The creator of WordPress opens up about becoming an internet villain, why he’s taking a stand, and the future of open source | Matt Mullenweg (founder and CEO, Automattic) | Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

If you're really open and open source, sometimes you have to stand up the bullies and you have to fight to protect your open source ideals.

Please put your hands together for Matt Mullenwig.

Matt Mullenwig has been making some questionable moves recently.

There's a lot going on with Matt and WordPress these days.

20 plus years of good sentiment burned in days.

You were like a 100 % beloved hero of open source and internet.

And now you're like in this a lot of people don't like you.

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

Previously like 1 % of the world thought I was terrible.

And now I feel like it's up to like 4 or 5%.

People that don't know what the hell's going on.

What's just like the high -level overview of what's going on?

There's a company called WP Engine.

By 2018, they got bought out by a private equity firm called Silver Lake.

You know, since 2019, WP Engine has kind of changed a bit.

They started using the trademark.

They're offering something called WordPress.

I refer to it as like a bastardized, hacked up version of it.

It's diluting our brand.

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

I like it's around the world seven times before truth has time to, you know, get out of bed.

Today my guest is Matt Mullenweg.

Matt is the co -creator of WordPress, which powers 40 % of websites on the internet today, including whitehouse .gov.

He's also the CEO of Automatic, which is valued at over $7 billion and owns products like WordPress .com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, Gravitars, and Pocketcasts.

There is a lot of drama these days around Matt and WordPress and within the open source community, so I thought I'd have Matt on to address many of the criticisms head -on that he hasn't addressed in other places, and also just get the full story on what's going on.

We also chat about what incepted him to spend over half his life at this point on open source and creating WordPress.

Also, why products like Llama are what He calls fake open source and his perspective on AI and open source.

Also, how AI is actually trained on open source code and what that means for the future and his approach for deciding what companies to acquire within automatic.

If you enjoy this episode, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.

Also, if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you now get a year free of Notion and Superhuman and Perplexity Pro and linear and granola check it out at lenny's newsletter .com with that i bring you matt mullenweg this episode is brought to you by work os if you're building a sas app at some

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That's WorkOS .com. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, and I am very excited to have Christina Cassioppo, CEO and co -founder of Vanta, joining me for this very short conversation.

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

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

Sure. So we started Vanta in 2018, focused on founders, helping them start to build out their security programs and get credit for all of that hard security work with compliance certifications like SOC 2 or ISO 2701.

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

That is very much our experience, but before the company, to some extent, during it.

But the idea is with automation, with AI, with software, we are helping customers build trust with prospects and customers in an efficient way.

And, you know, our joke, we started this compliance company, so you don't have to.

We appreciate you for doing that.

And you have a special discount for listeners.

they can get a thousand dollars off vanta at vanta .com slash lenny that's v -a -n -t -a .com slash lenny for $1 ,000 off vanta thanks for that christina thank you matt thank you so much for being here welcome to the podcast thanks it's a you know big fan uh long time listener so happy to be on i'm a long

time fan i've been wanting to get you on this podcast for so long and this is such an interesting time to be chatting with you you're there's a lot going on with Matt and WordPress these days.

So it's a really interesting, it's almost good that we waited a little bit to talk.

So we're going to get into a lot of that stuff.

But I want to start with just what is it that you do, Matt?

What are all the things you're involved in?

Give people a sense of just the things you're working on.

So first, when I was 19, I co -founded an open source project called WordPress with Mike Little.

And we started just blogging software then became sort of a full site thing and then became like a platform that really tons of stuff is built on.

And now it's kind of transitioning into like this cool Wasm can be embedded anywhere, run locally or make mobile apps.

It's like really interesting seeing WordPress used as an engine for powering like things I would say don't even look like a website, which is kind of wild to me.

But that's kind of the beauty of the open source.

People do things with that you don't expect.

Ended up dropping out of college, moving to San Francisco, and then worked at CNET for a year as product manager, actually.

That's how they are.

I want to talk about that, but go on.

And then had this vision where instead of downloading the software and setting up a database and everything, we made a SaaS version of WordPress.

They didn't want to do it.

So I was like, okay, I got to do this.

So I left and started a company called Automatic.

The idea was to create, essentially complement the core WordPress software with some commercial services, things that run in the cloud, Like Akismet Anti -Spam, which is our sort of machine learning, I guess you'd call it AI now, but like anti -spam system.

Or Jetpack, which is like iCloud for WordPress.

You know, it does the backups and the real -time sync and everything like that.

So, that was 19 years ago.

So, that's now grown to be, you know, over 1 ,700 people in actually 90 countries.

So, we've actually been fully distributed and remote and asynchronous from the start, which I think is one of our superpowers.

I actually wasn't the CEO in the beginning, but in 2014, so I guess 11 years ago, I became CEO.

The original CEO was, well, I guess I was in the very beginning, but then I hired Tony Schneider to be CEO probably four or five months in.

And yeah, so that is a very full -time thing.

And Automatic does a lot of products.

That's WordPress .com, WooCommerce, which is open source Shopify, which is now over half our revenue.

And then we have some really cool apps.

So like Beeper, Day One, Simple Note, Pocket Cast.

We're trying to fill up your home screens with open web, open source things that are very privacy and user centric.

So that, you know, running that company is definitely like a full time job.

I still run WordPress .org and the WordPress project.

So I'm the lead developer there.

And so sort of manage all those releases in the community and the, you know, the directories and all the sort of things we do on WordPress .org.

And this cool thing called Openverse, we took over Creative Commons, which is like a way you can find sort of open licensed images and audio and video.

So basically, if you notice the throughput through all these things, it's open source.

On like the nights and weekends or like side, a few hours a week, I do some angel investing.

So I've done over 100 angel investments through an entity called Autry Capital.

If anything's in the WordPress space, I invest in it through Automatic.

But if anything's a little more further afield, I do it through Audre Capital and have done some really exciting investments there.

Everything from name brands like Stripe and SpaceX, but also it was in the seat of Calm or a lot of home automation stuff like Ring, August, SmartThings.

Yeah, just check out Audre .co.

It's got some fun stuff in there.

daylight computer which is one i'm very excited about right now and i guess finally i i love san francisco so uh you know did i have a uh co -owner of a cool grungy jazz club at north beach called keys uh with simon rowe and uh so if you you know wednesday through saturday night you want to see some

awesome live jazz uh check out keys wow okay you said it too much i get it now uh uh jazz club i was not aware of i i gotta check this out it's called keys yeah keys jazz bistro Okay, cool.

It's over on Broadway in Columbus, kind of right around there.

Amazing. That was news to me.

Going back to automatic, I think people don't get the scale of this thing.

So just to mirror back a few things and even add to what you've said, 1 ,700 people work there, 90 different countries.

Also, you didn't share this stat.

Something like 43 % of the internet of internet websites are built on WordPress, run on WordPress.

Yeah. Yeah, so when we started, a lot of websites were built on custom CMSs, and there's a lot of fragmentation in the space.

But now WordPress has grown to be, yeah, over 40 % of all websites in the world, which is 10x to number two, which right now is Shopify.

Right, they're like at 4%.

I was looking at that list.

They're around 4%, yeah.

That's unreal. It used to be open source was the top three.

Unfortunately, like Drupal and Drupal have fallen behind.

and so now it's like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace are the top ones, but WordPress is still, you know, because we have this flywheel of open source, community, it's movement it kind of has this, you know like any open source like Linux or Apache or Wikipedia it has some positive flywheel effects when it

takes off Awesome, okay and then there's a few other things you didn't mention, I want to get to this later but I'll just mention now you guys own Tumblr, you bought Tumblr which I don't think a lot of people necessarily know.

Sorry I forgot to mention that Yeah, we're going to get into that.

Yeah. Yeah, running a social network is definitely the hardest thing I've ever attempted.

I thought we knew what we were doing because WordPress ran so much of the web.

I thought every content moderation thing you could ever deal with, but social networks are a whole nother ballgame.

Okay. Couple more fun facts before we get into some other stuff I want to chat about.

Fun fact number one is you're super involved in the Baylights project.

I didn't know this.

For people that don't know what the Baylight, if you're in San Francisco, You definitely know what the Baylights project, and I'm sure you love it.

For people that don't know what this is about, what is this project and how have you been involved?

Why have you been instrumental into making this a thing?

Baylights, you know, there's two famous bridges in San Francisco.

The Golden Gate Bridge, which is kind of the iconic one.

There's actually the Bay Bridge, which is the workhorse of San Francisco.

It has like the most, it's one of the busiest bridges in the country.

And it's really beautiful from an engineering point of view.

um and so kind of a a vision between ben davis and an artist leo villareal who's an amazing light artist actually had to start at burning man was to put gosh i forget the number i think 18 000 leds on the side of the bridge like on all the cables and um create this really beautiful gentle kind of like

a algorithmic uh light piece light art piece and um the uh yeah ben davis was was dating an artist friend of mine and we were over and having drinks on my patio we were looking at the bay bridge and i had this kind of thing where like there's some lights at the top of the bay bridge i was like oh wouldn't

it be cool if those lights were like christmas lights and they could do patterns or something you know it's the lights to keep planes from hitting it i was like oh you could like program that he was like yeah it's almost like the the social network thing where like a million's cool, but a billion would be

really cool. He was like, you know, that would be cool, but what if we put the whole side of it?

And so that, I was like, oh, cool.

And sort of made an angel investment in that thing.

They hadn't raised anything or had, I don't even think an entity at that point.

I was like, you know, to get you started, I forget what it was, 100 or 150K.

So I gave him that first bit.

And then it kind of blossomed into a thing.

And then sort of fast forward, I remember there's that timeline, but they were kind of at a final bit of fundraise and they they weren't able to close that last bit and i actually mortgaged my condo and donated the last a million million and a half to uh to finish out that project the bay lights were online

for 10 years uh the technology degraded and so like the environment's very harsh so actually we just completed a fundraise and are reinstalling the bay lights they're calling it bay lights 360.

so now it'll be both sides of the bridge it'll be visible from also Oakland and the Treasure Island because the first version if the city was very worried about the like drivers seeing the lights and it might distract them so we had an angle though that you could only see it from San Francisco which was a compromise

we didn't love you know because like yeah we love the East Bay and everything else like that too so new version is uh coming online uh hopefully later this year in the fall and uh and also that that turned into a non -profit called Illuminate which I'm on the board of run by Ben Davis, who I mentioned

previously, that does cool public art stuff around the city.

So they're responsible for the, you know, the Grace Lights, all the JFK Boulevard stuff where that's been, has the murals and like the beer garden and all the chairs, that's all illuminated.

So they do fun, their thing is radical public art.

So the thing is it's like art that needs to be free and accessible.

And I think that's so important for San Francisco.

Like we have great institutions, you know, the SF MoMA, the opera, et cetera, that have huge budgets, like a hundred million a year and illuminate for, you know, literally one tenth of that has created something that millions of people can enjoy, you know, and I like to think that anyone along the Embarcadero,

you know, you might be going through a tough time.

Obviously, we have people who are struggling with like mental health and homelessness and everything like that, but like maybe seeing a little bit of art can help raise your soul a little bit.

And that's how I think about philanthropy as well.

Like, you need to work on the base issues, you know, the fundamentals at the bottom of has those highly creative needs and then you also have to work on the things that like uh raise your soul a little bit so art so i like that barbell approach to philhengepy elon has a great quote along those lines

you can't just work on solving problems all day you need something inspiring to think about and to work towards i first of all thank you for doing this it's like if you live in sf you're like this makes the city better just having this around i didn't realize you were involved in like helping come up

with the idea itself i knew that you did the mortgage drows to make it possible i can't take any credit for the idea just that i was exposed to i had a a jason idea and they had a way cooler one with a real artist and everything like that so i was just happy to be it's like being an angel investor you

know like you you can support the entrepreneurs the people who uh actually really do it yeah okay and the other funny thing you said is about they were worried about the angle of the lights distracting people what's funny is when i drove drive across the bridge you can only see it when you're driving

towards san francisco looking backwards so i'm like looking in my rearview mirror and the mirror turning around to like kind of and that's it feels more dangerous the lights shining in in my face you know they call it impossible works of art there were like 13 agencies that had to sign off they were worried

the lights were distracting birds or seals or environmental reviews and it was really uh a uh a lot of like public bureaucrats and everyone had to like to make that happen there is like 20 places where someone could have said no and it never would happen so it's very inspiring to see the city come together

and also like as san francisco I feel like it's entering a new chapter right now like going from like the doom loop to the boom loop now I'm a big believer in the city so much innovation has come here from like food you know like the burrito fortune cookies all these sorts of things are from san francisco

so like obviously all the tech innovation that we're all familiar with uh it's kind of the city of the future and i don't know what it is in the water you know from like the 60s till now like cultural innovations things that happen and influence the whole world burning man you know grateful dead etc

like that all starts in san francisco so it's exciting to be here this episode back as they say on twitter okay someone very close to you told me that you're uh an excellent rapper i'm not gonna ask you to rap but if you ever want to answer any questions in rap form feel free oh man that that would be

fun I've dreamed about being able to do a Q &A and rhyme but I don't think I'm that talented just I'm planting the seed okay so I want to get into the all the drama there in swirling right now but I want to first lay the foundation of how you got into this and where this all came from so let's talk about just

the origin story of you and open source you've been more than half your life you've been working on open source you've been working at WordPress specifically WordPress us as such a core community within the open source community.

What was kind of the origin story of you becoming obsessed in, I don't know, open source pill?

I was a broke kid in Houston, Texas.

And my passions were jazz.

Houston has actually amazing music programs in the public schools.

And so I was very fortunate to go to some of the best civil arts programs, including my high school called the High School for Performing Visual Arts where Beyonce went, Robert Glasper, a lot of amazing folks went there.

And so music was a big part of my life and actually economics.

So I had this fun teacher, Scott Roman, who created, participated in our school in the Federal Reserve Challenge, which was run by the Federal Reserve that says the interest rates and you know backs the national banking system and everything like that has this competition for high school students um

it ended up being the first academic competition this art school ever won and um yeah first year we kind of didn't get that far second year we went all the way to nationals so i got to meet alan greenspan ben bernacki was our judge um you know went to dc so that was a very very exciting and so you're

being exposed to like also having great liberal arts education you know the ideas of you know freczek hayek agnes smith alexander hilton ben franklin thucydides you know all these sorts of things that philosophy really influenced me and um you combine that with that you know music lessons were expensive

so we couldn't really afford them so i would barter and trade i'd build websites for local musicians in exchange for lessons and uh some of these websites i would start to put software on like forums or you know like different things.

And that kind of exposed me to open source.

So, you know, my father was also, you know, engineer, he worked for oil companies and things, but his world was all Microsoft, it was all proprietary.

And I was kind of grew up in early days of the internet.

So it was SlashDots and, you know, Jeffrey Zeldman talked about web standards and all these things like are really kind of the social milieu and zeitgeist that I grew up in.

So I, you know, combining all this philosophy I studied, felt that open source was actually the most important idea of our generation.

So, like if the founding fathers were around today, I think that would be open source advocates.

As you think about it, as more and more of the lives are influenced and actually controlled by the software we use, if we don't have fundamental freedoms attached to that software we're not truly free so you know uh the wordpress is under a license called the gpl which has four freedoms uh the freedom

to use the software for any purpose so you can use it for anything whether i agree with you or not the terms of services you can do whatever you want with it uh the freedom to see how the software works you know open up the hood see how it works see every line of code you can audit it the freedom to

change it is the third freedom and then finally the freedom to redistribute those changes so you can share them.

And the GPL has a fun little hack where if you share them, you have to provide those same freedoms to who you share it with.

So it's what's called a viral open source license, as opposed to the MIT license or some of the others that aren't.

So yeah, I just kind of decided that this was what I was going to devote my life to.

And so that became getting involved with some early open source projects.

WordPress was actually a fork of a abandoned open source project called B2.

So the code base actually started was something that was already out there.

And I was a user and contributor to kind of volunteer on the forums and contributed code.

And then when I was abandoned and myself and Mike sort of were one of like four or five different forks that started that kind of picked it up and tried to continue it for our own use.

And then later for a larger community.

It feels like a lot of people are coming around to exactly your worldview.

And say, I was just watching a video of Jack Dorsey talking about how we're just controlled by algorithms and we don't know what's how we don't know how they work how and we don't we're not in control of our lives have you seen that video no but okay i actually love that also some people who maybe made

their made their first billion or whatever from proprietary software um then come back and it's so cool to see folks like mark andreason or bill gurley you know be huge advocates for open source um i actually remember one of my early meetings with uh uh andreason orbits some marketties.

And I didn't realize that at the time, I thought it was the, Tony Schneider and I were sort of fundraising and Mark really like grilled us.

He's like, how can you build a business on open source?

How can you be like remote and distributed?

Like look around Silicon Valley, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, every, every great company has had an office.

Like, how are you going to build something that can change the internet with, you know, people all around the world and and just had this long like hour -long debate and i was like we walked out of that's like wow that was the worst meeting ever they just hate everything we're doing and then uh you know

the next day they're like hey we're interested i was like what happened i didn't realize that he had kind of this like idea where like he wanted to attack the ideas and see how we defended it to sort of uh was how they hey battle -tested things i guess kind of like a microsoft culture or whatever where you

like really like i grilled the idea i just wasn't familiar with that but um it's so cool now that some of these folks that i've learned so much from are such good advocates for open source yeah it's so interesting i was just i just had the community notes team on the podcast and uh that's an amazing

example of community of sort of open source meta is adopting it from twitter slash x speaking of open source one of the interesting maybe most common ways people hear about open source these days is AI and AI models.

And there's a couple areas here.

One is you wrote this really interesting post where you talk about how Meta talks about Lama as an open source project, but you called it a false profit.

What is it about Lama that isn't open source?

What are people missing when they see Lama and they're like, oh, and Meta is amazing, open sourcing everything?

Lama, you can obviously download and run locally and all these sorts of things, right?

You have to use their SaaS service.

However, there's a clause in it that says, if you're above a certain threshold of monthly active users, I forget what it is.

It's big. It's like 750 million.

So it's pretty high.

You need a license from them.

And so that does not give you the freedom to use the software for any purpose, right?

If at some point you have to ask for permission, you're kind of at the whims of this company who you might be aligned with or you might be an enemy with.

And also, how do you define that?

So, for example, like on WordPress, our products don't have 750 million registered users.

But we reach billions of people per month in terms of visitors.

So is that defined?

So there's just ambiguity there.

So I still think what they've done is amazing.

And I like that they're releasing it.

I was very confused for why they insist on calling it open source.

because they actually met has been a huge open source contributor react you know they've done incredible improvements to the php engine which we benefit from a lot so like they're actually a big open source contributor i think mark zuckerberg really understands and loves open source too my best guess

now i don't have any inside information here but there's i think they're calling it open source because there's some european regulation about open source versus proprietary ai models so i think they're i think it might be like a weird regulatory thing because clearly they understand this is an open

source. So when I wrote the blog post, I was just kind of confused and thought like, oh, maybe if I like, you know, get this message out there, they'll change.

And then when they didn't, I was like, oh, there must be something else going on.

I think it might be this regulatory thing.

We were actually a big part of, actually many, many years ago, I think it was React that they were doing something with the licensing or like a patent restriction on.

And the WordPress community actually got meta to change that and reverse something they were doing to lock it down.

So yeah, I consider my role as an open source advocate to actually be my primary thing, you know, and it's very much my life mission.

You know, I hope to work on WordPress the rest of my life, but also like just open source and journal.

So I also like, you know, support Drupal and Joomla, like anything else that's open source, like I'm going to be a supporter of because I think when people choose that versus proprietary software we're increasing the freedom and liberty in the world and so I would love that every sort of like it's incumbent

on us that make open source to make a better user experience to make a better product so that people choose it and then you know the world becomes more free not less free.

And also feels it's important to you to I don't know what open source washing like avoid people using the term when it's not true and it's interesting in this case The thing that makes it not truly open source is the limit.

There's a limit where you can no longer use it the way you want.

Is that the issue? Yeah.

And there's actually like an open source OSI.

There's like a formal definition for what makes an open source license.

And there's actually many dozens of open source licenses and sort of public domain licenses and other things.

So it's also their stance that this is not an open source license.

Something else that I think is really interesting when it comes to AI in open source, you wrote about this and it blew my mind.

Such a good point that the code that these models were trained on was open source code because that's all they have access to.

They don't have like Windows code.

They don't have Shopify code.

And what a cool, I don't know, another success story slash, I don't know.

I guess, how do you feel about that?

All these AI models are trained on code you wrote in open source community.

That's beautiful. It's one of the safest things to train on, right?

Because the license of open source, like, very explicitly allows that.

You know, I also like to think about, you know, I have some window where my creative output is useful to society.

And if you fast forward, like, 50 or 100 years, I do believe that the utility for proprietary software eventually approaches zero.

So like when we're sending people to Mars, the operating system of the rockets and the devices and everything like that is not going to be built on the Windows NT kernel.

As amazing feat of engineering that like that proprietary kernel is, it's going to be built on an open source kernel, you know, Linux or BSD or something like that.

And so if you want to be part of something that sort of becomes the fabric of humanity's foundation, like things that allows a Cambrian inspiration of things built on top of it, a renaissance of ideas, you want to be involved with open source.

And so I really hope that more and more people, I'm a little bit of evangelist here, you know?

I'm a missionary where I really want to encourage more and more people to consider at least making part of their time, even if just a few hours a week, you know, contributing to open source because it could be part of something that has a huge impact.

And it's fun, especially if you're like a younger developer or designer or PM or whatever.

Like you can't walk up to Facebook and change their homepage page, or say, I'd like to change this feature.

But you could come to an open source project, you know, some of which has, you know, hundreds of millions of users, you could go to WordPress, or, you know, gosh, Bitcoin, or, you know, there's all these things are open source, chromium, Firefox, like, and you could actually change, you know, feature

or project management things or changes design or improve it.

And that's, I think, really, really special.

And And the thrill for me of knowing that code I wrote is now executing millions of times per seconds in millions of servers around the world.

That kind of thrill, that high, is when I first had my first open source contribution, such a thrill.

And I've been chasing that and enjoying that ever since.

Say someone wants to actually do this.

Where do they go? How do they do this?

Do they just pick a project, go to WordPress .org, and here's how you contribute?

What's, like, a next step there?

Yeah, pick a project that you use or like.

I mean, that's obviously a nice one.

For WordPress, we have this, it's called make .wordpress .org.

You know, it's where we make WordPress.

And there's, you know, different groups.

There's accessibility, there's design, there's the core code, there's plugins.

There's all sorts of ways.

So, really, whatever your talent is, there's people who translate, there's people who do support, there's people who write documentation, there's people who organize events.

you know that they're so whatever you feel like your your talent in the world is either that you have or that you want to cultivate you know there's so many people i mean i learned how to code while building wordpress basically i didn't have as too much formal training there so uh it's a great way to

to love your skills as well and work with some of the best developers and others in the this also made me think about ai agents are coming around devin and all these ai driven bot uh Coding agents, do you have a prediction at when most of the code contributed to the open source projects will be Devon and AI

agent such type projects?

I think Google talked about 25 % of their code or characters committed are now sort of AI assisted.

And they're probably on the bleeding edge.

I don't know how much of WordPress's code right now is AI assisted or something like that.

but I think over the next five years it definitely approaches maybe a majority and I'm actually very very excited so you know one of the big challenges that we have as a very open platform is we have this open plugin and theme architecture so the 60 ,000 plugins and themes and the way WordPress works

is these plugins themes can modify every single part of the code so you can really customize everything however many of these plugins and themes don't have the same sort of robust security and review process that core has so that's where when you hear about security issues with WordPress it's very rarely

in core anymore you know we haven't had a remote exploit in knock on wood like I think five years six years or something but in the plugins it can be somewhat more frequent and so one thing I'm very very excited about um the next year or two is actually more automated scanning because obviously that code

basis is so many tens of millions, maybe over 100 million lines of code at this point, it's impossible for humans to review that.

So we kind of rely on developers to review that and manage.

And of course we have bug bounties and everything.

So when things get reported, we fix it quickly.

But I can't wait for more automated scanning there.

And I think that could vastly upgrade the security of open source.

The other thing that's really exciting is right now you see people building apps and stuff, and it's just sort of custom -generated code.

But I think the next generation of these models or for the next layer there is because you know as everyone knows like just writing the code is it's just one part of it it's maintaining it that really becomes the the life cycle of it and stuart brand's new book is all about maintenance right which i'm

very excited about uh he's publishing i think with uh with stripe and it's actually kind of open source he's open sourcing the book so as you can see it being written online but But anyway, to go back, I think that if, and they're starting to do that, is when the open source model is you say like, hey,

build me a website, it actually installs WordPress and then builds on top of that and then customizes it on top of that.

Then you get for free that core engine that's always being audited and updated and getting past key support or whatever the new things are, sort of continuously.

And then your custom stuff can be on top of that, which I think is actually a lot more powerful than sort of building something proprietary custom from the ground up.

I love this book concept of maintenance.

My sister's partner has this quote that I've always come back to, life is maintenance.

You basically like everything you acquire and deal with, like you get a generator for your house, you have to maintain that forever.

Now you get like, you know, this backpack, okay, and I get to like maintain this thing.

Make you be nice, nice jacket.

Like everything is maintenance.

Everything in your life is just maintenance.

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

well that's why i think technical debt is one of the most interesting concepts you know there's so many companies as well that maybe have like big market caps but i feel like they might have billions or tens of billions of dollars of technical debt until you can cast you in the interface or how their

products integrate with themselves or things and i think about that a lot in our own company you know we definitely have some products also a little bear is coming on because you have have like such great product people and like we have some variable quality around some of our things right now.

Like if you check out Gravitar right now, I'm actually really proud of it.

Like it's, I think, a really great user experience, very slick.

But there's like parts of, well, I always say I'm the unhappiest WordPress user in the world.

So there's like parts of WordPress and WordPress .com that I'm a little embarrassed and ashamed of.

Like we kind of have to, we have a really large surface area that we cover with relatively few people.

And so there's some parts we haven't looked at in a little while that we need to get around to.

And it's a big focus for us this year is actually kind of going back to basics, back to core and improving you know all those kind of nooks and crannies of the the zero experience and also ruthlessly editing and cutting as much as possible because we've just launched a lot of stuff over the past 21

years that uh that maybe is is not as relevant today or doesn't need to be there it sounds like excellent work for your for this ai agent of the future that's coming soon there's one other area i want to mine and that's community community building building this ecosystem that you've created around

WordPress. It might be one of the most successful, biggest communities on the internet.

I'm curious just what lessons you've learned about what it takes to build a successful community online, especially.

This is probably influenced by economics and jazz, right?

So, and economics is all about systems thinking, right?

And what are the incentive structures of how you set something up.

And then jazz, it's all about collaboration.

Right? So if there's something unique I have for your audience, I would say it's, don't just build a product, build a movement.

And to the extent that we've been successful, I think it's that we give people something to believe in, you know, a philosophy or worldview, even silly things like, you know, we had this tagline, and the footer of the wordpress .org when we started, it's still there, it says code is poetry okay this idea that we're

not just writing code like we're trying to create something that can have uh elements we name every wordpress release after a jazz musician you know for the past 60 releases or so uh so those sorts of things bringing like a little art and soul and some fun into it as well it doesn't have to be serious

all the time um i think you know they can give something to believe in and work on and aim towards that's uh more than just the paycheck or more than just, you know, the utility, the base utility of the software.

So it's not just the software.

It's also like, how are the meetups?

You know, how are people getting together?

What events are you running?

How do people, are there forums?

How do people contribute?

You know, is there office hours or town halls?

I do a lot of Q &A. So like, you know, what are the things you're doing around the software that that's allowing people to get involved?

That's inviting contributions.

That's allowing people to build on top of it.

You know, I've studied platforms quite a bit, like Microsoft and others.

So our whole ecosystem of plugins and themes is part of what's made WordPress so successful in the mode that we have.

The core features of a CMS, you can kind of write with a few developers in a few weeks or something.

It's kind of not, you know, it's basically correct operations.

But to replicate those 60 ,000 plugins and themes, gosh, no one's done it.

It's a huge mode. And proprietary services can create platforms, Shopify has a third -party ecosystem and things like that.

But it's never a true platform.

And not a true platform.

It's when your ecosystem makes more money than the core does.

And so many times, whether it was the Facebook platform, I'm putting that in air quotes, or the Shopify platform, companies build on it and then they get the rug pulled out from after them because they're too successful.

And then the sort of thing you're building on decides, oh, we want that money or we want that growth.

and they sort of change the API or remove your access.

There's so many examples of this, especially on Facebook and Shopify and others where people got too successful and all of a sudden they knock on the door and they say, oh, that's a mighty nice app you have there.

I'd love to offer you some warrants where we own a bunch of your company or we're going to shut it off or those sorts of things.

And again, you don't have freedom unless you're building on open source.

That's why more and more companies and people are choosing.

if they're going to build a business on top of something else, if you build on open source, you have that guarantee.

Even if, you know, I grew devil horns, it became evil and automatic, decided to know, you know, whatever.

Like WordPress would still belong just as much to you as it would to me.

People can fork the code.

They can still own it.

They can still build on top of it.

So those things I think are really important.

What a segue to all of this drama that's swirling around you these days.

i think a lot of people do feel like there's devil horns that have appeared and so i'm excited to dig into this stuff i think i find that every time you go on a podcast these days if we don't get into this everyone's just like why is matt not answering these questions let's get into the hard stuff so i

have some i'm gonna ask you some hard questions uh for people that don't know what the hell's going on they're like what are you even talking about or just have a sense something is swirling with wordpress and matt i don't know what's going on what's just like the high level or what's going on yeah

so to set it um you can get wordpress from wordpress .com or you know us but also you can get wordpress from dozens of other hosts the biggest in the world are like go daddy hostinger new fold um it's not the biggest but it is in the top 10 or something it has about 700 000 wordpress installs there's

a company called wp engine um in 2019 wp engine started as like very wordpress oriented and they contributed a lot to the community and everything like that.

They're very respectful about, you know, distinguishing themselves from core.

Some people really realized it wasn't officially associated and everything.

But in 2019, they got bought out by a private equity firm called Silver Lake.

And, you know, anyone who follows business, you know, when private equity buys something, there's some good ones, but there's also many, many stories about how they can really kind of hollow things out, you know, really optimize their profits, become user hostile.

I actually recently read a story where one of the reasons there was a shortage of fire trucks, these LA fires, was that the fire truck manufacturers have been kind of rolled up by a private equity firm.

And they've been raising prices and like their supply constraint and things like that.

So there's literally like a shortage in fire trucks right now because of private equity.

And of course, if you look at healthcare or other things like this, so many examples where private equity can really, I think, be one of the darker parts of capitalism.

so you know since 2019 uh wp engine has kind of changed a bit and um they really stopped contributing to core and they started using the trademark um in a you know a way that was very confusing in the marketplace and uh you know particularly in the past year year and a half or so we're just getting

a lot i've got a lot of support for requests for wp engine and you know And when we do surveys, we find that, you know, 20, 30, 40 % of people thought they were officially associated because of how they were presenting, using our logo and presenting their brand and everything like that was very confusing

to people. And as you know, if you don't protect your trademark, you lose it.

And also the version of WordPress that they were offering actually wasn't our core vision of the functionality of WordPress.

So to save money, they were actually turning off features like revisions.

So a cool part about WordPress, that actually one of my favorite features, is every change to every single post or page is saved forever, just like Wikipedia.

So if you make a mistake, you can always undo it.

And, of course, as you know, like building a great product, that sort of user safety of an undo is so critical.

Now, obviously, you have to store these revisions, so it takes up more database space.

Now, it's trivial. It's megabytes.

So on modern databases, it's not that big a deal.

But the same money, they actually turned us off.

So they broke the undo feature in WordPress to essentially save money.

And so you have this thing where they're offering something called WordPress.

It's kind of, I think I referred to it as like a bastardized, hacked up version of it.

It's diluting our brand.

And then it's also people think it's official.

So even close friends of mine were like, oh, yeah, I signed up for this thing.

I thought I was supporting you.

And so it came to a head.

So past 18 months, they've also, we kind of contacted them and say, hey, you need a trademark license or something like if you're going to use this or change how you're doing things.

And, you know, kind of tried to negotiate something and had many different term sheets over the month's offer and different things.

And they just kept kind of stretching it out.

And I was like, what's going on here?

I think part of what was going on is last year they tried to sell the company.

So private equity usually holds things for like five to seven years.

So they were kind of five years into this.

They tried to shop it around and sell it.

They weren't able to find a buyer.

They said, well, they don't have an EIP and it feels like they're using your trademark.

So they're going to have trouble with you.

They don't have a license and things like that.

So while they were negotiating with us, it appears they were also like preparing this lawsuit against us.

So, again, I've been very fortunate in my business career that, you know, we've invested in dozens of companies.

We've acquired lots of things.

Like, by and large, 99 % of the time, people I've dealt with in business have been ethical, straightforward, honest.

I haven't really faced any, like, bald -faced lying or duplicitous behavior.

Very, very rarely, you know, people who just, you know, say one thing and do another are fraudulent in their behavior.

But I think that was happening here.

And so I also just wasn't prepared for it.

I was thinking I was a little naive and kind of didn't realize what was going on for a while.

So it came to a head.

And at WorkCamp US in September, I was like, okay, well, if you're still not going to even agree to negotiate, you know, I'm going to give this presentation about how I think both private equity has messed up a lot of open source projects in the past.

And how, in particular, Adobe Engine has done some very bad or evil things.

And they were like, okay, go for it.

So I did the presentation.

I think it was on a Thursday or Friday.

Kind of spicy. People are like, oh, can't believe you did that.

And then on Monday, they launched this with Quinn Emanuel, which is kind of the baddest, nastiest law firm.

It's like who Elon uses when he sues people.

Launched this big, multimillion -dollar lawsuit against both me personally and WordPress .org.

so like the WordPress community and automatic and um and also you know they're spending millions of dollars a month on both lawyers and pr so they're they're doing you know if you read uh my gosh who's the celebrity that they were recently talking about this like the dark pr stuff where they're like

boosting things like lively and like lively yeah yeah okay so all that stuff is is happening so there's uh and i warned you know people i think in the presentation and I say, Hey, there's going to be a smear campaign against me.

Internally in the company, I was like, Hey, they're going to dig up everything that's ever happened.

Anything bad anyone's ever said to me is kind of like all of a sudden become like a news item.

And that has happened.

It's been true. So right now there is a portion of the internet that does think I have devil horns and everything.

Fortunately, this is not my first rodeo.

I know a lot of people think like, Oh, that was nice for 20 years and then got mean.

But one thing, if you're really open and open source, sometimes you have to stand up the bullies and you have to fight to protect your open source ideals.

Otherwise people can take advantage of it in a way that ultimately can destroy everything you've created.

So, this is probably the fourth time the internet has decided I'm the main character or really evil.

And the previous ones we don't remember anymore.

It's Hot Nacho or the Easter Massacre themes or like these other things that aren't even on my Wikipedia page anymore.

but um those are your big deals at the time those are your incidents those weren't like historical battles no these are things that yeah i was involved in cool names including some things i had screwed up like hot notch was definitely a group of my aunt very early in the wordpress side but wow okay

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So you mentioned this talk you gave at WordCamp, and you said at the beginning of the talk, Like, I'm, oh no, afterwards you were like, I was really nervous to give this talk, and obviously you can see why.

Just like, what finally convinced you this was time?

Was it just to go, as you described, scorched earth nuclear?

Was it like WordCamp was coming up and this is the moment to go public with this?

Was there something else that kind of crossed the line?

It was a unique opportunity because we were essentially saying that, hey, WP Engine isn't going to be allowed to sponsor WordCamps anymore.

you know they're not going to be like a because we had again up to that point really done everything to like bring them in and have to be part of the community so i really had to also explain to our community like hey why we're going to be excluding this company that a lot of people saw is doing good

if you go to wp engine website they have whole pages about how much they contribute to give back and how they you know they do kind of greenwash or open source wash a lot of what they do so all their marketing branding was around this positive stuff and so I was like hey we need to just explain this case

but yeah again my defaults and how we've worked with by the way every other company in the WordPress space many of which are much much larger and make sometimes billions more in revenue than WP Engine is collaborative and so like if there's a trademark violation usually it's not even lawyers get involved

it's just like there's an email we have a conversation we do a call, we talk about it, you know, that that's how things get resolved.

And that's, that's my default.

I'm a lover, not a fighter.

So, and that's why this thing doesn't happen very often.

You know, I like to say that, yes, if I was a WordPress community or whatever was doing this like every year, every couple of months, yeah, you should worry about it.

But it kind of happens like every like 10 years.

So, so if I could mirror back the issues that you ran into, and I want to go through this a little bit more.

The problems you had with WP Engine in this case.

One is they were using the trademark, both WordPress and WooCommerce without license, and they're just abusing it, confusing people.

A lot of people thought WP Engine was actually automatic and WordPress official.

They weren't contributing to the project.

They were just making basically a bunch of money and not doing the work off this company they bought, and they're just kind of hollowing it out, as you described.

And then they're also cutting corners, making the product worse and that kind of reflects on the whole brand of WordPress.

That's a great summer yeah.

Awesome I'm curious just like which which of those three or is it something even else that most bothered you about this like what's just like this is the thing that's eating me and if I had to guess it'd be like damaging the legacy potentially of this thing you've worked on for most of your lives maybe

it's that maybe it's just taking advantage of the community uh just like what's the thing that you think is the root of this just like oh it just this needs to stop well i guess the one thing i'd add to your list was as this was happening they were pretending to good faith negotiate and in fact at one

point the executive you know we were talking about her joining automatic and running wordpress .org and you know kind of think when she thought the VPN she was going to sell she was thinking about what was next So yeah, a lot of this stuff was, I think that duplicitous behavior also kind of forced this to

an edge more than even those other things that you mentioned.

There's lots of companies that don't contribute back and it's not as big a deal.

But yeah, the legal issue was definitely the trademark thing.

So what pushed it to the edge?

I think just the magnitude of the issue.

I mean, they would refer to themselves is WordPress engine and client meetings and other things.

They were very cavalier about how they would imply their association with the project.

Obviously, as you can tell on socials, a lot of people are just really upset, and a lot of people blame you.

There's just, like I said, every time you're on a podcast or on Twitter, people are just like, Matt, what about this?

This sucks. Why are you doing this?

And I want to go through some of those things, but just not many people go through like, like I think you were like 100 % beloved hero of open source and internet.

And now you're like in this, a lot of people don't like you.

Just as a human, just what is that?

How do you work through that?

How do you deal with that?

What's that been like?

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

When we introduced something like Gutenberg, people hated it.

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

These are huge controversies in the WordPress history.

And there actually hasn't been a fork in WordPress around all this latest stuff, but there was when we introduced Gutenberg it's one called classic press where people actually forked the software so how I would describe it is previously like one percent of you know the world thought I was terrible and now

I feel like it's up to like four or five percent so it's still like not the majority but as you know something negative you feel seven times more than something positive and um you know when people are angry with you they're more likely to like it's kind of like restaurant reviews or whatever they're

more likely to leave a bad review than a good review and you know the people who you know wordpress you know 98 of all the core developers have stayed and contributed and are working on the next version and are supportive and all these sorts of things and uh part of the reason these folks are so good

is like they don't spend all their time on Twitter or Reddit arguing with folks.

And also the arguments could be very frustrating because people don't engage in good faith.

They don't really change their mind when new facts are introduced.

And so I've done my best actually, because from the open source side, I'm really used to engaging with things.

And I think that's been one thing I've learned from this is in some forums, it doesn't matter how you engage.

And especially if you have bots or other things running there, I'd leave comments on Reddit.

and immediately get like 40 downvotes.

I'm like, hey, this is an article about me and I'm adding a fact to the thing.

Like, why is it getting downvoted?

This is very relevant to the discussion, but it's literally hidden.

So like when you see that thread, you'd have to click like three or four times to see the comment I'd left.

And so it can really kind of change the perception.

And then when you read these things, I think it's just very human nature.

Even very folks very close to me, like if you read a thread and it's all like super negative, It's hard to not be influenced by that because we're social creatures.

So 100%. Now, the good news is I've had lots of, you know, sort of like credibility weighted, you know, the support from, you know, people like Mark Benioff or, you know, other open source leaders or the core people in WordPress, you know, Matius, Mary Hubbard, all the core committers, the international

community actually, like just in Japan.

Like they don't care about this stuff.

And so these are actually, if you look by like number of commits and lines of code and everything like that, the folks who actually are most crucial in WordPress.

So I feel like that's been a good balance as well for me because there are days where I'm like, gosh, am I an idiot?

Or, you know, it could be really down like reading all these things.

So that is part of what allows me to balance and get back to that sort of positive optimistic space that I think you need to be in to do great software and great work.

Yeah, the internet can be brutal.

Let me go through a couple of specific things that people pointed out because I think you've been on a lot of podcasts and people haven't asked you these questions and I think a lot of people are just like, but Matt, what about this?

This is really bad.

So let me just ask you a couple of things here.

One is there's just like a frustration in the community around the instability that this has just caused in the WordPress community.

I'll read you a couple of quotes.

Real people are receiving fewer projects on WordPress because C -suite or seeing WordPress is unstable because of this feud.

And I work at Enterprise, and we're very concerned about the stability of this platform on our project.

Just thoughts on that and the impact that is that on the community.

Yeah, I think this is until this gets resolved, which, by the way, I hope it is soon.

You know, I think it's, there's no business reason for this to continue.

Like, I really hope that they, you know, come to a settlement or something.

We're ready. They could end this tomorrow.

They wanted to. WVEngine could.

So we can't. We're just defending right now.

So, you know, it's really incumbent on them.

All of our competitors, by the way, are like, great.

WordPress, the king on the hill.

All of a sudden, we can use this.

And so there's also, not just from WVN, but also from all the competitors to WordPress and all the people who would love to capture server users or market share.

They're really leaning into this.

So I've seen white papers.

I've seen all sorts of things where people talk about this.

We're actually, in the next couple of days, going to publish something really cool on the WordPress at our blog, though, that shows, if you actually look at the numbers, There's like the activity, number of commits, plugin updates, downloads, installs of WordPress since September 20th when this all

started. It's quite healthy.

And so I'm not saying that there isn't, you know, examples of where someone lost a project or something like that.

I'm sure it's happened.

You know, the Internet's big.

WordPress has so many millions of users and developers and everything that you're going to get some examples.

But by the numbers, things are actually quite healthy.

And in some ways, it's not that there's no press is bad press.

It's raised the awareness of WordPress quite a bit.

So people who haven't talked about WordPress in years are now like, oh, let's talk about it.

And so a little bit of drama.

I think I wouldn't do this all the time, but a little bit can be a good thing.

OK, so one of the most common frustrations I've seen on the Internet of people complaining is around the trademark.

I don't know all the details, but my understanding is there's kind of a, you move the trademark to be owned by the foundation.

and automatic has exclusive rights to use the trademark.

And I think people are like, oh, I thought it was the foundation owned it, but maybe Matt still owns it.

And then you're trying to monetize it through this agreement WMP engine.

Is there anything you can share there that'll make people feel and see your side of the story?

Yeah, this is totally fair because it's complicated.

But people are saying this has been private.

This has all been very public and documented on the internet from the beginning.

So WordPress .org has always been me personally.

And I think because it's, you know, part of the reason we started there is .com was not available.

So that's why we started on the .org and things like that.

But I think people also assume .org means nonprofit or something.

And that's sometimes true, but it's not always.

It's not a requirement of the .org domain.

Then when I founded Automatic and when we did register the trademark, that actually was registered under Automatic.

So it used to be for the first five years of the project or whatever that Automatic just owned everything outright.

And again, I had investors and a board and that was under control of that.

Now, as Automatic became more successful, I was able to consolidate some voting rights and other things and at least later advocate.

Also, remember, I was like 21 when all this was happening.

So, I was not like maybe the most savvy about legal stuff or didn't always have the best advice.

So, later as I learned more, I was like, oh, you know, I want to actually take this out of the company and create a nonprofit.

And so, we ended up, yeah, creating a nonprofit.

Now, the rules around 5013C nonprofits around the IRS are actually very strict.

So, that's also something else people assume is like, oh, doesn't the nonprofit run the software?

and we applied for that originally and it was denied by the IRS so we actually weren't able to put wordpress .org or the software itself under the non -profit but we were able to just have sort of an educational purview so what was eventually approved was sort of like running the meet -ups and other things

for wordpress doing educational stuff we sponsor a lot of like learn to code or you know running workshops in other countries we have this cool thing i'll do action where we'll do a weekend where we take a bunch of non -profits and build websites for them and stuff like that.

So the non -profit does a lot of exciting things there and then also negotiated with the investors and everyone at Automatic to actually put the trademark under the foundation.

Now the compromise there was that Automatic at this point is running WordPress .com So, to continue running that, which at the time had already tens of millions of users and everything, it needed a commercial license.

And so, kind of the compromise is that the foundation would kind of own the trademark and license it out for non -commercial purposes.

I had a license to run WordPress .org, you know, because obviously I need that.

And then Automatic would retain the commercial license and the ability to sub -license that.

So, to sell that to others.

So this is kind of the grand compromise, and to create this tripartite structure, I was very inspired by the three branches of government.

So there's sort of power in each of those that I think sort of checks and balances each side of it, which is on purpose.

Wow, okay, I get why it's complicated.

I get why people would be confused.

This makes me think about OpenAI had a really strange structure, and that got him in a lot of trouble.

And it feels like when you're 21, you're like, oh, this makes a lot of sense.

What a great concept we've come up here.

And then all this complexity just adds to a lot of confusion around what's going on.

So thank you for addressing that.

Another there's a kind of a related question I've seen a couple of times is just why don't you let that dot org be run by a community?

Why not just like give that up to someone else and not just you?

Thoughts there? Yeah.

And the frame of that question is kind of interesting because it implies like I'm the only person making WordPress, which is obviously not true.

if you look at the daily commits and activity and everything, it is run by the community.

So it's hundreds of volunteers every day that are actually doing the day -to -day work and making the day -to -day decisions and everything that's happened.

So there has been a radical delegation.

However, there's ultimately a hierarchy and I'm kind of the CEO, so I'm like a final, final decision maker.

And so I think what people advocate for around this governance point of view is like, okay, we'll install a board on top of you that ultimately makes decisions for the product or things like that.

And there are other open source projects that have this structure.

None of them have been successful as WordPress.

So I think your audience in particular, like is great software ever created by committee?

Or does it more often reflect a vision of a leader or, you know, something that can allow us to, and I think particularly, you know, WordPress not just remaining relevant, but actually accelerating growth over huge technological shifts over the past two decades.

You know, when we started, there was like, you know, dynamic web apps or DHTML or JavaScript wasn't really a thing.

And then like social web and then iPhones and then all this sort of stuff that's changed over time.

And we've surfed a lot of these technological changes, which is very, very hard to do.

Most products do not remain relevant over multiple generational changes like that.

And that's been because sometimes we've had to make very unpopular decisions.

Like Gutenberg is a huge part of why WordPress is relevant today.

It's actually an open source project we do.

It's the block editor.

It's actually bigger than WordPress because it's not just used on WordPress.

It's used on every WordPress site, but also like Tumblr, other people.

I would actually love if Squarespace or Wix adopted Gutenberg.

It's meant to be like a really open source framework.

But anyway, if we had voted for whether we should do that or not, everyone would have voted against it, or the majority would have.

It was really a few core people of us in the community, you know, Matthias, myself, other core contributors, Ella, Andrew Oz, that said like, hey, no, this is the future, and it's going to take 10 years to do, and it's going to be a long bet.

It's going to suck for the first three or four years.

And so everyone's going to hate it in the beginning.

But then later, with iteration, we've had, I think, now 200 releases of Gutenberg.

We do sort of a very strict every two weeks release schedule since it started.

It's going to get pretty good.

And it's at that point now, it's actually getting pretty darn good.

And the next phase of it, actually, I'm so excited about it.

It's going to be collaboration.

So all of the real -time co -editing that Google Docs and Notion has is coming out to this open source thing.

And with the technological changes, we're actually able to do it peer -to -peer.

So we don't need a centralized server.

We can use WebRTC and other cool technologies.

I mean, anyway, I'm going sidelining, but I think that, you know, that's sort of more, and if you look at a lot of great companies, like, you know, there's a board or whatever, but like, ultimately, there's an executive.

And, you know, some of the most iconic companies of our generations are ones where the executive has, you know, retained some majority voting control or other things like that, which I've been able to with Automatic and with WordPress.

course and um you know i definitely think about succession planning and everything like that but uh if for when i'm gone i don't want to pass it to a committee i want to pass it to someone else who can have a role similar to mine and really sort of uh try to be a steward and there are ultimately laser

check and balance on that because again the community could leave they could fork the software people could change and so you know you're in charge quote unquote but you're also at Surface.

So it's a lot more being like a mayor than a CEO in that you you ultimately are accountable to the folks who are contributing and new users and everything like that.

So I do feel like there is a balance there.

Some of this as well is that there's some people who aren't part of leadership who feel like they should be.

So as you look at like the Yoast decree on things like these are folks who actually aren't like don't have commit status they haven't contributed to WordPress over the years and server a normal hierarchy of you know the meritocracy of how you You get like, you know, the ability to commit code or things

like that. And they're like, hey, I want to lead a release.

And so that's cool, dude, but like there's a process.

We have different people lead releases over the years, but like, you know, they kind of work their way up to it.

This makes so much sense to me.

That's one of the themes of the podcast, just the power of a singular visionary and leader founder mode, as we've all heard, as it's trending these days.

You made famous, yes.

I wouldn't say that.

it was shit yeah ryan shared it but then uh paul graham pointed afterwards and then i renamed the title of that episode founder mode to really retroactively kind of if i zoom out what i'm sensing here is there's like people that have this vision uh ideal of how something like this should run uh but they've

never actually worked at a place like a more non -profit board runs it runs a thing and i've seen what that actually looks like and so i think there's like a big disconnect between the ideal in theory and like what how does great stuff get built And one of the things I think we've tried to demonstrate

with WordPress is actually there's kind of like an open source side and a nonprofit side and a for -profit working in concert.

So, and one of the things people don't necessarily appreciate as much about why WordPress has been so successful is because of Automatic and things like Akismet doing anti -spam or WordPress .com, having a free version of WordPress that has introduced over 100 million people to the software in a way that you

could just sign up for free.

You don't have to pay for hosting or download it yourself or things like that.

So that kind of for -profit, non -profit open source working in concert, I think, is a really interesting model that we're starting to see a lot more companies do.

It's actually very exciting to me that some of the things that were controversial when we started, like open source or distributed work, are now the default for so many exciting new startups.

and there's whole ecosystems of really, really cool open source, like Cal .com for open source calendar.

There's so much cool stuff out there.

Actually, there's a whole generation of younger entrepreneurs that I find very, very inspiring because they're also bringing modern design and web development and everything to open source, which is very neat.

I anticipate a block post one day.

I told you so, guys.

Open source, remote work.

Imagine there's a few more things there.

There's one other thing I want to address.

I haven't seen you talk about this.

It comes up a bunch.

It's around, this is like very in the weeds, but I think it's really important to people.

And there's something here for a lot of people.

The way you guys forked advanced custom fields.

So I think what happened here is you guys forked an existing plugin.

I think somebody else's plugin and then kind of push people to this plugin versus the original plugin.

What can you share there?

Yeah, this is very complex.

But so WordPress .org has kind of like an app store.

it. You know, after WP Engine started suing us and, you know, creating millions of dollars of legal fees and things, we blocked their access toward press .org.

So this plugin they had, advanced custom fields, wasn't able to be updated.

At the same time, a number of security issues were found in it, including some we reported.

And so there had to be an update to it.

So we're like, okay, we'll ship the update for you, essentially.

And then we're like, okay, I think we need to call it something different, right?

Because it actually isn't there anymore.

And they still offer advanced custom fields on their own, people can download it from them, et cetera.

So we made secure custom fields, which was originally under the same directory listing so again because we want all the users of it to get the security updates um this is controversial and actually the they actually got a preliminary injection so the judge said reverse this so this has all been reversed

by the way there now is a separate fork under separate listing of secure custom fields which actually we have uh you know a team on it developers designers and we're creating just like wordpress is a fork we've actually forked this actually WooCommerce was a fork to a lot of things that works.

So we forked it and now have a new name, new everything that we're doing a lot of product innovation and like proving.

So there's a separate project now and separate directory listing for secure custom fields.

So that's kind of fast forward to today.

They now have access to WordPress .org again.

They have updated the plugin.

Everything's kind of back to how it was before.

And there's this separate thing called secure custom fields that the WordPress project is officially supporting.

Right. So I'm hearing essentially you block WP Engine as a part of this.

We're just going to simplify WordPress, reduce confusion.

There being bad actors in the space, so we're going to block them in that block.

There's like a dependency where people couldn't do a thing that they needed to do.

So you're like, and as the one that exists, there's a problem with it.

So we're going to make that dependence, like release a version that you can actually use and fix the security issues.

That was the intention.

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

Okay. Great. So maybe just the last question.

We talked about just like a lot of people see you with devil horns these days.

They think you're doing a lot of you're doing bad things and they don't like the approach you're taking.

You talked about there's this WP Engine spending a lot of money on PR and hiring this agency.

I guess, is there anything else that like, why do you think so many people are looking at you as the bad guy?

Is it mostly that you think?

Just like, where do you think it's coming from?

Why are like comments always so negative?

And we talked a bit about it, but anything more there?

I don't know if I can say why.

I do think one thing I've learned is that a lot of these things we've talked about are nuanced.

So one, essentially, thing I've learned in this process is that it's hard to explain this stuff in, you know, 240 characters or, you know, some mediums do not lend themselves well to discussing this.

And so I tried, you know, So I, but I, I'm, you know, participating less than like Reddit or Twitter and trying to do more long form things like this, where you can actually have the context and things can't be taken out of context.

Also, I think there's something where, you know, social networks sometimes are tuned to promote outrage.

And it was very interesting.

We ran a sentiment analysis recently.

We were kind of like looking at different social networks, analyzing all the comments.

And, and we found actually that the negative, you know, The sort of devil horn fraction on like, what was it?

Like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram was like 8%.

It's actually pretty small.

On Reddit, it was like bigger.

I forget the exact number.

But on Twitter, it was 52%.

You're like, whoa, what's going on there?

And so there's something in that algorithm.

And again, we can't see how the algorithm works or what the incentives are.

But it can promote kind of the most controversial things.

And I think that's not a novel perception.

Like there's a lot of discussion around how social media might be creating more fragmentation in society.

And I think this is just an example of that, where when you have networks, when people are getting the majority of the information from social networks and those networks are not designed to provide nuance or balance or even promote truth necessarily.

You know, misinformation can get spread far more than, you know, what's the saying?

Like a lie gets around the world seven times before truth has time to, you know.

Get out of bed. Get out of bed.

Yeah. There's been a lot of that.

So there's actually been a lot of misinformation, untrue things that like go viral.

And then the correction, you know, the untrue thing gets like 700 ,000 views and the correction gets like 20 ,000 views.

So there's been some of that happening.

And, you know, when mainstream media has covered this, it's actually been a lot better.

So there's been some actually really good articles and, you know, some business publications and other things that sort of look at a more nuanced and balanced view.

And I think the podcast has been pretty good.

But definitely on Twitter, like, I think you can get a version of all of this that is both, I think, not entirely true and also like pretty more negative.

You know, I imagine people are going to be like, Lenny, you didn't ask him this thing.

Here's the thing he said that I want to learn more about.

I'm sure I missed some stuff.

but from an outsider's perspective this all makes sense there's a company like I'm not I don't think PE companies are bad innately but their job is buy a company and make it run more efficiently and then oftentimes sell it for more so it makes sense that they buy a company make it more efficient cut

some corners don't put a lot of effort into making it awesome even though I'm sure there's awesome people working in there trying really hard to make it great and like basically what I'm feeling is you just they got to a point where this is hurting the ecosystem They're feeling really dishonest with working

with you, and there's a stalling technique.

And so it makes sense to me why you just have to stand up and fight back, and it's hard.

It's hard to do that.

Is there anything else on this thread before we move on to a different topic?

Anything else you want to share before we close out this chapter?

Well, if people have more questions, they can come to WordCamp Asia.

I'm going to do an open Q &A there.

We do town halls in the WordPress title work community.

There's a Slack people can get on and ask questions.

So, like, there is kind of like a lot of open ways to engage.

And I'm definitely happy to do that.

I'm probably not going to do it on Twitter as much, but, like, oh, yeah, well, there's longer form opportunities to have a discussion here, particularly if it's more like real time like this.

I'm very happy to. And that's why, if you look at it, there's actually a big difference.

WP Engine has not done any podcasts and no press.

They don't respond to journalists.

They don't talk about this.

And I've done the opposite, where I'm really trying to be out there and engage.

And everyone's like, why don't you just let the lawyers do the talking?

And it's like, well, but we have community.

And also, I feel like we're in the right.

So when you're in the wrong, you probably say only have the lawyers talk.

When you're in the right, I think you should be out there and tell the story.

I remember at the end of your WordCamp talk, you were like, any questions after this big, controversial talk?

And I'm curious how it felt.

All the questions initially were nothing to do with this.

It's what it felt like.

You're just like, oh, they already had these questions.

They didn't even know what you said.

maybe and i bet you're just like wait does anyone did anyone hear what i just said did it feel like that well also like that's really like a wordpress community event so it's a lot of core developers and things so like they have just wordpress questions so uh that is something uh you're like hello i've

now done hundreds and hundreds of these town halls and qas and i really enjoy it because you never know what's going to come up yeah okay i want to talk about all the companies that you're bought and have are will buy in the future uh it's kind of like you're building a little Berkshire Hathaway.

I think you've described it that way.

It's kind of what it's feeling like.

And Tumblr is really interesting.

I didn't like until I started prepping for this, I didn't even know you guys own Tumblr.

I haven't heard the story.

What's just why did you guys buy Tumblr?

What is going on with Tumblr?

It was like a big deal back in the day.

What is where is the current state of Tumblr?

What is the story there?

Oh, Tumblr is so interesting.

I mean, you know, at the time, I think it was one of our best competitors.

And they created this really amazing sort of hybrid of like blogging and social networking and if you kind of zoom back a lot of things that are now standard on other social networks like even the ability to embed an image with a post again was not supported originally on twitter and other things remember

they used to have like was it like tweet image or like you have to like link out to other things to post an image to twitter it wasn't native functionality and tumblr had like these multiple post types you could post like a chat image you know they were i think one of the first support video.

So they did a lot of, I think, product innovation under the leadership of David Karp, who's like a really amazing entrepreneur and product leader.

Funny story, both David and I were at CNET at the same time.

They'd hired both of us.

What an alumni group.

Whoa. They could have kept both of us probably.

But anyway, the Tumblr then, I forget the year, but they sold, I think the same time that Instagram date for a similar amount, $1 .1 billion dollars to you or to someone else instagram bought by facebook right right tumblr and tumblr bought by yahoo oh wow who was at the time again yahoo we don't think

about it now but i feel a little old but like at the time yahoo was like one of the internet giants and had recently versa meyer who was um or mayor who was one of like the big early people at google i think part creating the APA program and everything like that, was the CEO of Yahoo.

And this was, I think, one of her first big acquisitions.

Now, subsequently, obviously, we know how Instagram went.

I think people were like, I can't believe you bought this for a billion dollars.

And obviously, now it's worth hundreds of billions.

So that's had a really good trajectory.

At Yahoo, I think things became more challenged.

So again, this is a little bit of history, but Yahoo then had like this thing where they owned part of Alibaba which then became like more valuable than the rest of the company they had activist investors I think they had some CEO switches I think Rissemeyer like leaves or gets fired at some point you

know there's all this like turnover and I think Tumblr really languished under that their ownership and from what I can understand the team was actually held back a lot from things they wanted to launch or ways they wanted to iterate then yahoo mergers with aol which is another kind of early internet

thing uh that goes for like a little while so again the tumblr is just kind of stuck underneath the tumbling along tumbling along and then that gets bought by verizon so fast forward to 2019 you know verizon wants to get rid of tumblr and so they kind of put it up for sale and had a number of bidders

Automatic ended up buying it for a de minimis amount I think it's been reported we bought it for like three million dollars but obviously that represented a lot of value destruction over the years Tumblr had some tough times they actually were banned from the app store at one point for not moderating

things well enough and having kind of maybe a little too much porn.

Obviously Twitter and Reddit have porn, but maybe we're a little too out there with it and we're doing a good job filtering it and keeping it away from app store reviewers or whatever.

And so Verizon, to their credit, though, there were people bidding more.

Actually, I think a porn company was bidding on Tumblr that would have paid a lot more money.

They really were looking for an acquirer that they felt like would be a good steward.

And from my point of view, I had such incredible respect for Tumblr as a product and the community, you know, still, despite all of this sort of stuff that had happened, I think at that point still was like, you know, I forget the exact number, but like call it 15, 20 million monthly active users.

So really sort of active core.

and one of the things that's so fascinating is over half of that user base was under the age 25 and actually had a huge i think it was like uh 25 or 30 percent lgbt uh plus and um so you know i think a very unique place on the internet where people could uh have a social network where they could be

anonymous they could put on different identities they could you know be someplace their parents weren't like facebook or instagram like really still contained a special spot so uh we We didn't buy him.

Now, people are like, oh, you bought it for $3 million.

But we bought it sort of taking on all liabilities, including I think they were under investigation by the FTC.

There were lawsuits.

There was all this sort of stuff.

So it was free like a puppy, not free like beer.

Yeah, and a pretty big team.

I think 185 people were taking a lot of burn.

It was burning a ton of cash.

And yeah, that was 2019.

And so, it's been, I think, a humbling experience, you know, running a social network, and it was very, very different from all the other products that we've done.

And I think there's some incredible things about Tumblr, and that I'm still very excited about.

So, we're like, WordPress has primarily like a desktop and web user base.

Tumblr is obviously like 85 % app -based, has a younger demographic.

And so part of the vision that now we're executing on is actually we wanted to create a path for people using Tumblr to actually being powered by WordPress on the back end.

So Tumblr users could unlock themes, customization, plugins, et cetera.

Actually, we're in the process right now of migrating the half a billion Tumblr sites to WordPress.

Probably one of the largest data migrations that's happened in a while.

So we're kind of trying to do this in a way that's invisible to users on the front end.

And so changing at the back end, well, maintaining the APIs and the interface and everything.

So it's a fun engineering project.

I kind of posted this, like, kind of call to arms.

Got a lot of fun people applying for Automatic, and we hired a lot of great folks around this sort of, like, audacious project, this big, hairy, audacious goal.

And so that's where it's at now.

I sort of ran it personally for a few years while we're doing Turnaround.

But there's a great team there.

but I still challenge, still not profitable so we're still subsidizing it from the rest of Automatics businesses.

Fortunately, the rest of our business have done really well so we were able to do that but I definitely want to get to a place where it's sustainable and one of the things we're also experimenting with is can Tumblr have not just an advertising driven model because I think ultimately the incentives

of advertising social networks can lead to the kind of dynamics that you see on the more negative side of like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.

And so really trying to create a subscription model or a sort of like first party user driven advertising where like you promote your blog post or something like that or you promote a WooCommerce product or something where it's like not a third party ad ecosystem, which I think has a lot of like weird

code and malware and lots of stuff I don't love.

Wow. Sounds like a lot you took on with this acquisition.

And I love that you said you ran it initially.

So this is a good segue to maybe my last question.

I'm curious where this goes.

Just how do you, well, let me zoom out.

There's a lot of people these days that are excited about role of businesses.

I'm going to buy a bunch of companies, make them better, make them awesome, save money and then just keep building this holding company sort of thing.

You guys are doing that and it's working well.

What do you look for?

How do you decide a company's right for automatic?

What are kind of the factors that are like, we should buy this.

We can turn this around and turn it into a big success.

I don't know if I would do another turnaround around Tumblr again, or at least not for many, many years?

It's definitely a different thing.

The vast majority of things we acquire, it's simply something that's done well and we want to accelerate it.

Or sometimes, aqua hires where we're plugging it into one of our existing projects or we're taking the team and putting them on something we're already doing.

So, it's a really talented team.

Tumblr, I think we ended up ultimately replacing 85%, 90 % of the team as well so that that's just very different difference and um yeah so I I do think there are you know different ways of doing it but if you look at our other acquisitions like day one set are like founders still here many years later

we're accelerating like you know stuff like that we brought it to Android or bring it brought it to web like that that it's more of like taking something good and making it better and probably our best example there is is WooCommerce you know which was kind of a small company, I think 35, 40 people

based out of South Africa and has obviously grown to, you know, like I said, you know, Automatic makes about half a billion dollars a year now and WooCommerce is a majority of that.

Speaking of that, actually, you haven't shared the revenue number.

I know it's public, just like give people a sense of Automatic's revenue.

Can you just share those numbers?

Because I think it might blow people's minds.

I think we say publicly, it's about a half a billion dollars in sort of AR revenue right now.

Incredible. Okay. I'm going to, I have a question for you.

It's kind of a hot seat question.

As you talked, I wonder, I feel like people are thinking this.

So you've been talking about PE companies being often bad.

You're buying Tumblr.

You've talked about laying off a bunch of people, turning it all around.

How is that different from a PEB company, Matt?

Yeah. And I agree with you that PE, just because it's private equity doesn't mean it's bad.

And also I say something people say is like, hey, wait, don't you have private equity investors as well at Automatic?

And we do. Now, they own usually a small percentage, like sometimes under one percent, and they don't have control of the company.

So I think there's a distinguish.

Is it a minority investment or a control investment?

And with WP Engine, Silver Lake controls the company.

Now, when they control the company, I think there's a spectrum of actions.

You know, obviously, being more efficient is great.

And we should all strive for that.

And I think every business does, whether it's private equity or, you know, our business or things that are found or controlled.

you always want to be more efficient now there's some spectrum there where you over optimize or you can have dark patterns you know right now on wp engine it's very difficult to cancel your account because they're they're actually i think as of today 45 000 uh sites have left so they're i think down

to like 600 yeah well because their customers have realized like hey this isn't wordpress this isn't or they're suing the guy who started wordpress so like maybe we should not support this commercially so we have this site wordpressenginetracker .com that sort of shows in real time the sites that are leaving

it's kind of an exciting thing to see that number tick up actually maybe a good example as well like even though there's a lot of negativity if you actually look at like how people are voting with their wallets they're leaving so i think you have to judge as well like just look at the track record so one

of the things i'm very proud of with automatic is we are an acquirer of first resort.

And we have founders that have sold to us.

Paul Maina, day one, is a great example that didn't need to sell.

You could easily be wildly profitable, could have run it himself for a long, long time.

But people choose to join because they feel like we'll be good stewards of it in the future.

And ultimately, just have to look at the track record.

So, I think, you know, don't judge it by what it's called.

Judge it by the actions over time and and I I hope to continue building that reputation for a place that's a good steward of communities and software and everything else for many years to come Matt we covered so much everything I asked you all the hard questions and more before we wrap up is there anything

else that you want to leave listeners with any last thoughts comments insights stories um yeah follow me I'm at photomat p -h -o -t -o -m -a -t -t on tumblr twitter instagram everything like that.

I post a lot about other stuff.

I post a lot about AI and open source and other things.

Some WordPress things in there as well.

You know, I have these life missions to democratize publishing and commerce.

We added a new one last year, which is messaging.

So it's in beta mode right now, but relaunching in a few months as a product called Beeper, which takes all your Telegram, Instagram DM, signal, everything, brings it all into one app.

And you can do some really cool stuff like that.

And especially when you start to imagine search, or AI, local AI around that.

So, very, very excited about that relaunch.

So I encourage people to, you can check out the beta now, go to beaver .com to get like the new version.

And we're going to relaunch that later in the year.

So yeah, very excited about that.

It's kind of fun to be working on something that's at the stage where WordPress was in like 2003, 2004.

So yeah, WordPress is quite mature at this point.

WooCommerce is kind of where WordPress was in like 2010.

And then the Beeper stuff, the messaging stuff is where we were in like 2003.

so it's uh one thing that keeps me excited is working at like different stages of this yeah this feels like a reason to be doing your approach to Berkshire Hathaway is just like stay active in early stage stuff and not just optimize established things uh so that's beeper .com by the way awesome domain name

uh photomat is that what's the story photomat are you you're into photography I imagine is the story yeah it's a little bit of a pun so you know there's a a photo as a photo mat is also like p f o t o m a t t is a place that you would go to like develop your photos back when you would have film and develop

things uh so originally my my username was sax mat because i played the saxophone uh now sometimes people mishear that and also like as you know i started i stopped traveling i started traveling so much because uh it has been years i do like 400 ,000 miles of air travel because i go around the world

to like go to WordPress events and meet the community and you know as a distributed company we do lots of meetups and so it was became hard to carry my saxophone around so my method of artistic expression became photography and that's actually kind of how WordPress started was actually originally a site

where I could share my photos you know before Flickr before Facebook and everything like that sort of use this gallery software actually open source gallery software php software to sort of share all the photos I was taking and actually now on my website I think out of over 38 000 photos i posted and uh

yeah that's uh it's still one of the things i really love so it's also a username that was available everywhere and uh i still do it so i'm actually going to the mahakumela the big you know three in a million person gathering at the ganges river a few weeks and uh well i don't just decide to experience

that it happens like every 12 years but two i'm just really excited to like take some time to do photography uh and uh yeah i really enjoy it.

You forgot to mention your website and where your blog, your WordPress site itself, where you blog ma .tt is the domain, which is amazing.

I will point people to one of my favorite ritual you have on your blog, which is you share what's in your bag.

You talk about how you travel all this.

And I think every year you're like, here's the gadgets I use most and bring with me everywhere, right?

It's my most popular post of the year by far.

I'm not surprised. You need an amazon just buy everything uh button uh yeah because basically you're just trying to optimize for the least weight and most utility right out of all these gadgets that you're bringing with you on trips yeah actually weighing it is something i just started doing this year

so because my bag actually got really heavy got like 35 pounds or something and so uh yeah some friends were like hey why don't we weigh everything and just go through and post the weights oh my god okay anyway we'll point you to that man thank you so much for doing this this is awesome lenny thank

Thank you so much. And I really appreciate, you know, the ability to discuss these things in a longer form and also just your audience.

And so, oh, I guess final thing I'll say is we're hiring a ton.

So you have one of the most incredible audiences in the world.

I recommend your podcast and newsletter to a lot of my colleagues.

And so if you're someone who loves this kind of stuff, I think there's a big opportunity at Automatic to have an impact on these things.

What roles are you hiring for most?

And where do people find these roles?

automatic .com a -u -t -o -m -a -t -t -i -c there's a work with us page you kind of see how we work we'll fully distribute it and can manage that forever you know we sort of started that another interesting thing is we actually pay the same salaries globally so whether you're in california or italy or nigeria or wherever

we pay the global salaries so so yeah a lot of opportunities and And we're hiring for kind of everything.

So I would say that particularly like people with great design or product skills is probably one of the areas that you can have the biggest impact at Automatic right now.

All right. If you made it this far into the podcast, you should definitely put it.

Matt, thank you. Thank you for being here.

Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for listening.

If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast.

You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's podcast dot com.

See you in the next episode.

[Navigating the WordPress Conflict, Open Source Ideals, and the Future of AI]-[The creator of WordPress opens up about becoming an internet villain, why he’s taking a stand, and the future of open source | Matt Mullenweg (founder and CEO, Automattic)]

📋 Summary

The WordPress Crisis and the Battle for Open Source Ideals

The Philosophy of Open Source: Beyond Code

Building a "Berkshire Hathaway" of the Internet

Addressing the Public Backlash

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript