A friendly reminder that the author of this post, “Sarah Gooding[,] is an Editorial Ninja at Audrey Capital.” “Audrey Capital is an angel investment and research company created by Matt Mullenweg of WordPress to help innovative ideas grow.” Sarah is unfortunately not listed on Audrey Capital’s website under “Personnel”, but I’ll take her word for it.

To quote their Wikipedia article, “On September 19, 2019 Automattic announced a Series D funding round of $300 million from Salesforce, bringing the post-money valuation of the company to $3B.” And, to continue avoiding linking anything in case that would get me stuck in a moderation queue, Automattic is “a distributed company with 1,245 Automatticians in 77 countries speaking 93 different languages” (according to their own website).

I don’t have anything against Matt Mullenweg, Audrey Capital, nor Automattic. I barely know them. But I do take issue with this article being written from a seemingly neutral and third-party perspective, when it is fact written by someone working for someone who is the founder and CEO of one of the parties being discussed.

The “About” page of WordPress Tavern tells us that it is owned by Mullenweg, but they don’t seem proud of it when that information is in the second-to-last paragraph of said page. Maybe Matt is a shy guy. I can understand it being uncomfortable to put your stamp on things. But I think there should be a disclaimer on this article, given it being about the exact subject of confusion between Automattic and WordPress. Because it seems like an open secret, after reading the article, that there is a very strong tie between the author (Sarah) and Automattic (who Monica Ohara represents via WordPress.com).

Man, that was tiring with max-height: 230px;. To conclude, kudos to Monica & Automattic for making one small step for a company that I hope will end up being one giant leap for the community. And, of course, thank you to Caspar Hübinger for fighting for this. I respectfully reserve my right to be a cynic, though 😉