." But you know one thing if, if you're really open in open source, sometimes you have to stand up to bullies, and you have to fight to protect your open source ideals. Otherwise, people could take advantage of it in a way that ultimately can destroy, uh, everything you've created. So this is probably the fourth time the internet has decided I'm the main character or, or, or really evil. And, um, the previous ones we don't remember anymore. It's Hot Nacho or the Easter Massacre of Themes or, like, these other things that, that aren't even on my Wikipedia page anymore. But, um, were-

    14. LR

      Those were, those are your-

    15. MM

      ... seemed like really big deals at the time.

    16. LR

      Those are your incidents. Those weren't, like, historical battles.

    17. MM

      No, these are things that, yeah, I was involved in, or-

    18. LR

      Okay, but that's cool names at least.

    19. MM

      Um, including some things I, I screwed up. Like, Hot Nacho was definitely a screw-up on my end, very early in the WordPress side, but...

    20. LR

      Well, okay, I'm not gonna follow those threads (laughs) but those are great names.

    21. MM

      (laughs)

    22. LR

      This episode is brought to you by Loom. Loom lets you record your screen, your camera, and your voice to share video messages easily. Record a Loom and send it out with just a link to gather feedback, add context, or share an update. So now you can delete that novel-length email that you were writing. Instead, you can record your screen and share your message faster. Loom can help you have fewer meetings and make the meetings that you do have much more productive. Meetings start with everyone on the same page and end early. Problem solved, time saved. We know that everyone isn't a one-take wonder when it comes to recording videos. So Loom comes with easy editing and AI features to help you record once and get back to the work that counts. Save time, align your team, stay connected, and get more done with Loom. Now part of Atlassian, the makers of Jira. Try Loom for free today at loom.com/lenny. That's L-O-O-M.com/lenny. So you mentioned this talk you gave at WordCamp, and you said at the beginning of the talk, like, um... Oh no, afterwards you were like, "I was, I was really nervous to give this talk." And I, and obviously you can see why. Just, like, what, what finally convinced you this was time? Was it just to go, uh, as you described, scorched-earth nuclear? (laughs) Uh, was it like WordCamp was coming up and this is the moment to go public with this? Was there something else that kind of crossed the line?

    23. MM

      It was a unique opportunity, because we were essentially saying that, "Hey, WP Engine isn't gonna be allowed to sponsor WordCamps anymore." You know, there're not gonna be, like, a... 'Cause we had, again, up to that point really done everything to, like, bring them in and have them be part of the community. Um, so I really had to also explain to our community, like, "Hey, why we're gonna be excluding this company that a lot of people saw as, as doing good." If you go to WP Engine website, they have whole pages about how much they contribute and give back and how they, you know, they, they do kind of greenwash or open source-wash a lot of what they do. So, um, all their marketing and branding was around this positive stuff.And so I was like, "Hey, we, we need to just explain this case." But yeah, uh, again, my default and how we've worked with, by the way, every other company in the WordPress space, many of which are much, much larger and make sometimes billions more in revenue than WP Engine, um, is collaborative. (laughs) And so like, if there's a trademark violation, usually it's not even lawyers get involved. It's just like there's an email, we have a conversation, we do a call, we talk about it, you know! Um, that, that's how things get resolved. And, and that's, that's my, uh, default. I'm a lover not a fighter. And so... (laughs) Um, and that's why this thing doesn't happen very often.

    24. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. MM

      You know, I like to say that, yes, if, if I was, uh, if WordPress community or whatever was doing this, like, every year, every couple of months, yeah, you should worry about it. But it kind of happens, like, every, like, 10 years, so...

    26. LR

      So if I could mirror back the issues that you ran into, and I wanna go through this a little bit more. The issue, the, the problems you had with WP Engine in this case. One is they were using the trademark, both WordPress and WooCommerce without license, and they're just abusing it, confusing people. A lot of people thought WP Engine was actually automatic and WordPress official. They weren't contributing to the project. They were just making basically a bunch of money and not doing the work to, uh, off this company they bought, and they're just kind of hollowing it out as you described. And then they're also cutting corners, making the product worse. And that kind of reflects on the whole brand of WordPress.

    27. MM

      That's a great summary, yeah.

    28. LR

      Awesome.

  9. 50:24 – 55:29

    Facing criticism and controversy

    1. LR

      I'm curious, just like which, which of those three or is it something even else that most bothered you about this? Like, what's just like, this is the thing that's eating me? And, uh, if I had to guess, it'd be like damaging the legacy potentially of this thing you've worked on for most of your lives. Maybe it's that. Maybe it's just taking advantage of the community. Uh, just like, what's the thing that you think is the root of this, just like, "Oh, it just, this needs to stop?"

    2. MM

      Well, I guess the one thing I'd add to your list was, as this was happening, they were pretending to good faith negotiate. And in fact, uh, at one point the executive, you know, we were talking about her joining automatic and running WordPress out of work and, you know, kind of thing when she thought WP Engine was gonna sell. She was thinking about what was next. So yeah, a lot of this stuff was, um, I think that duplicitous behavior also kind of forced us to an edge more than even those other things that you mentioned. There's lots of companies that don't contribute back. And it's, it's not as big a deal or so, but yeah, the legal issue is definitely the trademark thing. Um, so, uh, what pushed it to the edge? I think, I think just the magnitude of the issue. I mean, they would refer to themselves as WordPress Engine in client meetings and other things. They were very cavalier about how, uh, they would imply their association with the, with the project.

    3. LR

      Obviously, as you can tell on socials, a lot of people are just really upset and a lot of people blame you. There's just, like, like I said, every time you're on a podcast or on Twitter, people are just like, "Matt, what about this? Well, this sucks. Why are you doing this?" And I want to go through some of those things, but just, uh, not many people go through like, like I think you were like, uh, 100% beloved hero of open source in internet, and now you're like in this, a lot of people don't like you. Just as a human, just what is that? How do you, how do you work through that? How do you deal with that? What's that been like?

    4. MM

      You know, if you were kind of inside baseball with WordPress, there's actually a lot of people who have been unhappy with me over the years.

    5. LR

      (laughs)

    6. MM

      And like, when we introduce something like Gutenberg, you know, people hated it.

    7. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MM

      Actually, when we introduced a visual editor, people hated it.

    9. LR

      Mm-hmm. You've had protests.

    10. MM

      And these are huge controversies in, in the WordPress history and when, you know... There actually hasn't been a fork of WordPress around all this latest stuff, but there was when we introduced Gutenberg. It's one called Classic Press, where people actually forked the software. Um, so how I, I would describe it is previously like 1% of, you know, the world thought I was terrible. And now I feel like it's up to like 4 or 5%. So it's still like not the majority, but as you know, something negative, you feel seven times more than something positive. And, um, and when people are angrier with you, they're more likely to like... it's kind of like restaurant reviews or whatever. They're more likely to leave a bad review than a good review. And, you know, the people who, you know, WordPress, you know, 98% of all the core developers have stayed (laughs) and contribute and are working on the next version and are supportive and, you know, all these sorts of things. And, uh, part of the reason these folks are so good is like they don't spend all their time on Twitter or Reddit arguing with folks. And also the arguments could be very frustrating 'cause people don't engage in good faith. They don't really change their mind when new facts are, are, are introduced. And so you kind of... I've done my best actually 'cause I, you know, from the open source side, I'm really used to engaging with things. And I think that's been one thing I've learned from this is like, uh, in some forums like it doesn't matter how you engage. And especially if you have like, you know, bots or other things running there. Like, I'd leave comments on Reddit, it'd immediately get like 40 down votes. I'm like, "Hey, this is an article about me and I'm adding a fact to the thing." Like, "Why is it getting down voted?" This is very relevant to the discussion, but it's literally hidden. So like when you see that thread, you'd have to click like three or four times to see the comment I had left. And so it can really kind of change the, uh, perception. And then when you read these things, um, I think it's just very human nature. Even very, folks very close to me, like if you read a thread and it's all like super negative, it's hard to, uh, to not be influenced by that 'cause we're social creatures. So, um-

    11. LR

      100%.

    12. MM

      ... now the good news is I've had lots of, you know, sort of like credibility weighted, um, you know, support from, you know, people like Marc Benioff or, you know, other open source leaders or the core people in WordPress, you know, Matthias, Mary Hubbard, uh, all the core committers. The international community actually, like was just in Japan, like that they don't care about this stuff. And so these are actually, if you look by like number of commits and lines of code and everything like that, the folks who are actually-... are most crucial in WordPress. So I feel like that's been a good balance as well for me, 'cause there are days where I'm like, "Gosh, am I an idiot?"

    13. LR

      (laughs)

    14. MM

      (laughs) Or, you know, it can be really down, like reading all these things. So that is, is part of what, uh, allows me to balance and get back to that sort of positive optimistic space that I think you need to be in to, to do, uh, great software and great work.

    15. LR

      Yeah. The internet can be brutal.

  10. 55:29 – 1:08:29

    Addressing community concerns

    1. LR

    2. MM

      (laughs)

    3. LR

      Let me go through a couple of specific things that people have pointed out, 'cause I think, uh, you've been on a lot of podcasts and people haven't asked you these questions, and I think a lot of people are just like, "But Matt, what about this? This is really bad." So lemme just ask you a couple of things here. One is there's just like a frustration in the community, uh, around the instability that this has just caused in the WordPress community. I'll read you a couple of quotes. "Real people are receiving fewer projects in the WordPress, on WordPress because C-suite are seeing WordPress as unstable because of this feud," and, "I work at enterprise and we're very concerned about the stability of this platform on our projects." Just thoughts on that and the impact that has had on the community.

    4. MM

      Yeah. I think this is... Until this gets resolved, which by the way I hope it is soon, you know, I, I think it's... There's no business reason for this cont- to continue. Like I really hope that they, you know, come to a settlement or something. We're, we're ready. They could end this tomorrow if they wanted to, WB Engine could. So, um, we can't. We're just defending right now, so, (laughs) you know, it's really incumbent on them. Um, all of our competitors, by the way, are like, "Great, you know, WordPress, the, the king on the hill. All of a sudden we can use this." And so there's also, not just from like WB Engine, but also from all the competitors to WordPress and all the people who would love to capture some of our users or market share, you know, they're, they're really leaning into this. So I've seen white papers, I've seen all sorts of things where people talk about this. We're actually, in the next couple of days, gonna publish something really cool on the WordPress.org blog, though, that shows like if you actually look at the numbers, like the activity, number of commits, plugin updates, downloads, installs of WordPress since September 20th when this all started, it's quite healthy. And so I'm not saying that there isn't, you know, examples of where someone lost a project or something like that. I'm sure it's happened. You know, it's, the internet's big. (laughs) And WordPress has, you know, so many millions of users and developers and everything that you're gonna get some examples. But by the numbers, uh, things are actually quite healthy, and, um, in some ways, it's not that there's no press is bad press. It's raised the awareness of WordPress quite a bit.

    5. LR

      (laughs)

    6. MM

      So people who haven't talked about WordPress in years are now like, "Oh, let's talk about it." And so a little bit of drama I think... No, I, I wouldn't do this all the time, but a little bit can be a good thing.

    7. LR

      Okay. So another... One of the, uh, most common frustrations I've seen on the internet, people complaining, is the, is around the trademark. I don't know all the details, but my understanding is there's kind of a, you move the trademark to be owned by the, the foundation, and Automatic had, is exclusive rights to use the trademark, and I think people are like, "Oh, was it... I thought it was the foundation owned it, but maybe Matt still owns it," and then you're trying to monetize it through this agreement with WP Engine. Is there anything you can share there that'll make people feel and see your side of the story?

    8. MM

      Yeah. This is totally fair 'cause it's complicated. Um, uh, but people are saying like, "This has been private." This has all been very public and documented (laughs) on the internet, you know, from the beginning. So, um, WordPress.org has always been me personally. And I think because it's, uh, you know, part of the reason we started there is .com was not available, so (laughs) when we started. So like that's why we started on the .org and things like that, but I think people also assume .org means nonprofit or something. And, uh, that's sometimes true, but it, it's not always. It's not a requirement of the .org domain. Then when I founded Automatic and when we did register the trademark, that actually was registered under Automatic. So what used to be, for the first, you know, five years of the project or whatever, that Automatic just owned everything outright. Um, and again, I had investors and a board, and, and that was, uh, under control of that. Now, as Automatic became more successful, I was able to consolidate some voting rights and other things, and at least the later advocate... Also, remember, I was like 21 when all this was happening.

    9. LR

      (laughs)

    10. MM

      So (laughs) I was not like maybe the most savvy about legal stuff or didn't always have the best advice. So later as I learned more, I was like, "Oh, you know, I wanna actually take this out of the company and create a nonprofit." And, um, so we ended up, yeah, creating a nonprofit. Now, the rules around 5013 (c) nonprofits around the IRS are actually very strict. So that's also something else people assume is like, "Oh, doesn't the nonprofit run the software?" And we applied for that originally, and it was denied by the IRS. So we actually weren't able to put WordPress.org or the software itself under the nonprofit. Um, but we were able to just have sort of a educational purview. So what was eventually approved was sort of like running the meetups and other things for WordPress, doing educational stuff. We sponsor a lot of like Learn To Code or, um, you know, running workshops in other countries. We have this cool thing called Do Action where we'll do like, you know, a weekend where we take a bunch of nonprofits and build websites for them and, you know, stuff like that. So the nonprofit does a lot of exciting things there, and then also negotiated with the sort of es- uh, investors and everyone at Automatic to sort of actually put the trademark under the foundation. Now, the compromise there was that, you know, Automatic at this point is running WordPress.com. So to continue running that, which at the time had already tens of millions of users and everything, it needed a commercial license. And so kind of the compromise is, is that the foundation would kind of, uh, own the trademark and license it out for non-commercial purposes. Um, I had a, a license to run WordPress.org, you know, 'cause obviously I need that, and then Automatic would retain the commercial license and the ability to sublicense that, so to sell that to others. So this is kind of the grand compromise, and, uh, create this tripartite structure. You know, I was very inspired by the three branches of government. So they're sort of-... power in each of those that I think sort of checks and balances, um, each side of it, which is, is on purpose.

    11. LR

      Wow, okay. I get why it's complicated. I get why people would be confused. This makes me think about OpenAI had a really strange structure and that got them in a lot of trouble, and it feels like when you're 21 you're like, "Oh, this makes a lot of sense. What a great concept we've come up here," and then all this complexity just adds to a lot of confusion around what's going on. So thank you for addressing that. Another ... There's a kind of a related question I've seen a couple times is just why don't you let the .org be run by a community? Why not just, like, give that up to someone else and not just you? Uh, thoughts there?

    12. MM

      Yeah, and the, the frame of that question is, is kinda interesting 'cause it implies, like, I'm the only person making WordPress, which is obviously not true. (laughs) If you look at the daily commits and activity and everything, um, it is run by the community. So it's, it's hundreds of volunteers every day that are, are actually doing the day-to-day work and making the day-to-day decisions, everything that's happened, so there has been a ra- re- uh, radical delegation. However, there's ultimately a hierarchy and I'm kind of the, the CEO, so I'm like the final, final decision maker. And so I think what people advocate for around this governance point of view is like, okay, well, install a board on top of you that, uh, you know, ultimately makes decisions for the product or, you know, things like that. And there are other open source projects that have this structure. None of them have been successful as WordPress. (laughs) So, you know, I think your audience in particular, like, is great software ever created by committee, or does it more often reflect, um, a vision of a leader or, you know, something that can allow us to... And I think particularly, you know, WordPress not just remaining relevant, but actually accelerating growth over huge technological shifts over the past two decades. You know, when we started there was like, you know, dynamic web apps or DHTML or JavaScript wasn't really a thing, and, and then, like, social web and then iPhones and then, you know, all this sort of stuff that's changed over time, and we've surfed a lot of these technological changes, which is very, very hard to do. Like, most products do not remain relevant over multiple generational changes like that. And, um, and that's been because sometimes we've had to make very unpopular decisions. Like if... Gutenberg is, is a huge part of why WordPress is relevant today, and it's actually an open source project we do, it's the block editor. It's actually bigger than WordPress, you know, 'cause it's not just used on WordPress. It's used on every WordPress site, but also, like, Tumblr, other people. I would actually love if Squarespace or Wix adopted Gutenberg. It's meant to be, like, a, a really open source, uh, framework. But anyway, if we had voted for whether we should do that or not, everyone would have voted against it, or the majority would have. It was really, uh, a few core people of us in the community, you know, Matias, myself, other core contributors, Ella, Andrew Oz, that, that said, like, "Hey, you know, this is the future and it's gonna take 10 years to do and it's gonna be a long path. It's gonna suck for the first three or four years and so everyone's gonna hate it in the beginning." Um, but then later, you know, with iteration, we've had I think now 200 releases of Gutenberg. Uh, we do sort of a very strict every two weeks release schedule since it started. Um, it's gonna get pretty good, and it's, it's at that point now where it's actually getting pretty darn good. And the next phase of it actually I'm so excited about, it's gonna be collaboration, so all the, like, the real-time co-editing that, like, Google Docs and Notion has is coming out to this open source thing. And with the technological changes, we're actually able to do it peer to peer, so we don't need a centralized server, we can use WebRTC and other cool technologies. So, I mean, I mean, I- I'm, I'm going sidelining, but I think that, um, you know, that sort of more... If you look at a lot of great companies, like, you know, there's a board or whatever, but, like, ultimately, like, there's an executive, and, you know, some of the most iconic companies of our generations are ones where the executive has, you know, retained some majority voting control or other things like that, which I've been able to do with Automatic and with WordPress and, um, you know, I definitely think about succession planning and everything like that. But, uh, if or when I'm gone, I, I don't want to pass it to a committee, I want to pass it to someone else who can, you know, have a role similar to mine and really sort of, uh, try to be a steward. And there, there ultimately is a check and balance on that, because, again, the community could leave. They could fork the software. People could change and so, you know, uh, you're "in charge," quote, unquote, but you're also at surface. So it's a lot more being, like, a mayor than a CEO, uh, in that you, you ultimately are accountable to the folks who are contributing and new users and everything like that. So I do feel like, um, there is a balance there. Some of this as well is that there's some people who aren't part of leadership who feel like they should be.

    13. LR

      Mm-hmm.

    14. MM

      (laughs) So if you look at, like, the Yoast crew and things, li- these are folks who actually aren't, like, don't have commit status, they haven't contributed to WordPress over the years and serve our normal hierarchy of, you know, the meritocracy of how you get, like, you know, the ability to commit code or things like that, and they're like, "Hey, I wanna be, I wanna lead a release." And so that, I mean, that's cool, dude, but, like, there's a, there's a process. (laughs) We have different people lead releases over the years but, like, you know, they, they kind of work their way up to it.

    15. LR

      This makes so much sense to me, and it's one of the themes of the podcast, just the power of a singular visionary and leader. Founder Mode, as we've all heard, is, uh, is trending these days. Uh, I think-

    16. MM

      You made famous, yeah. (laughs)

    17. LR

      I, I wouldn't say that.

    18. MM

      (laughs)

    19. LR

      Uh, it was sh- yeah, Ryan shared it but then, uh, Paul Graham coined it afterwards, and then I renamed the title of that episode Founder Mode 2. (laughs)

    20. MM

      I didn't say

    21. LR

      Yeah, actually.

    22. MM

      ... really rich reaction.

    23. LR

      Kind of if I zoom out what I'm sensing here is there's, like, people that have this vis- uh, ideal of how something like this should run, uh, but they've never actually worked at a place w- like, an, where nonprofit board runs it, runs a thing, and I've seen what that actually looks like. And so I think there's, like, a big disconnect between the ideal in theory and then, like, what, how does great stuff get built?

    24. MM

      And one of the things I think we've tried to demonstrate, uh, with WordPress is actually, there's kind of, like, a open source side and a nonprofit side and a for-profit working in concert.So, you know, one of the things people don't necessarily appreciate as much about why WordPress has been so successful is because of Automatic and things like Akismet doing anti-spam or WordPress.com having a free version of WordPress that has introduced, you know, over 100 million people to the software in a way that you could just sign up for free. You don't have to pay for hosting or download it yourself or things like that. So that kind of for-profit, non-profit, open source working in concert I think is, um, a really interesting model that we're starting to see a lot more companies do. It's actually very exciting to me that, um, some of the things that were controversial when we started, like open source or distributed work are now the default for so many exciting new startups and this whole ecosystems of, like, really, really cool, like, open source, like cal.com for open source calendar or, you know, there's so much cool stuff out there that, uh... Actually are, you know, there's a whole generation of, like, younger entrepreneurs that I find very, very inspiring 'cause they're also bringing, like, modern design and web development and everything to, to open source, which is very neat.

    25. LR

      I anticipate a blog post one day. I told you so, guys. Open source, remote work. I imagine there's a few more things there.

    26. MM

      (laughs)

  11. 1:08:29 – 1:11:15

    Forking Advanced Custom Fields

    1. MM

    2. LR

      There's one other thing I wanna address. Uh, I haven't seen you talk about this. It comes up a bunch. Uh, it's around... This is, like, very in the weeds, but I think it's really important to people and there's something that, uh, something here for a lot of people. Um, the way you guys forked Advanced Custom Fields. Uh, so I think what happened here is you guys forked an existing plug-in, I think somebody else's plug-in, and then kind of pushed people to this plug-in versus the original plug-in. Um, what can you share there?

    3. MM

      Yeah, this is very complex. But, so WordPress.org has kind of, like, an app store. Um, you know, after WP Engine started suing us, (laughs) you know, creating millions of dollars of legal fees and things, um, we blocked their access to WordPress.org. Um, so this plug-in they had, Advanced Custom Fields, uh, wasn't able to be updated. At the same time, a, a number of security issues were found in it, uh, including some we reported. And so there had to be an update to it. Uh, so we're like, "Okay. We'll, we'll ship the update for you," essentially. And then we're like, "Okay. I think we need to call it something different," right? 'Cause it actually isn't theirs anymore. And they still offer Advanced Custom Fields on their own, and people can download it from them, et cetera. Um, so we, we made Secure Custom Fields, uh, which was originally under the same directory listing. So again, because we want all the users of it to get, to get the security updates. Um, this is controversial and actually the, they actually got a preliminary injunction. So the judge said reverse this. So this has all been reversed by the way. There now is a separate fork and a separate listing of Secure Custom Fields, which actually we have, uh, you know, a team on it, developers, designers, and we're, we're creating... Just like WordPress is a fork. We've, we've actually forked this. Actually WooCommerce was a fork. A lot of things are forks. So we forked it and now have a new name, new everything, that we're doing a lot of product innovation and, and, like, improving. So there's a separate project now, uh, and separate directory listing for Secure Custom Fields. That's kind of fast-forward to today. Uh, they now have access to WordPress.org again. They have updated the plug-in. Everything's kind of back to how it was before. And, um, and there's, uh, this separate thing called Secure Custom Fields that, uh, the WordPress project is officially supporting.

    4. LR

      So I'm hearing essentially you blocked WP Engine as a part of this. We're just gonna simplify WordPress, reduce confusion. There are being bad actors in this space, so we're gonna block them. And in that block, there's, like, a dependency where people couldn't do a thing that they needed to do. So you're like... And that's, and as the one that exists, there's a problem with it, so we're gonna, uh, make that dependence... Like, release a version that you can actually use and fix the security issues.

    5. MM

      That was the intention. I, I think that there was a lot of perceptions around it that were different. But yeah, that was, that was the goal.

    6. LR

      Okay. Okay, great.

  12. 1:11:15 – 1:16:43

    The role of social media and public perception

    1. LR

      So maybe just a last question. We talked about just, like, a lot of people see you with devil horns these days. They think you've, you're doing a lot of... You're doing bad things and they don't like, uh, the approach you're taking. You talked about there's this WP Engine spending a lot of money on PR and hiring this agency. I guess, is there anything else that... Like, why do you think so many people are looking at you as the bad guy? Is it mostly that you think? Just, like, where do you think it's coming from? Why is, why are, like, comments always so negative? And we talked a bit about it, but anything more there?

    2. MM

      I don't know if I can say why. Uh, I do think one thing I've learned is that a lot of these things we've talked about are nuanced. So one essentially thing I've learned in this process is that it's hard to explain this stuff in, you know, 240 characters or, um, you know, the, the... Some mediums do not lend themselves well to discussing this. And so I tried, you know? (laughs) But I, I'm, you know, participating less in, like, Reddit or Twitter and trying to do more long-form things like this where you can actually have the context and things can't be taken out of context. Also, I think there's something where, you know, social networks sometimes are tuned to promote outrage. And it's very interesting, we, we ran a sentiment analysis recently. We were kind of like looking at different social networks, analyzing all the comments and, and we found actually that the negative, you know, the, the sort of devil horn fraction on like, uh... What was it? Like, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram was like 8%. Uh, it's actually pretty small. On Reddit, it was, like, bigger. I forget the exact number. But on Twitter, it was 52%. You're like, "Whoa."

Episode duration: 1:34:26

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