A vision for a new WordPress era
WordPress is at a crossroads, now even more clearly then when I wrote my previous post on WordPress’s roadmap. I had very much intended to leave this topic alone for a bit until after the holiday break, until, last night, Matt imposed a holiday break on us all.
This holiday break caused issues that needed immediate fixing, but also makes more clear that we don’t have the luxury of waiting.
We, the WordPress community, need to decide if we’re ok being led by a single person who controls everything, and might do things we disagree with, or if we want something else. For a project whose tagline is “Democratizing publishing”, we’ve been very low on exactly that: democracy.
I read the recent open letter by 20 signatories on the Repository who say “we stand with you” and make very clear that they object to the current status quo. I agree with most everything they say, and I want us all to take a step further: let’s get to solutions.
You’ll have heard the proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” and that’s very much how I think about developing CMSs too. You need many voices, many ideas, many backgrounds. You need to embrace diversity. Unfortunately, those with ideas that don’t follow the same direction as our current leader, are being shut down, quite a few even banned, hence the reason that those 19 signatories mentioned above chose anonymity. I get it and I respect it.
Our BDFL is no longer Benevolent, and because of that, speaking up in public is a risk. In an interview with Inc (which to be fair Matt called a “hit piece” himself) Matt said he preferred the term “enlightened leader” over “dictator”. I asked ChatGPT what would be qualities of an enlightened leader, it gave me the following:
An enlightened leader embodies qualities that inspire trust, foster growth, and guide others with wisdom, compassion, and integrity.
I think it’s fair to say that most in the community would disagree with that being an apt description of Matt’s current behavior.
On contributing & influence
While at Yoast, we always contributed “big”. Mostly because we wanted to, but quite often also because we had to: if we didn’t build the APIs to integrate into the things we wanted to integrate with (for example: Gutenberg), we simply couldn’t. As owners of Yoast we’ve spent well over 5% of revenue over the course of my time there on WordPress core development and that tradition seems to mostly continue there today.
In exchange for our contributions, I did get some say in where WordPress went, though never officially, and never when it went in directions that Matt disagreed with. Over time, that influence became less as Matt tightened his grip on the project. I think that tightening was in part a cramp. Wanting to control more what people were working on, because the project wasn’t progressing fast enough in the direction he wanted it to go in.
A lot has happened over the last few months, that I think all comes down to the above. I’ve often considered how the WordPress world “worked” unhealthy. I’ve spoken to many slightly outside of our industry over the past months about what was happening and several people, independent of each other, described WordPress as “a cult” to me. And I understand why.
I think it’s time to let go of the cult and change project leadership. I’ve said it before: we need a “board”. We can’t wait with doing that for the years it will take for Automattic and WP Engine to fight out this lawsuit. As was already reported, Matt said recently in Post Status that “it’s hard to imagine wanting to continue working on WordPress after this”. A few days later, he gave a completely conflicting message in the State of the Word. Yet he never came back on that first statement or clarified that he’d changed his mind. He also didn’t come back to talk to the community he turned his back on.
Last night, he disabled the registration of new accounts on WordPress.org and said this in his post:
I hope to find the time, energy, and money to reopen all of this sometime in the new year.
What if Matt doesn’t reopen registration? Or only does so for people with an @automattic.com email address? Let’s be clear: he could.
I’m still, to this day, very thankful for what Matt has created. I would love to work with him to fix all this. But it’s clear now, that we can no longer have him be our sole leader, although I’d love it if we could get him to be among the leaders.
What should happen now?
In my ideal world, the following things happen:
- A WordPress foundation like entity becomes the lead of the project, and gets a board of industry people, from diverse backgrounds.
- WordPress.org and all other important community assets that are currently “Matt’s private property” are handed over to that foundation.
- The WordPress trademark is given to the public domain or otherwise dealt with in such a way that every company can freely say that they do “WordPress hosting”, “WordPress support” etc. Not just because that’s the right thing to do in my mind, but because doing so means we allow growth of the terms and the concepts.
- People and companies can become sponsors of this WordPress foundation like entity, and we give some perks to those sponsors (for instance, listing them on a hosting page) and we disclose all of that transparently.
- We create several small teams responsible for Architecture, Product, Events, etc. and create a proper governance structure around this.
There’s lots more to figure out, but these are steps that must be taken fast. On the code side we need to take steps too, and we can most quickly act on one that has become very clear that we need immediately:
Federated And Independent Repositories
We need to supplement WordPress.org updates with other sources, so that what happened to Advanced Custom Fields, can’t happen again. Lots of hosts are currently experimenting with or already putting in place mirrors of WordPress.org. This creates issues: download and active install statistics are no longer reliable, for instance.
Just having mirrors of WordPress.org also doesn’t really solve the problem of a single party controlling our single update server. For that, we need to make sure that those mirrors federate with each other, and share each others data and, as Karim suggested, allow for independent plugins and themes to be hosted there, outside of the wordpress.org repository. I call this: Federated and Independent Repositories, in short: FAIR.
I’m already talking to several hosts about this, and would welcome anyone who wants to join these conversations, so we’re not duplicating work.
Matt might not agree to my first five points above. However: we can still work on the Federated and Independent Repositories without his permission, because frankly, we don’t need it.
We take back the commons.
What is my role in this?
I’ve already been working and talking to lots of people over the last few months trying to find ways out of this. I want to hold this community together. This resulted in several conversations, starting with my conversations with Matt and how to reconcile, to several conversations I’ve initiated with key community people & hosting leaders. This led to a deeper conversation with Karim Marucchi, CEO of Crowd Favorite, one of the WordPress world’s first enterprise-grade agencies, about breaking away from the status quo and focusing on the future. I feel this gives me a base for moving the conversation forward with people that I can fall back on and who can help to transition us to what’s next.
Taking back the commons means that we try to hear every voice, be considerate of all the different use cases of that commons and bring us all forward. We may not all agree along the way, but we’ll talk about that openly, without fear. We may make mistakes, and then we’ll set them right, and if needed, apologize.
I’m here, and willing to lead through this transition. I do have the time, the energy and the money needed to fund myself doing it. I’ve worked in this industry and this community for close to 20 years and it’s very dear to me. Thanks in large part to the WordPress project, I have the privileged position to be able to drop and/or delegate some of the stuff I’m working on and start working on this.
Let me be clear though: we should not replace one BDFL with another. This is a moment of transition. I’m also very willing to work with other leadership if it turns out the community wants someone else.
If you haven’t already, go read Karim’s post too and let me know all your thoughts. In the comments here, on Bluesky, X, through DMs somewhere or through my contact form here.
What happens now?
Right now, in the next few weeks: nothing. We do, truly, all deserve this holiday break (for those it applies to). I’m going to celebrate the holidays with my wife, children and wider family. I hope everyone can reflect about this throughout the holiday season (or you block it out entirely, and think about it later, fine too!).
We (being Karim and myself) will start 2025 by getting into a (probably virtual) room half way through January with lots of the leaders of this community & industry and decide where we go from here. So, enjoy, rest, and get ready!
Thank you 🙏🏼
I can’t wait to see how this progresses and to help wherever I can.
Exciting times ahead for the future of WP!
For the love god, FORK IT ALREADY. Matt will never relinquish control otherwise.
Create a new foundation with full transparency to manage it. There are plenty of companies in the ecosystem that would love to donate millions.
So lets just get on with it, this nonsense continued for long enough, wasting everyone’s time and money.
WP was forked already in August/September 2018: ClassicPress
And what many people don’t understand about ClassicPress is that it was forked as much over the lack of “enlightened leadership” as over the addition of Gutenberg to core.
I think that’s part of the branding problem of ClassicPress… The whole concept of calling it “Classic” makes it very much just about that in most people’s eyes…
I think this is a great idea for you to lead and do under a name other than WordPress. There’s really no way to accomplish everything you want without starting with a fresh slate from a trademark, branding, and people point of view.
Which of these things are impossible in your view within WordPress?
I don’t think any of them are possible if Matt’s not willing to let go of at least a little bit of the control he claims not to have on the WordPress Foundation or the project as a whole. I’d take his comment to mean that he’s not willing.
I’m pretty sure he means he’d never let it happen, but he still thinks of himself as “the good guy” and doesn’t want to say so outright.
I think from Matt’s view. He owns WordPress as a Brand, Trademark etc. It all belongs to Matt.
It would be nice if the community came together, like a Non Profit Organization from across the world not tied to a single person, country. It should be truly open source. Not being affected by some company contributing or no, not being affected by one person’s rational or irrational thoughts, not affecting a persons trademark and ownership.
So, you’re sticking with the “it’s my ball, I’m going home” mentality, got it.
In the off chance that this whole thing DOES go under a different name than WordPress, why would it need to start fresh from a people point of view?
There’s lots of people in the community – and in your organizations (hi, Woo) – that are looking for alternatives to your bastardized version of WordPress.
No fresh start needed – just a new path for people to follow that doesn’t involve you and your temper tantrums.
WordPress has grown for 20 years – sadly, you have not.
Somehow harsh to say the BDFL has not grown for 20 years but probably it often happens that the the self-appointed leader looses the contact to the reality of “the people”. Sadly after an overthrow it often doesn’t get much better. Let’s hope the community and WordPress can be saved, with or without the name.
If people use the hook and filter system as designed then it’s still core WordPress. Other than philosophical objections I personally don’t see how offering alternative options is a problem. Plugin and theme authors are entitled to have their themes and plugins updated from any repo of their choosing. And you are entitled not to host those at dot org. But your actions over the last four months have made it clear people need to have alternative options, options that don’t depend on the decisions of one peds
What are we supposed to do? I mean, really… My family and I rely on WP for the roof over our heads and for the food on our table — multiply that by thousands, tens of thousands, or millions of people.
I suspect you know many things the rest of us don’t. Hopefully, you can see some things that we can’t. But I wish for a second you could see this entire situation from our points of view.
Everything feels so unpredictable right now, and the collateral damage it’s causing feels like it’s tipped the scales to be worse than the damage from WPE not contributing their fair share.
Where does it end? How does this play out?
There is a way. It involves you stepping down. Which is what the community wants.
Matt, are you saying you are not open to the idea of making WordPress more democratic, with a more transparent and diverse leadership? Even with yourself included in said leadership structure?
How does one go about putting the idea for a vote with the foundation? Or are you speaking on their behalf?
Hope you take some time over the Christmas period to reconsider your position before its too late.
This would be a great use case for a certain abbreviation that can’t be trademarked.
Why don’t we just call it SecurePress?
Great idea, and include all Automattic/WooCommerce paid plugin functionality as free “fork”.
Thank you, Joost (and Karim, too), for launching this conversation and demonstrating positive leadership. Your suggested actions make great sense to me. I look forward to hearing more as the ideas are developed. I’m not a “community leader”, but will be happy to contribute if I can add value.
Happy Holidays!
Thank you for being a proactive and authoritative voice for a community that is completely lost. Let’s go!
Thank you and Karim for collaborating through this. Let’s do this. Happy to contribute some DevRel efforts and participate in any way of healing, restoring, and growing the community.
This is link-bait material.
No one in their right mind would ever do this:
“WordPress.org and all other important community assets that are currently “Matt’s private property” are handed over to that foundation.”
We can ask many things of Matt. We can do so politely. We can even call him names. But it’s our fault that we built our community and business around his private property. It’s nonsensical to ask of him to just give up on his private property.
And yes, I completely disagree with his approach of the WP Engine situation. That’s total BS.
But asking a functional human being to just give up his control of any IP is just wishful thinking.
Exactly this, but it is easier vs taking the responsability.
And yet every person that contributes towards open source (including Matt!) gives up their intellectual property every time they assign the copyright of the code they’ve written to the project.
The world spins because sane, rational and functional human beings give up their IP for the greater good, how is this any different?
The community contributed without clearly knowing that WordPress was his private property.
Hello Joost, some quick thoughts since I only have 5 minutes, firstly, have you considered bringing yoast over to Craft CMS? Secondly, have you considered investing in https://craftcms.com/, It’s PHP based, it feels modern, it’s super fast, but, lacks the only moat wordpress has (easy to install plugins), for now. I don’t think there’s been a better time to start looking at other solutions, I don’t think another wordpress fork will work. And, to anyone reading this, please understand that the only moat wordpress has is the plugin respository, the moment you bring funding and attention to a different platform with some degree of significant momentum behind it wordpress is in serious danger.
The reason I keep going back to WP for my clients is its extensibility. I’ve always worried about having only one option. Monopolies are useful, until they’re not. : /
The pricing of Craft is something that most likely won’t work in the WordPress world. The free as in “free beer” part is so ingrained in the community.
Thank you for taking the lead on this. Those of us who don’t HAVE the time, money, authority… we’re grateful.
The things to happen sound like the real five for the future! Count me in!
Thank you. This is the type of fair-minded leadership needed for the good of our community.
Yes, yes, yes. Thank you Joost and Karim for stepping *forward*.
I stand with both of you for this “hold this community together” effort. Publicly sharing my support. Let me know how I can help.
Thank you, Joost (and Karim, too)!
I hope your proactive approach will bring good to the WordPress community.
I stand fully behind you on this and your efforts!
100% support this path forward for WordPress. Thank you, Karim and others for putting together such a broad coalition and sound plan.
Joost
Join AspirePress.org. ASAP. You already have a head start with the project well underway. And it’s within WordPress.
Thank you Joost and Karim. Curious to see where this goes and happy to contribute some of my time and energy to this initiative 🙂
Also, happy holidays!
Thank you for this initiative! Count me in to help and contribute towards this effort, whether it be something community, code of conduct or development related.
This is exactly the kind of leadership WP needs. Thank you Joost and Karim. Here’s hoping your efforts align with and build with other independent groups working on this including The WP community collective + AspirePress.
This is just what I needed to read. Thank you for your clear communication and commitment to this vision.
I look forward to doing my part to assist with this process.
Thanks Joost for stepping up to take the lead and starting this along the right path. Changes are coming to the WordPress Community better if they are organized vs a chaotic mess.
Joost, it’s really sweet that you still have good faith when it comes to Matt. But there’s something you need to know: Matt is a narcissist. You can’t take anything people like that say at face value. There’s always an agenda of gaining or retaining control. What he meant was “There’s really no way I’ll allow you to accomplish anything you want without fighting you every step of the way”.
Because narcissists cannot give up control, ever. And they cannot admit they’re wrong, because that takes away their control too. Taking WP into a direction of new leadership would mean Matt would have to do both of those things, but they simply aren’t possible. Just as gravity pulls things down, narcissists live by these rules.
And what would Matt do, if he wasn’t in charge of WP? He showed in the recent speed competition that he doesn’t understand WP unless it’s to write a blog post, and his ideas have been holding back WP itself for years. So he knows he has no value to the project. He’s shown that he doesn’t understand the community, disregarding users and ethics constantly. So he has no value in a different community-facing role. And he’s shown that as a CEO, he’s volatile, petty, and has no understanding of consequence, so he has no value as an executive on another project. He knows full well that letting go of his top position in WP means he loses everything. The only people still rooting for him are the few left on Twitter that he hasn’t blocked.
So please reconsider all this good faith, and whether it still has any value here. Statements like “I’d love it if we could get him to be among the leaders” are worrying. Nobody wants him around anymore. If you were reviewing any other candidate, who’s name was not Matt Mullenweg but had a laundry list of all the shady and vindictive and inconsiderate things this person has done, would you suggest they help lead the future of WordPress? If it’s time to escape the cult, then it’s time to start accepting that when Matt shows (not tells) you what kind of person he is, you listen. He’s simply not a good guy, and he’ll never give up the control he has.
The only option is to forge your own path, separate from him. And, unfortunately, Matt is right about needing a rebrand: he won’t let you take away the “WordPress” name, it’s one of the only things he has. But on the bright side, it’s also one of the only things he can stop you from taking.
I believe in you. We need someone to lead all this, someone with wisdom, influence and power. You’re doing good work and I know you’ll succeed.
Charlie – you are 100% spot on. Believe Matt when he shows us who he is. While I would love for Joost’s idea to succeed, Matt has already proven that his ego and control are the only things that matter.
It’s not the product.
It’s not the community.
It’s not the developers that have made WordPress the success that it is.
It is childish shenanigans that have a direct financial impact on so many of us.
There are amazing developers that have created an incredible ecosystem of plugins, themes, and Page builders that paper over the myriad missing features and clunky (at best) core of WordPress and WooCommerce.
By continuing to play along with Matt, we are all tacitly endorsing his behavior.
It is time to move on to something else that could be 10 times better than what we all have now.
It’s time to stop drinking the Kool aid leave the cult.
Thanks for your analysis Charlie, Matt Mullenweg indeed is a narcissist and everyone who has not realised that yet, should start opening their eyes!
Although I welcome Joost’s initiative, I don’t see it going anywhere but the digital paper of blog posts and virtual meetings.
The fact that the entire teams at both Automattic and WP (the latter of which I believe consists of some paid roles and mostly volunteers, but I could be wrong) are standing by and doing nothing is worrying at best! Either they too are all narcissists or they like the status that being a Core developer/contributor brings and prefer that rather than to face the potential backlash when protesting?
And of course the talks of forking WordPress come up again and for some strange reason everyone seems to forget that back in August 2018 WordPress was actually successfully forked and has been in constant development as ClassicPress ever since!
Why doesn’t everyone come running to ClassicPress? For everyone complaining about their livelihood potentially being at risk, ClassicPress is the perfect answer! And of course with more developers flocking to ClassicPress, the development of plugin forks will also increase and the whole thing could really gain new momentum!
Charlie, thank you so much for pointing this out, so clearly!! I have been following the news developing around this new WordPress saga, extensively… Each time, even more questions have come to my mind. But with your message here, I finally think to get the clue. You now finally provide me a clear view, above all, by giving meaning to my personal doubts and concerns, so far. To me it seems, you nail it, as it is. Thanks so much for that!
I strongly support this initiative. While I have enjoyed using WordPress, recent events have caused me increasing concern.
I am now moved to Classic press and progressively reducing my reliance on plugins, particularly those from Automattic.
I recognize that true independence necessitates a move away from WordPress, although a complete transition has not yet been feasible. However, this remains my long-term objective.
Interesting take – THIS is the biggest thing to stand out for me:
“People and companies can become sponsors of this WordPress foundation like entity, and we give some perks to those sponsors (for instance, listing them on a hosting page) and we disclose all of that transparently.”
This sound exactly like what we have now and that is NOT good since EVERY one of those hosts are sub-standard.
There’s a difference between the current situation where some hosts are “recommended”, because we know they have paid a lot of money and the new situation where you show who paid money for what without recommending them. They get respect for contributing, but without any official recommendation. Transparency is very important.
Great initiative Joost and Karim. Thanks for holding the community together and taking a step forward. Let’s go.
Thank you very much. This is a great thing and I am very pleased that Joost and Karim are launching this initiative.
Thanks Joost. I totally support the call for a more transparent and democratic leadership structure in the WP community. No single individual should to have the power to unilaterally make decisions that impact so many. Thanks for bringing some clarity and vision to the situation! There’s so much talent and potential in the community. Looking forward to seeing where this goes in 2025. Merry Christmas!
Thank you for articulating what so many in the WordPress community have been feeling, Joost.
Your vision of a more collaborative and transparent governance model is both refreshing and necessary for the project’s long-term sustainability. The idea of a diverse foundation and federated repositories resonates deeply, as it encourages inclusivity and shared ownership.
I appreciate your willingness to step forward and lead these conversations 🫡 —it gives hope for a stronger, more united future.
Thank you for stepping up, Joost, it’s finally so refreshing to see prominent members of the community being absolutely vocal about the current state of affairs.
I stand with you and I bet you many WordCamp organisers will do, too.
What is of outmost importance is to try and keep the community together and the ecosystem unharmed. This is exactly, what Matt has been failing to see and take into account in his decisions: WordPress is its community.
YoastPress *does* have a nice ring to it. Just saying.
I don’t own the brand Yoast anymore though, so that’d be a bit hard to pull off 😉
Also: this is not a fork. We don’t need a new name.
That is absolutely right, we don’t need a fork, we do not need a new name, neither a new community. We need healthy governance.
And yet, If Matt won’t relinquish the trademarks and .org (and that seems extremely unlikely), maybe that’s the only way?
A fork with the right people behind it and the right governance in place would potentially be far more trustworthy to a lot of us now than anything that still has Matt involved in it, in whatever capacity.
As a small agency the hubris on display is deeply concerning and if he stays involved we’ll just migrate to other systems. We can’t trust our livelihood to an ecosystem that has this much uncertainty in its future. We’d also be doing a disservice to our clients in telling them it’s a stable platform. It clearly isn’t any more. We’ve already started transitioning some of our client work to Statamic since this all started. It’s literally a fork in the road for us and we’ve been using WordPress since 2008.
I fully support this. Enlisting myself to contribute. Let’s turn the page over. The only way Matt can redeem himself is to accept this. Otherwise it’s a battle he will loose.
I wish everyone a long and prosperous life, but I am genuinely concerned about the “bus factor” in the WordPress ecosystem. If control lies solely in the hands of one individual, without a governing body or committee of multiple members, it poses significant risks.
Once an organization reaches a certain size and level of influence, it should not rely entirely on one person. This is essential for the well-being and stability of all contributors and employees involved.
Even as a single entrepreneur running a growing business with 10 employees, I am actively seeking a partner to ensure the continuity of my operations in case I am no longer able to manage them. *Knock on wood.*
Hoi. I think you should fork it. Sorry, this might not be ideal, but it might be the only way I’m afraid.
Then also remove this new heavy blocks editor, which I hated so much I left WordPress for that reason. And focus on what the users want again. And you’re golden.
You won’t regret it.
Not that I’m anyone important, but as one of those users, I *want* the block editor. I’m not sure if we can have such great improvements as the block editor (in my view) along with a well-governed project, but I hope we can.
Let’s not replace one overly top-down controlled project with another.
I agree with you. Making it optional as a core option would make a lot of people happy, but the block editor also has a lot of potential. It doesn’t need scrapping, it’s just been lead by someone who neither understands nor cares how people use it. For Matt, it’s just a feature for wordpress dot com to compete with other sites. He has zero interest in how developed and clients use it otherwise
Melroy, you make it sound as if forking is a piece of cake! Believe me it is not.
But nevertheless in August 2018 a couple of brave souls have actually done it; have a look at ClassicPress.
Thank you so much for taking the lead on such an important matter. You will have our full support.
I fully support this and look forward to what comes next! Let me know how I can help.
Extremely good news, thank you for thanking initiative.
Now, if the fork really happen we just need developers team to create a plugins to convert WordPress site to the new forked core … the world would be a better place!
So why are just talking about what you may do, instead of just doing it? Real project are made just like that, doing them, not talking about them. You seem to have the expertise, backing and karma.
Just fork it, baby. Then you will see what is the commitment, the tenure and the mentioned need of keeping the community together would be.
Otherwise, this article is just a political campaign, where you are mostly talking instead of doing.
If you guys think Matt cares about anyone other than himself its a problem
Like many others I also support this initiative. I appreciate the current proposal to give Matt a fair chance to stay involved. It would make a transition so much easier. But even if he doesn’t want to cooperate, I’m sure there’s more than enough support to create a fork as long as it’s easy for current users to switch their existing sites to the new fork. That’s the biggest condition for success.
This seems like something we could do with a tiny plugin unless and until they somehow prevent that?
I agree that the future of WordPress needs to be clear and transparent leadership. This will give it resilience against any one person trying to blow things up for any reason. We, the users of WordPress, need to trust that they wont do to our plugins and themes what was done to ACF. We need a leadership we can trust.
The cloud brain reckons there’s about a 1% chance of this happening under the WordPress brand so might be time to start thinking of alternatives:
“Sam, if you’re looking for a seat-of-the-pants, subjective probability estimate that Matt Mullenweg will up and hand over the WordPress.org domain and trademark to a new independent governance body anytime soon, I’d peg it at something under 5%. Maybe closer to 1% if we’re being brutally honest.”
https://chatgpt.com/share/6766cd73-cb3c-800f-8b18-6d9d921aa36b
I began to reply here, and it became rather lengthy, so I thought it would be better to publish it on my blog and link to it from here:
https://patriciabt.com/blog/open-reply-to-joost-on-wordpress-leadership/
I’m open to working with you, Joost, and others with similar ideas to help create such a board or “Foundation v2.”
I wish everyone a happy holiday season, if you have one, and hope that 2025 brings restored trust in the WordPress project.
Since its inception, WordPress has evolved into so much more than what it was, powering a significant portion of the web. This success is a testament to the effectiveness of its leadership model and Matt.
While discussions about governance are valuable, it’s essential to acknowledge that the existing leadership structure has played a pivotal role in WordPress’s achievements. Any proposed changes should carefully consider the potential impact on the project’s stability and continued success.
I think we should fork and change the name. WordPress is WordPress, what we need is something that doesn’t exist yet.
Let’s create a Blockchain-based Software Repository.
With Smart Contracts we define rules for adding, verifying, and updating software in the repository, manage user access and permissions, and handle versioning and metadata for software packages.
We will have decentralized storage with store hashes or pointers to these files on the blockchain to ensure integrity and immutability.
We could allow contributors to be rewarded through cryptocurrency or tokens, and a lot of advantages given by a blockchain.
If we do something new, let’s do it with the new technologies. Only the decentralized power given by a blockchain can compete with a small circle of commanders.
Democracy against centralized power, centralized power is the winner. See the ClassicPress case.
However, centralized power against decentralized power, decentralized power is the winner. You just need to design the system properly. Then WordPress will disappear, and a new open source based on a blockchain will bloom.
Based on Matt’s comment, it’s clear that he views the existing structure and control over the WordPress trademark, branding, and community assets as non-negotiable. This reinforces the idea that substantial changes to governance or leadership will likely not happen within the current framework.
If the community wants to move forward with a truly independent and democratic approach, it may have to pursue alternative paths, such as creating a fork or building a parallel project. Matt’s stance highlights the challenge of reforming from within, making external initiatives more appealing to those seeking meaningful change. This also underscores the need for pragmatic discussions about what is realistically achievable within these constraints.
I think as you have a number of companies under your influence that are in the WordPress space, the boards and shareholders should remove you for seeking to harm the community.
Well intentioned although I am sure you are, this isn’t a cogent vision for running a large multi-faceted business with the number of users that WordPress has. Yours and others views on OpenSource don’t reflect the reality of any successful organisations, but yet you want to foist them on a community you have been part of for such a long time.
One person has demonstrated capacity to execute on growing WordPress brand, community as leader (I’d say elected leader too as I recognise you could all overthrow him by forking), and the whole internet seems to be attacking and seeking to supplant Matt, in the name of a business who are using personal smears, PR hit-pieces and well-intentioned (but totally inequipped) commentators to take pot-shots. All you’re going to do is kill the ecosystem.
I’ve seen literally nothing positive come from the attacks on Matt and WordPress.
Matt will never give up on the trademark and a fork will never make it without the backing of a large company to commit resources and developers like Automattic is doing.
Who will pay to maintain such a big project?
Volunteers need coordination, fully committed people and leaders. Who will do this for free?
And as for companies that can back up such a project where are they? We see large companies that benefit from WordPress like WPengine that do so little.
Nobody wants to pay, ideal non trivial open source where everything is free both as in beer and freedom does not exist in the real world.
All these discussions are made in the heat of the moment, nobody realizes the effort needed to run a project like WordPress.
And for forks just ask ClassicPress how it’s doing, nobody wants to use the renamed and less maintained copycat.
As for alternatives there is nothing that can match WordPress in terms of features and ecosystem, there are some new projects like Vvveb but it will take years to build a large community and reach the level of the WordPress ecosystem.
I don’t think that the status quo will be changed soon …
I think you’re making a lot of assumptions here. Many have been paying for things for years. For many companies I’ve spoken to, they’d be willing to do more if the governance of the project was arranged better.
Hey all,
First off, Matt, thank you for WordPress.
Second, the tides are turning. Are you going to destroy all the wonderful things WordPress has brought to the world and it’s people?
Man up dude. Hand over the keys please.
To the community at large, love y’all. So thankful for all the time, effort and, code ..among so so many other things.
I’m more than open to lending my time and effort to help here too. How can I volunteer my time and effort towards the larger good?
Dinos
Thank you for taking the initiative.
A WordPress foundation like entity… The last time I checked, the WordPress Foundation had three directors: Matt Mullenweg, Mark Ghosh, and Chele Chiavacci Farley.
Does anyone know what the latter two think about the this #WPDrama? I’m unfamiliar with the foundation’s statutes, but it would seem unusual if a simple two-to-one vote weren’t possible in such situations.
Has anyone mentioned AspirePress? They are already working on forming the WordPress repository, and they want to democratize/federate it too. Hopefully you could work together.
https://github.com/aspirepress
We’re definitely talking to them!
As commented, this proposal ignores Automattic’s absolute power over WordPress IP. And remember Joost, for years you sided with them, even working directly with Matt to hijack WordPress.org leadership positions for Automattic staff and cronies. Yourself took over the Marketing Team for a short period booting the leader without coordination nor apology. Now you want to replace one BDFL for another, seems to me, based upon your history. Yes, you are an important partner with the WordPress Community at large, No this is not a viable solution.
This proposal seems like the app developers of the iOS App Store want to take over control from Apple.
Totally reasonable, not a communist proposition at all—after all, Marx lives within many.
Why bother with property rights when you can just demand someone hand over what they own?
Let the revolution begin.
Except that Apple developed the App store by themselves, here, those developers helped to build the “app store” for decades.
So contributing to the ‘app store’ is now grounds for demanding ownership?
By that logic, flipping burgers at McDonald’s should earn everyone an ownership stake and a boardroom seat.
Labor may earn proceeds, but it doesn’t create ownership.
Apple owns the App Store they built, just like Matt owns WordPress.org. He didn’t hand out equity for commits, and helping to stock the shelves doesn’t entitle you to own the store.
Coercing Matt, shaming him, or guilt-trapping him aren’t new tricks—it’s straight out of Marx’s playbook, but without the beard or the manifesto.
Your first comment, as I found it in my backend. My reply is to your second.
P.S: I noticed you didn’t approve this comment, so I’m reposting it.
Do you see the irony? By not approving my critical comment, you showcased that you’d be no different than Matt in his position.
—————-
So contributing to the ‘app store’ is now grounds for demanding ownership?
By that logic, flipping burgers at McDonald’s for ‘decades’ should earn everyone an ownership stake and a boardroom seat?
Labor may earn the proceeds, but it doesn’t create a right to ownership.
Apple owns the App Store they built, just like Matt owns WordPress.org.
Matt didn’t hand out equity for commits, and helping stock the shelves doesn’t entitle you or anyone else to claim ownership of the store.
Coercing Matt into giving up ownership of DotOrg, shaming him, or guilt-trapping him aren’t new tricks—it’s straight out of Marx’s playbook.
I didn’t approve any comments for a while because I was out celebrating Christmas with my family 😀
You’re entitled to your opinion, as I am to mine. I’d urge you to read up a bit more about the whole saga, see how Matt has behaved towards the community, and how we got here. I truly would prefer not to be in this situation at all.
I’ve seen and read Matt’s interviews, comments, blog posts, and court filings, including the latest injunction.
I don’t side with Matt either 100%. However, I’d like to highlight a key excerpt from those court filings:
“Mr. Mullenweg has no contracts, agreements, or obligation to provide WP Engine access to the network and resources of WordPress.org. WP Engine points to no terms, conditions, or permissions that entitle them to such access. Nevertheless, WP Engine, a private equity-backed company, made the unilateral decision, at its own risk, to build a multi-billion dollar business around Mr. Mullenweg’s website. In doing so, WP Engine gambled for the sake of profit that Mr. Mullenweg would continue to maintain open access to his website for free. That was their choice.”
Injunction is temporary till the case is decided. The odds of a court forcing the transfer of WordPress.org to a public trust are slim to none—closer to 1/100 or even 0/100.
The odds of Matt doing so voluntarily is 0/100.
Legally and philosophically, this community crusade to wrest ownership from Matt rests on fundamentally shaky grounds.
While I am sympathetic to some of the community frustrations, I encourage you to focus on crafting stronger arguments and strategies rather than doubling down on those that disregard these realities.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
In 12 months it will be infinitely easier for small/medium companies to build their own content management systems, with only the features they need.
It will be even easier for agencies.
The days of companies and agencies needing to rely on WP, Wix, Webflow are quickly coming to an end.
In a couple years – assuming websites are still the best properties to post their content – I could see the market being dominated to unnamed, homegrown systems.
Faster if WordPress falls apart.
Right now, WordPress should be focused on improving the UI of the dashboard, bloat and other things that users often complain about so that people don’t even consider building their own (companies or agencies alike).
Now isn’t the time for this drama if you want WordPress to survive.
Just my thoughts.
I’m supporting this. Automattic has this creed: Always expect good intentions.
This request is not an anti-Matt letter, i absolutely don’t read it that way. Matt turned 40 this year, if he embraced this then WordPress will still be relevant when he’s 50.
He must see that he’s the bottleneck of too many stuff which no one person can cope. Look at the Youtube speedtest, Matt couldn’t find even simple blocks settings. As the founder of blocks, that is quite worrying. What should we expect from regular users, then?
Matt must understand he’s still a fantastic representation of the open-source world. He showcased that it’s possible to earn honest money based on free money. Since the roll into blocks and FSE, it all got stale. Matt has also the wrong stats: the work he’s been doing the last 5 years hasn’t brought growth to WordPress. In fact; it’s only thanks to Elementor and WooCommerce that WordPress kept the market share.
I wish 2025 will be a turning point in WordPress history, and that Matt has still a central point as he also deserved it. (whatever happened and is said). So, believing in a board doesn’t mean we stop believing in Matt. I guess that is my take on this. And i do wish for 2025 that Matt sees it too: for his own health, recognition and legacy.
Good news, everyone! Let me know, if I can be of any assistance.
A plugin and theme repo that actually properly tests for security and performance would be really beneficial. I think an independent metric system is required so we can see real world performance of plugins at scale and so people get warnings prior to installation that this plugin is useless when you have > 2000 posts would be great.
Even better if the repo just removes stuff that doesn’t scale and isn’t secure. That would be something I could get behind.
Glad to see so much support for this!
I hate to give Matt any actually good ideas, but one angle that could and should be pursued is going to regulators with the claim that dot org is effectively a monopoly app store, and should be opened for competition – specifically by implementing something in core that no longer only hard-codes dot org for updates.
Matt would obviously make his misleading claim that it’s open source so nothing stopping anyone from updating elsewhere, though he has confirmed here and elsewhere that it would, in fact, be extremely difficult/impossible to build anything of the sort.
The EU is most active on such themes, but there’s plenty of anti-trust stuff going on in the US regarding meta, Apple, Google etc. They’ve even forced Apple to open up to 3rd party App Stores!
I said that I hate to give Matt a good idea, because this would give him an easy way to avoid losing his stranglehold on WP while placating one of the major points of contention. And it would be comparatively low risk for him, as it would still be a monumental effort to build a parallel ecosystem, so likely to fail.
I think it’s time to also listen to common user and not only developers.
May of us migrated from a static website which had lesser problems than WP with security issues especially since the introduction of Gutenberg.
Anyhow there’s plenty of things to consider such as to many update releases, the strictly use of the glossary in translation (I’m PTE for many plugins) which is making WP a kind of thinking dictatorship (I mean that you must use the very same words for any different plugin/theme) which blocks the translations development, the GTE power to let in waiting list for years translations because they have/belong to private translation companies, and so on.
I and many others have considered several times to switch back to a static website or migrate to other CMS such as Drupal.
I really wish you and Karim can go on with this project and make it easier to move a site from the actual situation to yours project.
Believe me, people don’t like monopoly nor one world order. Till you focus on true free collaboration and discussion anything will go on well and thrive forever.
Willing to contribute with my little experience in some way.
Have a nice time and a great success.
This is such a big topic, and honestly, it feels like WordPress is at a breaking point. The whole idea of “democratizing publishing” doesn’t seem to match how things are run right now. I really liked the part where you mentioned creating a board and making things more transparent feels like that’s what’s missing.
Also, the idea of federated repositories is interesting, especially after what happened with Advanced Custom Fields. It makes sense to give the community more control instead of relying on one central authority. Do you think the WordPress ecosystem would even support a big shift like this, or is it too stuck in its ways? Curious to hear how this evolves