"I Take No Pride in This, as It Means The...  🔗 **Source:** ["I Take No Pride in This, as It Means The...](https://twitter.com/trentlapinski/status/2098922412024717785/?rw_tt_thread=True) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: > - automattic > - matt-mullenweg > - wordpress-governance > - open-source-governance > - wp-engine-lawsuit > author: Duane Storey (quote-posting a thread by Trent Lapinski, who also replies) > source: https://twitter.com/trentlapinski/status/2098922412024717785/?rw_tt_thread=True > reference: https://twitter.com/trentlapinski/status/2098922412024717785/?rw_tt_thread=True > date created: 2026-09-13 > > > [!info] Generated analysis — not the author's words. Sections below are machine-written > > from the captured source. Only text inside `> [!quote]` blocks is verbatim from the author. > > Do not quote or attribute any other line to the named author. > <!-- deep-read:sections start --> ## 🏷️ Title "I take no pride in this" — Duane Storey and Trent Lapinski on the Automattic board crisis, the failure of WordPress governance, and what comes next **Who is speaking.** The captured body has three voices in sequence. (1) Duane Storey opens by quoting Trent Lapinski's closing paragraph and adds his own commentary on governance, Morten Rand-Hendriksen's earlier efforts, the ACF/Secure Custom Fields takeover, and the Sep 30 spoliation hearing. (2) Trent Lapinski's full original thread (posted Sep 12, 2026 at 7:14 PM) is embedded: a scenario analysis of what happens if Matt Mullenweg reverses the board's leave decision, followed by financial and legal predictions. (3) Trent replies to Duane: Andrew Nacin and others also tried, but everything had to go through Matt, so "It wasn't real governance." Readers should attribute each claim to the correct speaker; the Reader author field shows Duane Storey, but most of the word count is Trent's. ## 🧭 Table of Contents 1. Title 2. References (in-page) 3. Summary 4. Main Content and Notes 5. References 6. Paraphrase 7. Newsletter 8. Action Items 9. Hypotheses 10. Methodology 11. Questions 12. Future Research 13. Implications 14. Learning Styles Assessment 15. Accessibility Assessment 16. DEIB Assessment 17. Logical Validity 18. DARVO Analysis 19. Conclusion 20. Refactor Appendix ## 🔗 References (in-page) Links that actually appear in the captured body: - Trent Lapinski profile: https://twitter.com/trentlapinski - Trent's original thread (Sep 12, 2026, 7:14 PM): https://twitter.com/trentlapinski/status/2098852701475946687 - Duane Storey profile: https://twitter.com/DuaneStorey - The saved item itself (Trent's reply in the thread view): https://twitter.com/trentlapinski/status/2098922412024717785/?rw_tt_thread=True No external documents, court filings, financial reports, or news articles are linked in the body. Every figure in the thread (83% valuation decline, the Sep 30 hearing, board composition) is asserted without a citation. ## 📝 Summary **What happened.** In the days after Automattic's board voted to place CEO Matt Mullenweg on leave, and after his return days later, Trent Lapinski posted a long thread laying out a worst-case chain of consequences: if Matt regained his title by replacing the board, the ousted directors (who represent large shareholders) could sue for breach of fiduciary duty or seek an injunction; Automattic's valuation has reportedly fallen 83% in five years; the WP Engine trial resumes at the end of September and, in Trent's view, the facts favor WP Engine; venture capital will avoid the company; and the only paths forward are a down-round buyer, a settlement, or a skeleton-crew survival mode. Duane Storey quote-posted the thread's closing lament and added that governance advocates such as Morten were ostracized, that one person destabilizing an ecosystem is a warning to enterprises evaluating open source, and that trust in WordPress.org was already damaged by the ACF plugin takeover. Trent replied that Andrew Nacin and others also tried to build governance, but every decision still routed through Matt. **Why it matters.** This is a primary artifact of community sentiment during the crisis, from two long-tenured contributors rather than outside journalists. It shows how quickly the conversation moved from "who is CEO this week" to "is the project's governance model structurally broken." It also shows the emotional register: grief and anger more than analysis. **Stakeholders.** Matt Mullenweg; the Automattic board and its investor representatives (the thread names BlackRock and Salesforce as shareholders); Automattic employees facing possible layoffs; WP Engine as litigant; WordPress.org contributors and plugin authors (the ACF precedent); enterprise adopters weighing platform risk; the wider open-source community watching a governance failure play out publicly; alternative governance efforts such as FAIR and The WPOCC. **Risks.** The thread's predictions are almost entirely unsourced speculation, and Trent flags only one of them as such. Repeating figures like "83%" or claims about criminal exposure without verification would spread misinformation. On the other side, dismissing the thread entirely would miss a real signal: veteran contributors publicly saying they no longer trust the project's institutions. **Bottom line.** Treat this as a sentiment and hypothesis document, not a factual account. The strongest, most defensible claim is the shared one at the end: WordPress never had governance independent of one person, and the current crisis is the bill coming due. ## 📖 Main Content ### 🗒️ Notes **Structure of the capture.** Readwise stitched the thread as: Duane's quote-post text, then an embedded card of Trent's full thread, then a horizontal rule, then Trent's reply to Duane. The first paragraph (in quotation marks) is Trent's closing paragraph, quoted by Duane; it appears again near the end of Trent's thread. **Duane's argument, in three moves.** 1. Governance was proposed and refused. "Guys like Morten" (Morten Rand-Hendriksen, who publicly argued for a WordPress governance project around 2018 to 2019) tried and were "effectively ostracized." 2. Reputational damage is unprecedented in speed. Twenty years of goodwill gone quickly, with spillover onto open source as a category; an enterprise evaluating open source might now hesitate. 3. Trust in WordPress.org is already broken. The "ACF hijack" (the October 2024 takeover of the Advanced Custom Fields plugin slug on WordPress.org, republished as Secure Custom Fields) is cited as the moment trust ended. Duane expects more instability as the WP Engine lawsuit continues, especially around a Sep 30 spoliation hearing. **Trent's argument, as a scenario tree.** - Scenario: Matt stacks the board, fires the existing board, installs a new one, reinstates himself, fires the interim CEO. Consequence: shareholder class action; ousted directors seek an injunction. - Financial claim: 83% valuation decline over five years, therefore revenue is likely very bad. - Legal claim: WP Engine trial resumes end of month; facts unfavorable to Matt; possible multimillion-dollar penalties; possible criminal referral for extortion. - Motive claim: the board wanted Matt on leave before trial to settle and save the company (labeled "just speculation"). - Cascade: board and inner circle sue for fiduciary breach; VC blacklist; only exits are a down-round buyer, a settlement, or a skeleton crew hoarding cash; CFO was fired so payroll risk is near; more layoffs. - Project claim: fewer developers, less leadership, AI eroding the business; WordPress must become "an agentic system," but no one can drive that and Matt would block it. - Coda: the lament about the open web and unsolved open-source governance. **Trent's reply.** Andrew Nacin (a former lead developer) and others also tried. Everything still had to be run by Matt, who would not approve it. "It wasn't real governance." **What is verifiable from the body alone.** Only the existence and timing of the posts, and the speakers' opinions. Everything else requires outside sources. ## 📚 References (primary sources preferred) From the body (see in-page list above): Trent's thread status 2098852701475946687; the saved reply status 2098922412024717785. Not linked in the body; listed for follow-up verification only, no URLs asserted: - Automattic's own announcements regarding the board vote, Matt's leave, and his return (September 2026). - The WP Engine v. Automattic and Mullenweg docket (U.S. District Court, Northern District of California) for the actual trial schedule and any spoliation motion. - The October 2024 WordPress.org announcement of Secure Custom Fields, the primary source for the "ACF hijack" reference. - Morten Rand-Hendriksen's 2018 to 2019 posts proposing a WordPress governance project. - FAIR Package Manager and The WPOCC public materials as the current alternative governance efforts. ## 🗣️ Paraphrase (paragraph by paragraph) 1. (Trent, quoted by Duane) I get no satisfaction from this; it is the open web being dismantled, something I spent years helping build. I wish we had fixed open-source governance so this could never happen. 2. (Duane) People like Morten pushed hard for WordPress governance and were pushed out for it. I have never seen someone burn twenty years of goodwill this fast, and it stains open source generally. If I ran a large company I would now question open source, having seen one person do this much damage this quickly. 3. (Duane) After the ACF takeover I do not see how anyone trusts WordPress.org, and Automattic's internal situation is worse. Expect more turbulence as the lawsuit proceeds, especially the Sep 30 spoliation hearing. 4. (Trent, thread) If Matt retook the CEO title by packing the board, firing the old board, and reversing the interim CEO, he now faces a shareholder class action. 5. (Trent) The fired directors represent big shareholders and could get a court to remove him again. 6. (Trent) Automattic's value is down 83% in five years; revenue must be very poor for that. 7. (Trent) The WP Engine case goes to trial at month's end; the facts favor WP Engine; penalties could be millions; a criminal extortion referral is possible. 8. (Trent) The board probably wanted Matt sidelined before trial to settle and protect the company; he and the board disagree on strategy. (Trent marks this as speculation.) 9. (Trent) Former directors and insiders will sue for fiduciary breach and negligence. 10. (Trent) Between the WP Engine case and a shareholder suit involving big VC firms, BlackRock, and Salesforce, no venture capital will touch Automattic. 11. (Trent) Matt's only hope is a buyer willing to take out other investors in a down round, and they may prefer to sue rather than sell. 12. (Trent) Absent that, he has only declining revenue and no CFO; payroll risk and layoffs follow. 13. (Trent) The realistic rescue is Matt stepping down so a new team can get investors to recapitalize, but those investors will not do it while he remains. 14. (Trent) If he stays, he must settle or lose, cut to a skeleton crew, hoard cash, and fight investor lawsuits with unlimited legal budgets. 15. (Trent) For WordPress: fewer developers, fewer resources, less leadership, while AI erodes the business. 16. (Trent) WordPress must become an agentic system, not just a data store, but no one can lead that change and Matt would block it. 17. (Trent) With lawsuits pending, VC cut off, and major investors angry, prospects are poor. 18. (Trent) Closing lament, as in paragraph 1. 19. (Trent, reply) Andrew Nacin and others tried too. Everything still needed Matt's sign-off and he would not give it. It was never real governance. ## 📰 Newsletter (WordPress-focused, witty, with links) **Subject: The week WordPress discovered it never had a governance model, just a founder** If you spent last week refreshing the Automattic board news, you were not alone. Trent Lapinski's thread (https://twitter.com/trentlapinski/status/2098852701475946687) reads like a chess engine evaluating every line and finding checkmate in all of them: shareholder suits, injunctions, VC freeze-out, skeleton crew. It is speculative, and Trent says so exactly once, so treat the numbers with care. The part worth your attention is not the financial forecasting. It is the exchange with Duane Storey (https://twitter.com/DuaneStorey), who pointed out that Morten Rand-Hendriksen tried to build governance years ago and was shown the door. Trent's reply: Andrew Nacin and others tried as well, but every decision still went through one person. "It wasn't real governance." That is the actual story. Not who holds the CEO badge this week, but whether the project can make a decision when the founder is unavailable, on leave, or wrong. FAIR and The WPOCC have been building toward that answer; this thread is the loudest argument yet for why they need to finish. One more thing: Duane names the ACF takeover as the moment plugin authors stopped trusting WordPress.org. If you maintain a plugin, this is a good week to make sure your distribution does not depend on a single registry. ## ✅ Action Items ### DevRel - Prepare a plain-language FAQ separating verified facts (board vote, leave, return) from thread speculation (83%, criminal referral, payroll risk) so community members are not repeating unsourced claims. - Monitor sentiment among veteran contributors; the two speakers here are long-tenured, and their exit signals matter more than casual users. ### OSPO - Draft an internal risk memo on single-registry dependency (WordPress.org) for plugins and themes used in production; the ACF precedent is the case study. - Evaluate FAIR Package Manager and mirror options for build pipelines. ### Community - Host a moderated discussion on governance history (Morten's 2018 to 2019 proposal, the Nacin era) so newer contributors have context rather than rumor. ### WordPress subteams - **Core:** Document the current decision path for releases if the project lead is unavailable. This thread asserts no such path exists; prove or disprove it. - **Core Performance:** Not directly implicated; no action beyond awareness. - **Core AI:** Trent's "agentic system" claim is a product thesis; capture it as an input to roadmap discussion, with the caveat that it comes from a critic, not a user study. - **Core Program Team:** Prepare contingency release coordination notes for reduced Automattic sponsorship. - **Mobile, Playground, CLI:** Audit dependencies on Automattic-controlled infrastructure. - **Community (events):** Expect harder questions at meetups and WordCamps; give organizers a neutral talking-points sheet. - **Training, Documentation:** Add a governance and project-history module so contributors understand how decisions are actually made. - **Marketing:** Do not respond to the thread directly; publish verified timelines only. - **Support:** Prepare responses for users asking whether WordPress is "safe to use." - **Design, Photos, TV, Polyglots, Accessibility, Openverse, Themes, Tide:** No direct action; note funding exposure if Automattic sponsorship contracts. - **Meta:** Review plugin directory takeover policy in light of continuing ACF references. - **Plugins:** Publish clear criteria for when a slug can be reassigned. - **Hosting:** Coordinate mirror and update-server contingency planning across hosts. ### The WPOCC - Use this thread as evidence in the case for a documented, founder-independent decision process; cite the Nacin and Morten precedents. ### FAIR - Publish a short explainer on how FAIR mitigates the ACF-style registry risk Duane names. ## 🧪 Hypotheses (3 to 6, testable) 1. **H1:** Public governance proposals (Morten, 2018 to 2019) were rejected rather than adopted. Test: locate the original posts and the official responses. 2. **H2:** Automattic's valuation has declined by roughly 83% over five years. Test: compare the last reported priced round with any 2025 to 2026 secondary or 409A disclosures. 3. **H3:** The WP Engine trial resumes in late September 2026 with a spoliation motion around Sep 30. Test: check the court docket. 4. **H4:** Enterprise adoption sentiment toward WordPress has measurably declined since October 2024. Test: analyst reports, job postings, hosting churn data. 5. **H5:** Plugin authors increasingly distribute outside WordPress.org since the ACF takeover. Test: count plugins with alternate update channels (FAIR, GitHub) before and after October 2024. 6. **H6:** Contributor activity from Automattic-sponsored developers drops in the two release cycles after the board crisis. Test: props counts by employer affiliation. ## 📊 Methodology The body was read in full and speaker boundaries were identified from the quotation marks, the embedded card, the horizontal rule, and the @mention. Each claim was classified as opinion, prediction, or factual assertion, and factual assertions were checked for in-body citations (none exist). Fallacies were identified from the assertion set. No outside sources were fetched; all references beyond the body are flagged as unverified. ## ❓ Questions - What specifically did the board's leave resolution say, and what mechanism brought Matt back? - Is the 83% figure from a priced round, a secondary sale, or an internal valuation? - Which hearing is scheduled for Sep 30, and does it concern spoliation? - Which "interim CEO" is Trent referring to, and was anyone fired? - Who are "Morten" and "Andrew Nacin" to a newer reader, and what exactly did they propose? - Is Duane's "enterprise doubts about open source" claim about WordPress specifically or open source broadly? ## 🔮 Future Research - A timeline of WordPress governance proposals and outcomes, 2005 to 2026. - A comparative study: how Node.js, Python, and Rust handled founder transitions, versus WordPress. - Longitudinal contributor-affiliation data through the crisis. - Enterprise CMS RFP language changes referencing governance risk. ## 💡 Implications - **Practice:** Agencies and hosts should have a written contingency for a disrupted WordPress release cadence and for plugin registry changes. - **Policy:** The project needs a documented, founder-independent decision process; this thread is a case study in what its absence costs. - **Security:** Registry takeovers (ACF) and update-server control are supply-chain risks; mirrors and signed packages matter. - **Education:** Contributor onboarding should teach how decisions are actually made, not only how to submit a patch. - **Funding:** If Automattic sponsorship contracts, Five for the Future and independent funding vehicles become critical; The WPOCC and FAIR need sustainable budgets. ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - **Visual:** Weak. Text only; no diagrams. A scenario tree would help. - **Aural:** Weak. Nothing to listen to. - **Verbal:** Strong. Plain, direct sentences; conversational. - **Kinesthetic:** Weak. No exercises. - **Logical:** Moderate. Trent's thread is structured as if-then chains, but premises are unsupported. - **Social:** Moderate. It is a public exchange, and the reply format invites participation. - **Solitary:** Moderate. Easy to read alone and reflect on. - **Naturalistic:** Not applicable. - **Reading level:** Roughly grade 9 to 10 (Flesch-Kincaid estimate); vocabulary includes legal and finance terms (fiduciary, spoliation, down round) without definitions. ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment Mapped to WCAG 2.2 AA where the source (a social thread captured as text) can be assessed: 1. **Text alternatives (1.1.1):** The profile image has an empty alt attribute in the capture; acceptable as decorative. 2. **Adaptable structure (1.3.1):** No headings; speaker changes are signaled only by punctuation and a rule. Fails for screen-reader users who need to know who is speaking. 3. **Distinguishable (1.4.x):** Plain text; contrast depends on the reader app. Pass by default. 4. **Readable (3.1.x):** Language is plain but undefined jargon (spoliation, fiduciary, down round) affects 3.1.3 (unusual words). Partial. 5. **Navigable (2.4.x):** Link text is meaningful (profile names, "Posted Sep 12"). Pass. 6. **Predictable and input assistance (3.2, 3.3):** Not applicable; no forms. 7. **Cognitive load:** Long unbroken speculation with many conditionals; a summary or headings would help readers with attention or processing differences. ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment - **Cultural breadth:** Narrow. Two North American men discussing a U.S. company and U.S. litigation; no global contributor perspective. - **Inclusive language:** "Guys like Morten" is casual gendered phrasing; profanity is present ("shitty"). Otherwise neutral. - **Neurodiversity support:** Low. Dense conditional chains without signposting. - **Representation:** Only named figures are Matt, Morten, and Andrew Nacin; the many non-Automattic and non-U.S. contributors affected are invisible. - **Psychological safety:** The thread models candor, but the tone ("stupid enough," "stick it to Matt") may discourage contributors who want to discuss governance without personal attack. ## ✅ Logical Validity **Strong reasoning.** - The core shared claim (decisions always routed through one person, so it was never real governance) is supported by two independent firsthand accounts in the thread (Duane citing Morten; Trent citing Nacin and his own experience). - Trent correctly labels one inference ("just speculation") and structures his scenario as conditionals ("if Matt stacked the board..."). - Duane's causal link from the ACF takeover to loss of trust is a reasonable inference from a documented event. **Fallacies (named, located, explained, fix).** 1. **Appeal to probability (possibility treated as likelihood).** Location: Trent, thread paragraph 7: "Matt could even be recommended for criminal charges for extortion, which could result in probation or jail time." No evidence of a criminal referral is offered; a civil trial outcome does not imply one. Fix: state the actual claims in the civil case and note that criminal exposure is unknown. 2. **Hasty generalization.** Location: Duane, paragraph 2: "If I were a large enterprise, I might be having doubts about open source now..." One project's founder-centric failure is generalized to open source as a category, although most major projects use foundations or multi-stakeholder governance. Fix: narrow the claim to founder-controlled projects without independent governance. 3. **Non sequitur (valuation to revenue).** Location: Trent, thread paragraph 6: "Automattic has declined in value 83% in 5 years. Their revenue is likely bad, like really bad for such a decline to happen." Private valuations can fall due to multiple compression, litigation risk, or governance concerns with stable revenue. Fix: separate valuation drivers and cite the source of the 83% figure. 4. **Slippery slope (unlabeled).** Location: Trent, paragraphs 9 to 12: board suits, VC blacklist, payroll failure, layoffs presented as a near-inevitable chain. Fix: attach probabilities or conditions to each step. **Tone of voice.** Grieving and angry, occasionally contemptuous ("stupid enough," "stick it to Matt"). Duane's tone is weary; Trent's is prosecutorial. Both close in mourning rather than triumph, which lends credibility to the sincerity if not the accuracy. ## 🛡️ DARVO Analysis DARVO describes an accused party denying, attacking, and reversing victim and offender. Neither speaker is the accused party, so classic DARVO does not apply. Checking the pattern anyway: - **Deny:** Absent. Neither speaker denies any conduct of their own. - **Attack:** Present but not reversal-driven. Both criticize Matt directly; the criticism is of a public figure's public actions. - **Reverse victim-offender:** Weak signal. Trent frames himself and the community as victims ("something I contributed many years of my life to building"), which is a claim of harm, not a reversal, because he is not responding to an accusation against himself. Conclusion: no DARVO pattern in the source. A reader should instead watch for DARVO in any official response to threads like this. ## 🎯 Conclusion **Bottom line.** The thread's financial and legal predictions are unsourced and should not be repeated as fact. Its durable contribution is testimony from two long-tenured contributors that WordPress governance was always nominal because every decision required one person's approval, and that earlier reformers (Morten, Nacin) were sidelined. The September 2026 board crisis made that structural weakness visible to everyone. **Next steps.** 1. Verify H2 and H3 (valuation figure, court date) before citing anything from this thread. 2. Collect the primary sources on Morten's and Nacin's governance efforts. 3. Feed the governance testimony into The WPOCC and FAIR working documents as motivating evidence. 4. Prepare community-facing FAQ separating fact from speculation. ## 🧱 Refactor Appendix ### Literature Split Pad ### h1 — Governance reformers were ostracized > [!quote] > Guys like Morten tried really hard to get some type of governance in the WP ecosystem, and they were effectively ostracized for it. Speaker: Duane Storey. #atom/literature/h1 ### h2 — Everything routed through Matt > [!quote] > At the end of the day we still had to run everything by Matt and he wouldn't approve anything. Speaker: Trent Lapinski (reply). #atom/literature/h2 ### h3 — The agentic pivot no one can lead > [!quote] > As the Internet moves towards becoming an agentic AI Internet, WordPress's only hope is to become an agentic system. Merely using WordPress as a data store is not enough. It has to pivot to become part of the agentic stack but there's really no one to drive such a radical change to the project and Matt would never allow it as it breaks 20 years of legacy development. Speaker: Trent Lapinski (thread). #atom/literature/h3 ### Fallacy anchors > [!quote] > Matt could even be recommended for criminal charges for extortion, which could result in probation or jail time. Speaker: Trent Lapinski. #fallacy/appeal-to-probability > [!quote] > If I were a large enterprise, I might be having doubts about open source now seeing how one person can cause some much damage in such a short amount of time and destabilize the ecosystem.. Speaker: Duane Storey. #fallacy/hasty-generalization > [!quote] > Automattic has declined in value 83% in 5 years. Their revenue is likely bad, like really bad for such a decline to happen. Speaker: Trent Lapinski. #fallacy/non-sequitur ### Atomic Split Pad #### z1 — Nominal governance is worse than none A project that has governance bodies but routes every decision through one approver has the costs of bureaucracy without the resilience. When the approver becomes unavailable or contested, the bodies cannot act. Evidence: h1, h2. #atom/zettel/z1 #### z2 — Registry control is a supply-chain risk Duane's ACF reference shows that a plugin registry operator who can reassign slugs holds a supply-chain lever over every downstream site. Mirrors and signed, multi-source distribution (FAIR) are the mitigation. #atom/zettel/z1 #### z3 — Speculation with one disclaimer A long chain of predictions with a single "just speculation" label invites readers to treat the rest as fact. Good practice is to label each inference. #atom/zettel/z1 ### Fleeting Queue - Find Morten Rand-Hendriksen's original governance proposal and the responses to it. #atom/fleeting/f1 - Check the WP Engine docket for the late-September schedule. #atom/fleeting/f1 - Ask whether "interim CEO" in Trent's thread refers to a named person. #atom/fleeting/f1 - Compare this thread's tone with Duane's and Trent's posts from October 2024 for drift. #atom/fleeting/f1 <!-- deep-read:sections end --> 📄 **Full text:** [[Full Document Contents/Tweets/I Take No Pride in This, as It Means The....md|"I Take No Pride in This, as It Means The... by Duane Storey]] ## Highlights - Guys like Morten tried really hard to get some type of governance in the WP ecosystem, and they were effectively ostracized for it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m2dqvsm51rc31mcykvg5ez0c)) - Note: Duane Storey: governance reformers were pushed out, not heard. - Tags: atom/literature/h1 - If I were a large enterprise, I might be having doubts about open source now seeing how one person can cause some much damage in such a short amount of time and destabilize the ecosystem.. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m2dqw17wrr6mqndean5rr02j)) - Note: One founder-controlled project generalized to open source as a category. - Tags: fallacy/hasty-generalization - Automattic has declined in value 83% in 5 years. Their revenue is likely bad, like really bad for such a decline to happen. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m2dqw2qbnyc03gb428jy776f)) - Note: Valuation decline does not entail revenue decline; the 83% figure is unsourced. - Tags: fallacy/non-sequitur - Matt could even be recommended for criminal charges for extortion, which could result in probation or jail time. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m2dqvzc73qaasjvn8298keq3)) - Note: Possibility presented as likelihood; no evidence of any criminal referral is offered. - Tags: fallacy/appeal-to-probability - As the Internet moves towards becoming an agentic AI Internet, WordPress’s only hope is to become an agentic system. Merely using WordPress as a data store is not enough. It has to pivot to become part of the agentic stack but there’s really no one to drive such a radical change to the project and Matt would never allow it as it breaks 20 years of legacy development. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m2dqvxqx0mghfyz40ry4szs3)) - Note: Trent Lapinski: product thesis for WordPress's future, tied to the leadership problem. - Tags: atom/literature/h3 - At the end of the day we still had to run everything by Matt and he wouldn’t approve anything. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m2dqvw2pf5jfeeen6wnefcbp)) - Note: Trent Lapinski: the core testimony that WordPress governance was nominal. - Tags: atom/literature/h2