Jonathan and Luke speak with Matt. Yep, that Matt. They talk about jazz, blogging, photography, and the infuriating, heartbreaking, grey-hair-making drama that’s engulfed the WordPress community over the last year.

Transcript#

Luke:
So you’re the CEO of Automatic, which houses multiple products from WordPress.com to Woo to Tumblr. You’re an investor, a blogger, you’re the release lead for WordPress 6.9. You must have so much on your plate and you have a lot that you’re responsible for. So my question, just to lead us in, is how much freedom do you feel over how you get to spend your time and energy?

Matt:
That’s a good question. You know, you’re right, I do have a lot going on. And so in some ways, I feel an incredible freedom that I can move between these things. But there are a lot of responsibilities. So ⁓ yeah, in other ways, I do have just a ton of responsibilities that I’m accountable to. But that’s okay. That’s the life I’ve chosen.

Jonathan:
Matt, I’m curious with all the things that are on your plate, like outside of WordPress, where do you most enjoy spending your time and energy? There’s a lot of things that you could be doing when you’re not working on WordPress. What do you enjoy the most?

Matt:
You know, I’ve always gotten a lot of energy from travel and seeing the world. And I’ve been to all seven continents, you know, hundreds of cities, et cetera. And just learning about different cultures and people all over the world has always been very rewarding for me. And it’s also complimentary in that there’s WordPress users all over the world. Learning how people are using it and getting ideas for the product and everything.

And my company is distributed, so I have colleagues in 80 plus countries. So being able to meet them all over the world. I also love music, and jazz in particular is my background. It’s kind of what got me into web development originally. And I do sort of sponsor a jazz club in San Francisco called Keys Jazz Bistro. So when I’m in town, I try to make it out to that. And I enjoy some live music and support some local musicians.

Jonathan:
Matt, if I heard you correctly, you said all seven continents. What is the WordPress scene like in Antarctica these days?

Matt:
It was mostly me as you can imagine.

But yeah, it’s funny because when I first went, obviously you’re completely offline or bandwidth is very limited even at the South Pole station and things, you know, they’re very limited. I actually brought a USB drive to give them some stuff I downloaded and things just to share some media. But now with Starlink, I think the world’s kind of changed. It could be connected anywhere.

Luke:
That’s awesome. I guess a lot of that travel was what informed some of the early blog posts that you were making because it’s “PhotoMatt”, right? You’ve done a lot of travel photography.

Matt:
Yeah, like I said, my early passion was music, but as I started traveling more, it’s hard to travel with an instrument. And so I got a lot more into photography and yeah, it’s a great way. Also, my memory is terrible, so it’s a great way to kind of like remember things and be able to look back. And I enjoy the artistry of it as well.

Luke:
Yeah, I saw on your blog just recently you dredged up some old business cards and you’re a saxophonist!

Matt:
Yeah, that was how I paid my bills. I probably made more money from playing saxophone than web development or computer development until I was like maybe 19.

Luke:
When was the last time you still get an opportunity to have a bit of a jam?

Matt:
Every now and then I pull it out or play with friends. A lot of people I grew up with are still musicians and quite, quite better than me because they’ve stuck with it. So, but you know, music is just I think so important for the soul. It’s something I really just enjoy participating in and being part of.

Luke:
We enjoy having that theme in the WordPress releases of having jazz musicians. I know I always learn something new.

Jonathan is obsessed with this concept of WordPress as an operating system. And I know that’s something you’ve talked about too, Matt. So I want him to ask his operating system question that is dying to get out.

Jonathan:
So for those who haven’t heard me talk about it before, Matt, you were the one who first wrote about this idea of WordPress as an operating system many years ago. And it’s something that at first I’m like, it didn’t really make sense to me. And then it began to resonate and I began to think about it more. And especially the ecosystem ramifications of it. My question for you, we’ve touched on this off and on over the years. Do you still see that as relevant framing? And if yes or no, how has your thinking evolved over the years?

Matt:
Sure, it is complex because of course WordPress can be used in many ways. It can be used as an API provider or something like that. But I think WordPress is most powerful when it is that base layer, when it is the operating system. When it’s the thing you put on your website and then everything else is built on top of it, right? The plugins, the themes, that whole ecosystem of that sort of more like a monolithic stack where WordPress is serving the site itself. I feel like that is actually where you get most of the benefit of being fully dynamic, PHP, being able to integrate plugins, turn things on and off. You know, a lot of things we do around like, you know, making things SEO friendly and providing API is providing MCP servers and the new versions like all that.

So ⁓ yeah, there’s many ways to use WordPress, but my favorite is when people use it as this kind of base operating system for the open web.

Jonathan:
At State of the Word here at WordCamp US a couple weeks back, I got to be there in person and listen to you talk. And one of the threads that stood out to me is you talked about, this is my own paraphrase, so if you’ll indulge me, this idea of empowering creativity on the open web and “expression of creativity”, I think is the term that you used. I resonate with that a lot and it’s this idea that people, as I see it, can be building interesting things on WordPress.

I’m curious. For you, did the switch, like has that always been there or did that, was there sort of a natural progression from blogging to this like higher order expression of whatever you’re wanting to do online? Did that come in at a clear point in time for you or was that just a kind of a natural evolution?

Matt:
Hmm. Yeah, I guess I just always liked the idea of, you know, kind of learning and sharing as you go. Blogging is very personal. Actually, ever since WordCamp US, I’ve been really inspired. I’ve been blogging like every day. So I like try to, at some point, I think it became a little bit more like work, whereas like, I got to like write essays and like, then cross post it to all these different things.

And now I’m just kind of like, I don’t care. I’m just gonna like, you know, use it as my personal log. I’m gonna blog for myself, things I want to remember or that I find interesting. And if other people see it, great. If not, whatever, you know, it’s ~ I’ve always got a day job.

I just find that sort of practice of ⁓ sharing what you are coming across or interested in or thinking. Yeah, it is kind of fun. And you know, people resonate with it. It helps you connect with people who are into the same things that you are. And then it becomes like a great, you know, personal archive of your own thoughts over the years.

A plugin that my colleague, Scott Riley wrote that I love on my WP Admin is like, On This Day, it’s essentially like, you know, when I log in to my WP admin on the dashboard, I’ve got this little widget that shows “on this day” in previous years. And it’s kind of fun to look back at those. I also use that to do a bit of gardening. You know, I’ll go back and like clean up the old HTML or like if a link is broken, I might update it to archive.org or something like that. So I do a little like maintaining there as well and gardening of my old content.

But yeah, I find that to be just a valuable resource for myself.

Luke:
Yeah, I guess it’s been over 10 years now since, well, Ryan McCue sort of championed the API, the WordPress REST API. And that really, I don’t know, do you recall that time? It was like, we were all talking about WordPress as an application framework and we could build all of these great web apps. I remember, I must’ve been like the last WordCamp San Francisco.

That was one of the big topics that you brought up, I think I recall correctly. Do you think WordPress has gone beyond that or did it get stuck in that sort mode of thinking? Are we coming back to blogging now? Where do we think the future is when it comes to all of that sort of thing?

Matt:
That’s a good question. Actually, looking back, I don’t know if bringing the REST API into Core was the right decision. That code ended up being a little bit buggy, it had some security problems, it introduced a lot of surface area to the product. ⁓And is REST the right API or is GraphQL better or something else?

But again, the nice thing about WordPress is there’s more than one way to do it. So you can use WP CLI for some people. That’s their way they want to interact with their WordPress. For some it’s Rust, for some it’s XMLRPC, for some it might just be our feeds that we provide. You know, going forward, I think a lot about ⁓ how do we allow some of these things, like really, like what should be in core? What’s that core experience and user experience?

And then for people who want to extend it or interact with their WordPress in different ways, like what do we need to build in? And it’s really customer driven. So for example, like, you we have mobile apps. And so if we those mobile apps to work, then we need to have an API built into the thing. So like, you know, you got to think about that customer journey. Like it’s fine for something to be a plugin, but for asking people to install a plugin, like what does that flow look like, you know?

Luke:
I guess my question is, what is the customer? Back then we were talking about, we went through this stage of talking about the customer as being not only blogs, not only build a whole website, not only that, but you can also build a whole web app now using WordPress. And it was sort of growing in its application and what it could be used for.

So what I hear you saying, and please, correct me if I’m not getting this quite right. But it sort of sounds like you’re saying, well, let’s focus in on the people who use WordPress. And those people seem to be, it’s more website focused. What is the customer for WordPress?

Matt:
Well, Yeah, so there’s multiple ways to look at that. So I do think it is useful to look at and survey, like, what are the demographics of people using WordPress, like to understand who it’s resonating with. But from a product development point of view, ⁓ you know, people contain multitudes. Right. So when we start to put labels, you’re a blogger, you’re a website creator, you’re a builder, you’re a store, you’re a whatever, those can become constraining.

And so I like to think about it as like, what are the capabilities? Like, why would someone use WordPress versus something else? What do they like about it? And some of those core capabilities are, well, you have a fully dynamic sites that you can look at the front end and then click edit and change it really easily. Those sorts of core capabilities are are fundamental. And we need to think about how we’re exposing those capabilities. And that’s what’s fun about this new abilities APIs. It’s forcing us to actually be explicit about listing these out and registering them and making them accessible in a programmatic way as well. And then how’s the workflow around all of that? What’s the UI? What’s the user experience of how people use it?

And again, like commenting as an example, that’s gonna be different for someone who has a blog versus maybe they have a store and the comments are reviews. Maybe there’s a contact form and that’s like got its own nuances to how it works and how it’s stored and what really matters there. So, these are all kind of different versions of it. That’s the beautiful thing about engineering product development is like you can decide what are the primitives and what are the abstractions.

And then how can you put different user-friendly interfaces and modes on top of it?

Jonathan:
Matt, I’m thinking back to pre-Gutenberg and the Gutenberg experience. And one of the things that I felt during that was, and I was happy to see this, that you and the folks heavily involved in the project were taking risks and saying, OK, we’re going to go this direction with it. And I saw that that was an early exposure to me and what I would describe as more product-led thinking, where it’s like, we’re going to make these decisions that ~ hopefully it’s well received, even if it’s not, like we’re going more this direction.

And yeah, and I saw that as an expression. That was a foundational piece for me in this idea of WordPress as an operating system. And just to touch back to the question I posed previously, it started out as this blogging and grew its capabilities. WooCommerce brought this whole new realm, a whole new ecosystems worth of activity around something else that you could now create in WordPress.

And then from there on, and I think Gutenberg, well, like set this up, there was this, all these infinite expressions of creativity just became even more possible as you could build things, like on top of this, how, from your point of view, from like product thinking, like how, how intentional has been that open canvas of “we don’t know what’s possible” ~ like trying to optimize for those possibilities or is it just surprised you that it’s gone in that direction?

Matt:
Well, it’s very much inherent in our license that we choose to publish the software under. So I would say if you want to create software where people can only do certain things, like, you know, don’t do it open source, right? By definition, when something’s open source, there’s going to be the ability for people to open it up, change how works, and ⁓ whether that’s through affordances you provide like a plugin system or whether that’s just they’re modifying the code directly because they could do that, you know, and running it themselves.

So I think inherent to our open source nature is the idea that people can, you know, transform it to be whatever they want it to be. And hopefully it provides some shortcuts, you know, some sort of set of things, tools that they didn’t need to build themselves.

But yeah, it’s ultimately up to them.

Luke:
Matt, for the last several seasons of Crossword, we’ve been discussing, let’s call it the fallout from what you described as a nuclear war against WP Engine. And we’ve been talking about the effects of that on the project and the community. And I’m a little nervous to ask, but I wonder, have you ever listened to a Crossword episode before?

Matt:
Yeah!

Luke:
Yeah, so there was a time, I was listening back recently to a few crossword episodes myself and there was a time there when I was really scared to speak about WordPress and about how I was feeling about some of the decisions that were being made because there was like this whole slate of bands that would, you know, like affect my ability to provide for my family sort of thing.

It was a really big deal. It’s a lot of like identity attached to it because I love WordPress, you know, and I built a career in WordPress. I associate myself with WordPress. And I guess more recently I’ve seen, and especially since the Jubilee blog post, I’ve seen a bit more of a relaxed attitude around that. Is that something that you’re thinking about when, when you’re writing these blog posts and you’re making big changes, like how, how much consideration do you take of like the stress that it causes people like me? I have a friend who’s doubled his gray hair count since this started at WordCamp a year ago.

How much of, of those like individual personal things of people being scared to speak up and all of that do you think about when making these blog posts?

Matt:
Well, you have to think about everything, of course. Yeah, I wouldn’t describe it as more relaxed, you know, because, you freedom is not free. And sometimes you have to really fight to stand up against bullies or bad actors or people taking advantage or breaking trademark law or law or other things around a product because otherwise it can become taken advantage of and ⁓ destroyed actually, you know.

I described it as cancer to WordPress. And of course those things left untreated can kill the host. So I think a lot about the future and you know, if we allow certain things to continue or if everyone did, you know, this, what one actor might be doing, what would that look like? ⁓ And you kind of have to like, you know, iterate out and play these things out years in advance.

And yeah, sometimes that requires little actions or little interventions, and sometimes it requires big ones. The big ones only happen periodically, kind of every five to seven years. The little ones happen though every day. And there’s sort of a constant pruning and gardening and investing in the health, long-term health of the ecosystem. ⁓ And I’m human, so of course I make mistakes.

And I have in the past and I will in the future. And so what you could do also is learn from those, take feedback, iterate and, and, you know, also know that you’re not going to please everybody. So like, uh, ultimately end of the day, like I, I’m not trying to win a popularity contest.

Luke:
Yeah, yeah, that’s part of being a leader.

Matt:
I’m not trying to, you know, um, I’m trying to do what, you know, in my moral framework and what I believe is right for the world and everything, do what’s right. And that’s ultimately what has to drive these things at the end of the day. And not everyone’s gonna agree with that, and that’s okay. And also people have just very different incentives. So, you know, my incentives around WordPress being around 50 years from now, or being the operating system for the web might be different from someone’s incentives who is trying to build a business as investors or a business they’re trying to sell or some sort of other shorter term things that are driving their behavior and their decisions and what they’re advocating for. ⁓ We even have this tension in the software. So for example, you know, WordPress does things, right?

It has gaps. Sometimes people build a plugin and a business around filling that gap. And maybe that’s a great little business. Maybe it some 100 grand a year. And that’s really important to them. However, this functionality not being in core, not being something that WordPress itself does, is hurting tens of millions of people or costing us in theory, billions of dollars, around millions of dollars of productivity or growth or something like that, or other businesses, you know, built on top of WordPress, getting more use because so, you know, making that decision for what you’re providing is all there’s always going to be attention there and always some different incentives from different people in the marketplace. So, you know, my role as the leader of the product, which I think and you know, one of the creators of it and doing this for so long, I take very, very seriously as like how to zoom out from, you know, even my own self-interest or my company’s interest and think like, okay, what’s right for this project in the long term?

Jonathan:
Matt, when I was at WordCamp US last year, I got to drive home afterwards. It was close enough that I could make it a drive. And I found myself feeling like pretty disheartened and confused. And when Luke and I started, we started up Crossword season seven shortly thereafter, and that did a lot to help me like process through it. Through those first couple of weeks, I think the thing that hit me the hardest, because I think a fair amount, I felt like I was tracking what you were saying.

Like you opened up, you’re talking about the dangers of private equity. The thing that hit me the hardest was when you referred to WordPress.org as your personal site. I understood that that was technically true and I could infer reasons why it makes sense that you’d say that. And I think what I was struggling with was the impact that I was feeling to my own personal identity, which I would sum up like this.

For the past two decades, I’ve used WordPress and I’ve encouraged people actively. To do the same and a big part of why I did that was this idea, I understood that WordPress was ours. And I told people that when they use WordPress and encourage others to do the same that we all benefited from. There’s this inherent value built on this open source ideology. And when you said that .org was yours, well, I understood intellectually you were referring to the website. It felt to me like your sentiment extended to the project, to the community, to the ecosystem.

And I ended up feeling like, “I messed up here. I got something wrong. I also misled others.” It’s been a year now. And in reflecting back, I think my conclusion is that maybe I was like optimistic or naive and I’d heard what I wanted to and I probably did get it wrong somewhere. And so my question is, I’d love some guidance from you. Like from your perspective with that project level view, you have to think about the next 50 years. Where did I go wrong in my thinking? Was there something I misunderstood that led me to feeling like confused?

Matt:
And this is nuanced. And so that’s a quote that got taken out of context. And like you said, people reacted really, really strongly to it. So I really regret that reaction because if you look at the full context of what we were saying, it was really much more about, yes, so why did you feel like you were wordpress.org? Well, well, because most of the code is open source and most of it’s run day to day. And so many of the functions of the operating the site are done by a variety of people…

Luke:
I just want to push back a little Matt.. because I just, sorry, I just do want to push back a little because you didn’t say WordPress.org belongs to me just once. Like you’ve said it in relation to like, I don’t know, the marketing team, X stuff. You’ve said it on Slack. You said it to the verge. Like it’s been a few times that we’ve heard this line come out. So I guess a bit of clarification.

Matt:
Well, let me finish what I’m saying because I’m trying to add the nuance. ⁓

Luke:
All right. All right.

Matt:
So the other side of that is, OK, one WP Engine and Silver Lake are suing someone who is going to court, who is paying for the lawyers, who is ultimately responsible and accountable and liable for what happens on the site. So I am that entity which shields. So Jonathan, Luke, like ⁓ you know, are you having to hire lawyers? Are you having to be like, whatever it is? And so ⁓ there is kind of the legal version of this as well, as like, ultimately, like, what is the entity accountable for if something goes wrong on the site, or who’s paying for the upkeep of the site, or who is ultimately managing these sorts of things. So this is where it gets into ⁓ you know, a place that you can describe it as is essentially a hybrid that ⁓ this is a domain that belongs to me. On that domain, there are servers, are entities, everything like that. Some of these are run in ⁓ ways that are open source and anyone can edit. There’s like wiki pages and forums and reviews and everything that anyone can participate in.

And then some of those are things that only a few people can change. And some of them are things only I can change. So, you know, really, WordPress.org is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of services and forms and different bits of code and content. You know, it’s under different licenses. You some of the code is licensed in a certain way. Some of the content is licensed in a certain way. There’s assets on there.

Like there’s a logo, there’s a trademark. So all of these different things have different elements and it’s, I would say, reductive and harmful. So the people who are trying to say, this is just Matt’s thing. And what they’re really reacting to is like, they’re reacting to some disagreement with a decision I made or my leadership or something like that. And they’re saying we want a different leadership structure or we want a different governance.

And then to answer that, then you also have to say, well, then, okay, who’s paying for the servers? How are we running it? Who’s controlling it? Where does the trademark belong to? What is the legal liability? know, when a company decides they’re gonna unhappy with something on the site and they sue, which could be because of bad reviews, it could be because of DMCA, it could be because of privacy laws, it could be because of accessibility laws, it could be for any number of things, like who’s liable, who’s signing up to say like, okay, I’m on the hook there.

I mean, these all become like quite, quite nuanced. And ⁓ I think you have to really address it in a way that looks at the full breadth of what we’re talking about. ⁓ So that’s why, again, I fully disclaim the reductive statement that this is Matt’s personal website as an accurate way to describe it. However, there are many things which ultimately I am on the hook for, liable for, or accountable for individually for the site.

Jonathan:
Matt, that makes a lot of sense and I appreciate you taking the time to like to explain that. And I think part of the struggle for me is that separation from what makes sense intellectually to just what my personal experience was. I think, and I’d even just add a nuance here is like I’ve known, like WordPress.com belongs to you and Automatic as well. And I felt my own experience as a former Automattician as well. I felt consistently grateful to you and to Automatic for its investments into the project, into the community and the ecosystem.

I think what I’m still just, and it’s okay if there’s no answer. I know it’s nuanced and complex. What I’ve been wrestling with is like, what did I get wrong that led me to take that so, or to feel like, oh, I messed up here. Like I took too much ownership of this. And I understand the nuance in what you’re describing, because it’s bit of a technicality, right? And I even appreciate you calling out that there’s a big degree of surface area that you’re taking. I don’t have to go get a lawyer here, right?

But something about it, I guess broke a little bit inside me afterwards where I’m like, have I been advocating for this in the wrong way? And I don’t know. I’m not expecting you to solve that for me. just looking for, I guess I wanted to share the personal impact to me. like, it’s, I consider myself a deep believer in this for a long time. And ⁓ it was a struggle for me.

Matt:
Sure, and all of this is built on, you know, our legal system, our laws, our constitution, all of these things where we’ve created a number of abstractions. So I will push back when you say that WordPress.com belongs to me or Automattic belongs to me. It is technically a seed corporation, which has investors, which has a board, which I answer to. And, you know, the board could fire me if they want. They there’s also that how are those board seats chosen? How are they accounted for? All of these things have very complex structures and governance aspects. So what is the root access of something? And of course, actions in all of this are then constrained by the laws of society.

You know, there’s certain things you could do, which society says that’s illegal. And, you know, that’s some of what’s being alleged and being fought in the courts right now. So like things you can say, are you allowed to criticize? Are you allowed to talk about, you know, there are some companies that say, no, you’re not. And that’s part of what ⁓ I’m being, you know, going through this huge legal case for is they’re saying I shouldn’t have been allowed to say, you know, X, Y, Z.

And so that’s something that we’re working out. It’s, you know, we have lots of complicated systems in society to deal with this, including the court system, the justice system, law enforcement, et cetera. And of course it varies then from country to country in different jurisdictions.

Luke:
So just keeping on the theme of identity. You know, it used to be a year ago that people would ask me, what do you do? And I would tell them, I have this great job. I have a dream job. I contribute to open source and open source project. Have you heard of WordPress? And most people have. They said, “Cool, who owns WordPress?” And I say, nobody owns it. It belongs to all of us. Actually.

I took that line from a State of the Word address that you gave a few years ago. You said WordPress belongs to all of us. And I get all excited about this, right? Like it’s this hugely impactful project. It’s beautiful, really. It’s like this community project, community built thing that powers 40 plus percent of the web. it’s a really exciting thing. It’s really something special to be part of tell people this, can’t believe it. You mean this huge impact thing isn’t proprietary? No, it’s not putting, you it’s something that’s run by a whole community.

Matt:
Well, I guess it also gets to what is the value that you’re getting from WordPress that belongs to you? So that code, for example, I can’t take away from you. It’s distributed under a license that even if everything shut down tomorrow, and like we shut down WordPress.org and whatever like that, or the GitHub went down or whatever, like you’d be able to have a copy of that and other people could distribute it.

Now, do you have ownership to market under the WordPress name? Can you sell things as WordPress and say like, this is from WordPress and buy my WordPress widget? It’s official WordPress. No, that’s a trademark. You don’t have ownership of that. ⁓ So I think that’s where these abstractions ⁓ can be helpful and also require some sort of defining of what you have. So what I… what I’m really talking about when I say WordPress belongs to all of us, I’m talking about that license that the code is under, your ability to use the software for any purpose, the freedoms, the four freedoms of the GPL are pretty radical and different from what most other software gives you. And it really truly does belong to you. A license has been granted to you, rather is a more accurate way to put it, that gives you some inalienable rights, some things that cannot be taken away. ⁓

Luke:
It belongs to me in so much as I can install it on my own machine. So long as there are parts that don’t belong to me of WordPress though, because I updating plugins.

Matt:
Sure. Can you wake up tomorrow and say what’s in the next version? No. Some people can though. Some people have different ability to. They might be core committers or they might be, and by the way, some random people do that might come from a track ticket or a GitHub ticket on what’s in the next version. So even though they don’t have sort of like a formal ownership of WordPress, they are influencing the future of it..

Luke:
Right, no, that’s not my call.

Matt:
And that is kind of the beauty of open source is that it allows for even if you don’t technically own the trademark or own the copyright for something that you’re able to influence its future in a way that many people can participate in.

Luke:
I think one of the surprising things from all of this is that people discovered that the WordPress site that belonged to them, that they felt ownership over, was running on their own servers, that there was the possibility of it breaking overnight. And that may have always been true, but it was a surprise. With suddenly the parts of WordPress that depend on WordPress.org, that that can be disabled remotely.

Matt:
Sure, I mean that has always been true. And many web hosts over the years, ⁓ who are ultimately on the hook for providing a service to their customers, for making sure the software works, ⁓ might have different ways to mitigate the availability of certain web services. And so I think that’s really on the responsibility of a host to look at how everything, the software,

they’re selling to people is operating and what happens when certain parts of that break. And that could be the CDN. It could be, you know, network calls that are being made. could be remote file calls that are embedded to Google fonts or something. There’s like a million ways. And so you have to decide like which of this you’re building back up to.

Luke:
Yeah. Sorry, man.

I get technically how it works and you’re right, it’s always been the case. And it’s really, it’s ultimately the responsibility of the site owner to be able to mitigate that. You’re 100 % right. I guess more what I’m speaking to is the surprise. There was sort of a, maybe an expectation from the community that WordPress was sort of standalone. And even though it isn’t really, there was this almost a chilling effect it felt to me of like, ⁓ hold on, there’s an external factor. And we started to hear things like, I have friends in enterprise sales who started to hear things like, well, there’s a risk factor with WordPress we hadn’t ever considered before. that among other various things, it really, ~ took us by surprise and made a lot of people nervous and fearful. That’s the gray hairs that I’m talking about, you know?

Matt:
Sure. And that misdirection was done very deliberately on behalf of an actor who was called out for misusing a trademark and said, you know, feels that they should be able to use a trademark in certain ways that are not in alignment with the, you know, people who have rights to that trademark or ownership of that trademark. And they formatted a lot of discord and misinformation and, you know controversy to essentially ⁓ attack this ⁓ raising of an issue that there was perhaps some bad behavior going on. so it’s, ⁓ this is again, one of the motivations, what are the incentives of the different people putting this out there. And we’re also in a social media world where, I think that different from prior controversies that WordPress has gone through, and there have been many, many over the years where different actors have had different incentives or wanted things to happen in a different way.

I’m even going back to like the Easter massacre of themes, right? So for a while, thousands of theme developers would sell links in their theme that would link to like an SEO website or something like that. And one day WordPress decided this was not allowed. And so all of sudden, like probably millions of dollars that was going to thousands of theme developers got cut off overnight. And they were very unhappy about this. And there was a huge pushback. And they said, well, we should be able to publish whatever we want. This is GPO code. There’s nothing in the GPO that says I can’t embed my spam link on the site. And we, myself and others, collectively decided as the people running WordPress.org that we were not going to distribute themes that had these spam links in them. So again, could someone still publish it on their own site? Of course. And so that’s like, that wasn’t taken away from them. But like we were saying, okay, from this like thing that’s in WordPress.org that we promote and say, this is a great place to get themes. We’re making sort of a promise to our customers that those themes operate in certain way.

And those promises are implied, some are explicit, but there’s also just the brands. Like we’re saying like, hey, this code isn’t going to like cross your site or maybe it falls through accessibility standards. Like there’s a continuum of things that are like evolving over time. ⁓ so previously when these controversies happened, like it blew up on the blogosphere, but we didn’t have this kind of social media thing and Twitter and other things that I think do really rile people up and don’t load themselves to more long-form nuanced discourse. Honestly, this whole thing, like if we had all been forced to sit in a room and talk about it, probably would have been way less bad than what we were doing, which was like tweeting at each other during blog posts and news media was hyping things up, and if it bleeds, it leads, and there’s all sorts of misinformation going around and everything. So everyone got really riled up. ⁓

Luke:
Hmm.

Jonathan:
Well, and Matt, from the beginning, I’ve felt, and this is part of what’s made difficult for me, that you were being sincere and meant, I would describe that you meant well throughout the process, right? And like I said, even going back to Gutenberg, I’ve appreciated your willingness to take risks that have these ramifications. As Luke and I were preparing for this, I think it’s fair, at least on my part, to say that I’ve been nervous about this.

And in large part, just because of how much WordPress and being a part of this is meant to me personally and and I’ve there was one moment where You you switched you switched over the the dot org slack to require it had you had to like log back in and I had a moment where I was like no, did I just did I get banned? Did something happen? Did I say something and it wasn’t based in any evidence? but I felt that and I’ve made progress in it and I appreciate Matt consistently like the effort that you’ve been willing to spend and trying to explain yourself and and think through these things. Last question from me is as you look back over…

Matt:
Well, and I will say before you get to the question, as you judge the different actors in this, there is one side, which is going on podcast, talking to journalists, engaging with the community. I’ve done numerous town halls and Q&A’s and WordCamps and other things since this has been very. And and by the way, some of things I’m being sued for are things that I said in a podcast or talking to a journalist or other things. And there’s another side which has not. ⁓

Jonathan:
Yes. I see that, yeah.

Matt:
They are not talking to independent journalists. They’re not doing interviews. They are not engaging in this except through, you know, ⁓ Quentin Emmanuel, which is one of the most notoriously fierce and, you know, law firms in the world. ⁓ You know, if you talk to any lawyer who’s ever dealt with Quentin Emmanuel, they have a reputation and they’re known for, you know, executing the law in certain ways and all these sorts of things. So that is, you know, please also judge the different participants in this. If you felt like the other side was operating in good faith, then they probably also should be coming on your podcast and doing things like this.

Jonathan:
I appreciate the risk that I’ve seen you consistently take, right? Throughout this process. So my question is this, I’m looking for something to, ~ how do I go from here? What’s the future look like? And one thing that would help me personally - is anything that stands out to you that you’ve learned from this that’s going to impact like how you do things going forward?

Matt:
Ha! ⁓ I would say, know, honestly, the thing I haven’t had to deal with in the past ⁓ is a huge lawsuit like this. So ⁓ which of course was initiated by WP Engine and Quinn Emanuel. We did not actually initiate the whole legal case. So everything that’s been going on in the courts that you’ve been reading about has been automatic and myself defending against the claims made. ⁓ and the loss of those filed, ⁓ I think November of last year or whenever it was. ⁓ So, ⁓ as American citizens and someone like who’s an actor participant in our democracy, ⁓ how the legal system can be weaponized and the asymmetric cost of that ⁓ and how things like discovery work, for example, how that can be threatening. So the fact that

You have to preserve all these records and provide full copies of everything. And if there’s any mistakes made there, then all of a sudden that becomes its own issue. And what does that also mean? ⁓ What can they legally demand copies of? What can they get access to? And how discovery works even? So a lot of people think, does discovery mean, I had to take all my devices to be imaged? For example.

So full copies of all my devices, everything on the hard drive, everything. Now that that image of my computer doesn’t just get be given to the other side. It gets sort of held. There’s like discovery firms and technical things, and they can request essentially like queries against that. And then that goes to my lawyers who then present it back to the other side. And there’s, you know, things can be contested. So there’s a whole process around that where

I mean, some of that was very scary to me. I’m like, goodness, like, are they going to have access to my Bitcoin wallet? And it’s like, well, yes and no, like, no, not really. But they could request that or, you know, then they would have to justify that to a judge and things like that. But it’s yeah, all of this is is. So I say that’s my biggest learning. This is an entire part that luckily in my long business career, you know, investing in hundreds of startups and building businesses for 20 years now. ⁓ I haven’t been involved in quite an extensive legal process like this. And it also made me say that, like, hey, avoid this if you can. I do not recommend it, ⁓ particularly how it can be weaponized and how companies with lots of money ⁓ can literally spend millions of dollars to force you to spend millions of dollars to defend, even just to like, you know, respond to things.

Luke:
Matt, I have to admit that’s not ⁓ the answer I was hoping to hear when Jonathan asked that question.

Matt:
Well, there’s been so many other things I’ve learned, but you asked about the biggest thing.

Luke:
Yeah, sure. All right, fair enough.

Matt:
So I was trying to think, well, this is the biggest surface area. Like, have I have I learned about how to communicate better? Of course. Like, and that’s been something I’ve learned by doing it well and doing it poorly many times since I was a kid and started WordPress. So there’s been like probably thousands of things I’ve learned. However, this is like the biggest area of kind of new knowledge and domain that I’ve actually had to become quite expert in. Maybe not expert, but had to learn like so, so, so much.

Luke:
So that leads nicely into sort of my final question also, which I actually, mentioned earlier that there’s been a couple of these controversies in the start. We’ve been around long enough to remember like Envato and Thesis and things like that. This does feel a bit different because when I look around me, I see a lot of contributors have lost trust, I’ve seen a lot of drop-off of contributors. And then I see like these behaviors like, ⁓ is pineapple delicious on a pizza? I guess that was meant as a joke, but when people are like freaking out about the future of the project, it didn’t land well for me. The whole JKPress tongue in cheek thing and banning people and all of, then there’s like new organizations calling like WPCC who are like trying to maybe bring some order to all of this. And it just feels like a baller gun, like a complete chaos. feels messy. And I see people around me losing faith in your leadership. And I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve trusted you through multiple stages. And some of these, as you called them, some of these big things that these controversies that have happened before.

This newest one feels very different. And what I’m hoping you can lead me, leave me with for this podcast is why should, give me, give me some good reasons. Give me a good reason to keep trusting in your leadership of the project. The WP Engine thing so far hasn’t felt to me personally, like it was a war worth fighting. I have to tell you, I kind of resent being dragged into it.

Matt:
I guess first I’ll just say, I’m sorry.

Luke:
Thank you.

Matt:
So, it’s a big question. I’m not sure exactly how to answer it fully. I will say it has been nice taking perspective to be able to look at old blog posts. so I know you say this feels different this time. However, one of the benefits of now having done this for 20 years, 22 years with WordPress, is looking back at the time, I thought those were existential crises. And people were saying, this is the death of WordPress. WordPress has died a dozen times over the years. And there’s always been someone saying, and by the way, people who are incentivized to say like, okay, this is the end. Now let’s all switch to this other thing or now let’s come over to my thing or let’s go to this new technology stack. It’s all jam stack now, or it’s all gonna be, you know, we’re all going to switch to Wix or whatever it is. That has happened so many times over the years. ⁓ And any time that you falter or make a mistake or just have a controversy or a public fight, people are going to use that to pile on and ⁓ promote their self-interest and for the different things.

So the question like, Luke, you’re saying personally, like, what should you, how can I give you confidence? I don’t know, I hope coming on your podcast, having this discussion helps a little bit. ⁓

Luke:
Yeah, that’s definitely big.

Matt:
I hope that you also, you know, judge us by, you know, how is the next version of WordPress? Is it safe? Is it secure? Is it stable? What are we building? What is like the new features that my company is investing in around AI and MCP and the future of WordPress? Like what are the things that we’re putting into open source?

You know, so look at the sort of breadth of everything and also like look at the track record. So has have I changed in the past, you know, six months in a way that is different from the past 19 and a half years or 21 years or whatever. So, but ultimately you have to make your own decision and you choose where to put your energy and time. And I think everyone should do that based on, you know, where they find, you know, meaningfulness, connection, joy, happiness from everything.

And so, you know, part of some of this, like the intention behind the pineapple thing or something like that is also just to remind ourselves that like, hey, let’s have fun with this. We’re building software. This should be a little bit silly. We should be able to have jokes, not take ourselves too, too seriously around this. ⁓ Yes, it is the huge end of the world, but like, are we still able to go to our homes at night and, you know, hug our loved ones and have food to eat?

in the grand scheme of things like is what is the the threats, the existential threats or our future and our well-being. Even if even like let’s just pretend like WordPress, I would shut down tomorrow. Like, well, OK, so we’ll make a copy of it and you could still sell it to clients, whatever this new thing is called or whatever it is. Like what would be it’s easy to catastrophize and feel like things are the end of the world or existential.

However, you know, this is also why I love meditation, like, it’s really helpful to be able to take a step back and like, really, like, okay, look at the full context, or even imagine like, okay, let’s imagine the worst possible than that could happen. And if that happened, what would I do tomorrow? well, maybe I would, you know, like,

Let’s pretend that WordPress or going away is worst possible thing. By the way, I’m just saying that I don’t think it’ll happen. But, you know, let’s just pretend that’s like a terrible thing that could happen. ⁓ Or I get hit. let’s say I die tomorrow. I could be hit by a bus, by the way. OK, what happens the next day? ⁓

Luke:
Yeah. I would scramble to look for a job. That’s what I’d do if that happened.

Matt:
You know, and what will all the people running WordPress around the world do? What do all the web posts do? What do, like, you know, I think we will find a way, we will move on, we will like, you know, and the beautiful thing about open source and that license also is that those fundamental freedoms that are granted in that license, you know, the sort of twist on copyright law that open source has figured out, you know, from their pioneers of it in the 90s and the 80s, does provide a lot of continuity and care, which is different than if this were proprietary software ⁓ or something else. So ultimately, that’s another thing. It’s like, we’re all open source at the end of the day. And so that does provide a lot of customization, flexibility, autonomy, and freedom to all the users of that software.

Jonathan:
Matt, thank you for all of this. I really, one of the things that stood out to me from your WordCamp US keynote and the Q&A afterwards is I saw myself feeling excited about building again. I’m looking forward to like 6.9. I’ve been personally having a lot of fun playing with AI and I’m seeing an energy in WordPress that I think part of Luke and I and I really appreciate you coming on to have this conversation with us is that we’re looking for a way to move on. And yeah, I really appreciate.

Yeah, thank you for taking the time to do this and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in 6.9. We’ll be covering that this season Thank you for coming on spending this time with us.

Matt:
And likewise, I appreciate that even though we might really disagree in certain areas or have different worldviews or different things, that we can come together for discussion. And I think that’s really important for society, that even people who radically disagree or that we not allow that to shut down the discourse and the conversations. And also remember that we’re humans at the end of the day.

We have health and trials and tribulations and people get sick and they die and all these sorts of things. Like, you know, let’s remember that fundamental humanity and try to find ways to be kind to each other and also, you know, engage with each other.