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I really do not agree that WordPress by committee is a good idea. Each individual, especially Joost De Valk, have their own personal motivations. De Valk doesn’t and has never represented me in any way, shape, or form. And he now owns or is partners in a venture capital company? I don’t put a lot of faith and trust in his point of view. He’s a guy who refused to provide support for his open source version of Yoast, which forced people to upgrade to get help, I provide support for my free version.
This, to me, looks like the typical move to oust a leader and take over the project. If this were to happen, it could also cause the project to die a slow death too. Look at Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg. They drive or drovetheir visions from a singular point of view. I don’t necessarily like Musk but I group him in with the others because they’re all in similar positions.
I have seen what happens when a group try to come in and force the leader out. It can have even more harmful effects than the status quo. It happens all the time and then the organization is frozen because there’s no clear leadership on all aspects of the project.
Then you have WP Engine, who clearly want this to happen, egging things on by releasing a statement.
This is ugly. The wolves are coming out when they sense they can get an advantage. Who votes on these people leading anything? Who says that each of them represent what we would like to see? Is there a community vote? Do I get a say? It seems like the people who have made the most money from the project and have the most influence and coming together to try and force Matt out.
And stop with this “benevolent dictator) nonsense. Matt is acting as an executive. Sure it’s not perfect. Sure, there are issues. But he’s the core visionary behind the project driving it forward and not a single one of the others has grown an open source project to this level in their personal histories. They’ve built agencies, themes, and plugins and they all come from their niche point of views, but none of them has actually driven a project that’s 100 times what they’ve built on their own.
Of course their point of view is valuable and should be listened to but I think Matt had every right to hold WP Engine accountable for use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
I do not share the opinion the trademarks should be public. Show me another example of an open source project releasing its trademarks for free and open use. If you do that, it completely waters down the mark and the brand. No. Absolutely not. Do not make the trademark free to use. When anyone can use the WordPress mark for whatever they want, many people will be confused. Everyone one will then say they are WordPress and no one can do anything about it. Such a nonsensical idea. The only reason anyone would want it open is so they can finally use the term in a Google ad. So they can profit off the use and surely not give back the same value then mark brings to them.
There are a lot of people who stand by Matt’s leadership. Are some things not advisable? Absolutely The Pineapple login, shutting down WordPress.org for the holidays, then saying we don’t know when it will be back is immature and not what I’d expect from Matt. And, the constant posts and tweets from Matt are probably, in some ways, a bridge too far. But he’s also fighting for what he believes in and there’s something to be said for that. Most qualified people would say that enough is enough and just keep your mouth ahut.
I just don’t see WordPress evolving by committee. It’s not something any organization does very well, open source or commercial. How many companies out there run themselves by committee? Not many.
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“The Linux Foundation offers a free, perpetual, world-wide sublicense to approved sublicense applicants. In return, the sublicensee holders must agree not to challenge Linus Torvalds’ ownership of the Linux mark in any jurisdiction, and to provide proper attribution of ownership on their goods, services and elsewhere.”
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I am an outsider, an amateur who has been using WordPress personally for small civic nonprofit groups, often not even with a 501(c)(3), the largest budget of which is in the low five figures. At a quick glance, I see 2 issues with the 5-point proposal:
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“Companies and individuals can sponsor the foundation, receiving perks like listings on a hosting page.”—I am not sure what this means, but sponsors generally get outsized control and financial advantages beyond their proportional contribution.
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“proper governance”—I really need a sense of what is meant by that, as it could be helpful to progress and equity or it could be extremely restrictive, bureaucratic, and exclusionary.
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I support Joost de Valk with his ideas for a reform. This is a clear conflict of interest for Matt to server so many roles simultaneously. The Foundation and his company must be clearly separated. WordPress.org accounts being banned left and right for no reason. I don’t know what Matt smokes, but that clearly is a form of a dictatorship that goes against anything open-source and community stands for. His personal wars are not the wars of the community against any company. It’s time for people to say “The King is without clothes!”
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Pleased it was allowed, sums up perfectly my point of view and that of the silent majority.
They say empty vessels make the most noise, those who don’t like the status quo have a variety of options available to them, due ironically to the efforts of Matt who has long advocated for open source.
So as they say, off you pop, jog on and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Of course, they won’t because like all good venture capitalists, they know where the money is, and it ain’t with the alternative.
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I’ll put this out there… There were plenty of people in the last decade alone talking at WordCamps in hallway tracks or after parties expressing some of the very views brought up. These ideas and proposal by Joost weren’t new at all.
I support his ideas in this and think with fair and good planning, this could be a good thing.
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It’s clear the WordPress community is at a crossroads. Joost de Valk’s call for change is a bold step toward decentralizing leadership and promoting democracy within the project. As open-source evolves, a more diverse and collaborative approach seems necessary to ensure its future. Curious to see where this conversation leads!
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I click on Jesse Nickles’ Twitter profile and the second thing I see is support for neonazi and holocaust denier.
Maybe you should vet your advocates a bit more because this adds a sour taste.
https://xcancel.com/jessuppi retweeted https://xcancel.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/1870600724230607080#m.
Germar Rudolf has an english wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germar_Rudolf
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Forking isn’t likely to go anywhere and is just going to be a headache and more work for everyone having to support multiple communities.
I don’t know what the solution is, but I’ve been working in WordPress for ten years now, the client sites are already built and running, there is no moving away from WordPress. The clients don’t care that there is some kerfuffle going on.
I could have ignored it all but the hostile takeover of the plugin feels like the trust has been broken and I don’t see how to get it back.
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Have cake. Eat cake.
Let’s understand that “WordPress” the community, the code, the brand, et al. has an extremely high valuation. Billions of dollars of valuation.Thus, the current governance structure over WordPress is not going to change despite the good intentions of people like Jost and Karim and the crappy intentions of WPE. Matt has made it clear, he’s not inclined to change governance or turn his brand over to well-meaning but non-professional directors.
So what’s possible? A code fork. A community realignment. What usually happens in these situations is that the fork does not get the financial or developer resources it needs and infighting ensues before the fork implodes.
There’s a reason why open source is both fantastic and hard to sustain. This is it
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I do not believe in just “removeing Matt”. I believe in the Community.
So many people in the community all they care is about their wallets and friends. Not about the community.
For me I remember when WordCamps was about the local community and not bringing someone from across the country.
The last WordCamp I attended was 2018 in Toronto. The next year there was none then the pandemic. The reason I was given is they were too tired. Then later on because it was too hard.
If the local meetup group couldn’t handle things in 2019, they should of given the reins to others in the community.
For the past couple of years the monthly meetups were online and let’s fix your site up.
Look at the Reddit group, so many are just milking the drama, no giving back. They’ll write the usual attack posts just to milk up the SEO juices.
Every year there should be some kind of selection on who the organizers are for WordCamps. The speakers should be about the local community. I am sorry but in let’s say WordCamp Halifax…there shouldnt’ be speakers from Miami, Los Angeles, Houston or even Paris.
Once the organizers are selected then there should be a way for speakers to submit ideas then people who want to attend vote, so out of let’s say 100 ideas, the top 40-60 get voted in the schedule.
Same for the monthly meetups, there should be a list that people want to see and the top voted topic gets in for January 2025, repeat for every month.
You could do it for three months from now on. To give the organizers to find a speaker for that topic. So we, as 25 December 2024, vote for the topic in March 2025. In January 2025 we vote for April 2025 topic and so forth.
You could also put a whole bunch of topics on a list and the top 12 become the monthly meetups for 2025.
It should never be about the organizers of whatever city or town and getting their friends as speakers.
Forking will never happen, wasn’t ClassicPress a fork and apparently it was so much for some of the coders for that (read that somewher eon Reddit).
Without WordPress, so many of us wouldn’t have a job. Some do the VERY BARE MINIMUM.
If we have some kind of Council…some people will get in like they shouldn’t be in that Council.
I am not going to mention which WordCamp but one of the organizers for it, forced the location of that WordCamp, he/she didn’t even attend and the college/university that WordCamp occured wa where he/she (that organizer) worked at, at some point.
EVERY YEAR, there should be an application and not just given to the previous years’s organizers.
Perfect example of what shouldn’t happen…WPE, we all know all they care is about making money and not truly giving back to the community. They force turning off revisions, they have a list of no-no plugins to install, that is so wrong.
We should be focusing on community and not the professional/personal interests of a few people.
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I am No tech guy. Been long time user of work. Have no interest in this or that or Old or New Feud. But Yoast Lecturing to Matt on the Matter is laughable. This guy we never ever cared for Free customers, we literally celebrated when ‘RankMath’ came and then yoast has to add many features for Free.
To Joost de Valk- i think Matt is anyday better than you. Maybe Matt is wrong in current happenings but for us ‘users’ he always had cared.
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Joost is a joke. For anyone blindly hopping on the hype train, remember this: https://wptavern.com/yoastcon-overshadowed-by-twitter-storm-joost-de-valk-seo-industry-leaders-called-out-for-objectifying-women
This guy is not leader material. Meanwhile, Matt is doing great work. Sure, people will always complain about decisions, but honestly, y’all are lucky Matt’s as balanced as he is.
Try pulling this crap on someone like Linus Torvalds and see how that goes. 💀
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Joost de Valk’s call for breaking the WordPress status quo is a timely and thought-provoking challenge to the platform’s ongoing development. His suggestion that the community should embrace a more radical shift—particularly in terms of user experience and platform integration—speaks to the growing need for WordPress to evolve beyond its current limitations. While WordPress has long been the go-to solution for website building, it’s clear that the platform must adapt to the increasingly competitive digital landscape. However, as the community’s reactions show, change isn’t always easy, especially when it comes to preserving the open-source values that have made WordPress so successful. I think de Valk’s push for innovation is important, but it’s essential to strike a balance between bold changes and maintaining the core principles that users love about WordPress. Ultimately, the future of WordPress hinges on how well the community can embrace transformation while staying true to its foundational ideals.
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