Thoughts on Automattic and WordPress:  🔗 **Source:** [Thoughts on Automattic and WordPress:](https://twitter.com/trentlapinski/status/2098897669854785859/?rw_tt_thread=True) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: > - automattic > - wordpress-governance > - wp-engine-lawsuit > - open-source-governance > - agentic-ai > author: Trent Lapinski (trentlapinski) > source: https://twitter.com/trentlapinski/status/2098897669854785859/?rw_tt_thread=True > reference: https://twitter.com/trentlapinski/status/2098897669854785859/?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 Do not quote or attribute any other line to the named author.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 Thoughts on Automattic and WordPress: a tweet thread by Trent Lapinski reacting to the September 2026 Automattic board vote that placed CEO Matt Mullenweg on leave and his return to the CEO role days later. The thread is a chain of predictions about shareholder litigation, the WP Engine trial, Automattic's cash position, and what a weakened Automattic means for the WordPress project. ## 🧭 Table of Contents 1. References (in-page) 2. Summary 3. Main Content and Notes 4. References 5. Paraphrase 6. Newsletter 7. Action Items 8. Hypotheses 9. Methodology 10. Questions 11. Future Research 12. Implications 13. Learning Styles Assessment 14. Accessibility Assessment 15. DEIB Assessment 16. Logical Validity 17. DARVO Analysis 18. Conclusion 19. Refactor Appendix ## 🔗 References (in-page) The captured body contains no hyperlinks, no screenshots, no quoted filings, and no named news reports. Every figure in the thread (an 83 percent decline in value over five years, the trial resuming at the end of the month, the identity of investors, the firing of the CFO) is asserted without a citation. The only in-page reference is the thread's own second post, which the capture separates with a horizontal rule and which appears to reply to another user's comment ("Entirely possible."). ## 📝 Summary **What happened.** Trent Lapinski, a long-time WordPress ecosystem figure, published a two-part thread after Automattic's board voted to place Matt Mullenweg on leave and Mullenweg returned as CEO within days. Lapinski's thesis is that the way Mullenweg regained the title (the thread frames it hypothetically as stacking the board, firing the existing directors, and installing a new board to reinstate him) exposes Automattic to a shareholder class action, that the ousted directors represent large investors who can seek an injunction, and that this collides with the WP Engine trial resuming at month's end. He predicts a cascade: lost trial, shareholder suits naming major VC firms, BlackRock, and Salesforce, a venture capital blacklist, a down round or no round, missed payroll, and mass layoffs. The second post reframes the whole WP Engine conflict as personal: he claims Mullenweg tried to hire WP Engine's CEO, was refused, and then escalated the trademark dispute out of wounded pride. **Why it matters.** Automattic is the largest single employer of WordPress core contributors and funds a significant share of project infrastructure. If even a fraction of the predicted financial squeeze materializes, the effects land on release cadence, Five for the Future commitments, and community programs. The thread also puts a name on the governance failure that many contributors have discussed quietly: the project has no mechanism to separate the fate of WordPress from the fate of one company and one person. **Stakeholders.** Automattic employees and shareholders; Mullenweg personally; WP Engine and its customers; hosting companies that depend on the WordPress.org plugin and theme directories; core contributors sponsored by Automattic; the wider open web community; alternative governance and distribution efforts such as FAIR and The WPOCC. **Risks.** The thread's claims are unverified and several are legally loaded (extortion, criminal referral, fiduciary breach). Repeating them without attribution creates defamation exposure for anyone who amplifies. Conversely, ignoring the scenario entirely leaves community teams unprepared for a genuine funding shock. **Bottom line.** Treat this as a well-informed but uncited worst-case scenario written by a partisan observer. Its strategic warning (WordPress must become an agentic system, and the project has no independent governance to drive that change) is worth acting on regardless of whether the financial predictions come true. ## 📖 Main Content The thread moves through four arcs. First, corporate governance: the claim that a board-stacking maneuver to regain the CEO title invites a shareholder class action and that displaced directors retain standing to seek injunctive relief. Second, finances: an asserted 83 percent decline in Automattic's valuation over five years, an inference that revenue is in serious decline, the firing of the CFO, and a prediction of missed payroll. Third, litigation: the WP Engine case going to trial with facts the author believes favor WP Engine, potential penalties in the millions, and a speculative criminal extortion referral. Fourth, the project: fewer developers, fewer resources, less leadership, AI pressure on the business model, and the argument that WordPress must become part of the agentic stack rather than remain a content data store. The second post shifts register from financial analysis to motive attribution. It asserts that Mullenweg attempted to recruit WP Engine's CEO, was rejected, and only then pursued the trademark campaign, which the author characterizes as a misunderstanding of trademark law and as extortion. ### 🗒️ Notes - The author hedges exactly once ("just speculation") about the board's motive for placing Mullenweg on leave, then treats every subsequent step of the cascade as near-certain. - The 83 percent valuation decline is plausible only as a secondary-market or internal 409A figure; Automattic is private and has not published a mark-down. Verify before repeating. - "Fired the CFO" is asserted without a date or source. Automattic has had leadership turnover in finance before; check whether this refers to the September 2026 events specifically. - The claim that Salesforce and BlackRock are on the cap table matches public reporting on Automattic's 2019 and 2021 rounds, but their role as board-level actors in the September vote is not documented in the source. - The trademark critique overlaps with the WP Engine complaint's own framing, so the author's legal read is not independent of one side's pleadings. - The agentic-WordPress argument is the most durable and least contested point in the thread, and it is the one that community teams can act on without waiting for court outcomes. - The closing paragraph of the first post is a sincere expression of grief about the open web, which changes how the earlier paragraphs should be read: this is advocacy from someone who feels personally harmed, not neutral analysis. ## 📚 References The source cites nothing. The following are offered for verification and were not linked or named by the author: - WP Engine, Inc. v. Automattic Inc. and Matthew Mullenweg, United States District Court for the Northern District of California, case 3:24-cv-06917. Primary docket for the litigation the author references. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69221176/wp-engine-inc-v-automattic-inc/ - Automattic newsroom and company pages for any official statement on the board vote and CEO status. https://automattic.com/press/ - WordPress.org governance and Five for the Future pages for the project's stated contribution model. https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/ - FAIR Package Manager project (Linux Foundation) as the principal federated distribution alternative. https://fair.pm/ - The WP Open Community Collective (The WPOCC) as an independent community funding vehicle. https://www.wpocc.org/ Each link above is a verification pointer, not a citation the author made. ## 🗣️ Paraphrase 1. If Mullenweg regained the CEO title by replacing the board with loyalists who then reinstated him, the ousted directors and the shareholders they represent can sue and may even obtain a court order removing him again. 2. Automattic's valuation has fallen dramatically, which the author reads as evidence of badly declining revenue. 3. The WP Engine case is headed to trial soon. The author believes the facts favor WP Engine, that damages could be large, and that a criminal extortion referral is possible. 4. The author speculates the board wanted Mullenweg sidelined before trial in order to settle and protect the company, and that the two sides disagree fundamentally on litigation strategy. 5. Former directors and insiders are predicted to sue for breach of fiduciary duty and negligence. 6. Facing both the WP Engine case and a shareholder suit involving large institutional investors, Automattic will be unable to raise venture money. 7. The only path the author sees is a down-round buyout of existing investors, which those investors may refuse out of spite. 8. Without new capital, the company depends on declining revenue, has just lost its CFO, and may miss payroll, leading to layoffs. 9. A rescue by existing investors is possible only if Mullenweg steps down and a new team takes over. 10. If he stays, his options are to settle or lose, cut the company to a skeleton crew, hoard cash, and absorb years of investor litigation. 11. For WordPress this means fewer developers, fewer resources, less leadership, and continuing AI erosion of the business model. 12. WordPress must become an agentic system rather than a passive data store, but no one is positioned to lead that change and Mullenweg would resist it because it breaks two decades of legacy. 13. With lawsuits pending, capital cut off, and major investors alienated, the outlook is poor. 14. The author says he takes no pleasure in this, mourns the destabilization of the open web he helped build, and wishes open source governance had been solved so this could not happen. 15. (Second post) The author agrees with an unseen reply, adds that revenue was already declining, and claims Mullenweg tried to hire WP Engine's CEO because WP Engine was profitable. 16. He characterizes the trademark strategy as a desperate revenue play and a misreading of trademark law. 17. He claims the escalation came only after the CEO declined the job offer, and frames the conflict as a man reacting to rejection by a woman rather than a dispute about private equity. 18. WP Engine succeeded where Automattic failed, so, in his telling, Mullenweg chose to destroy both, and his own board has now been burned. ## 📰 Newsletter **The board giveth, the board taketh away, the board getteth replaced.** Trent Lapinski spent the week after Automattic's board vote doing what the rest of us were doing: refreshing feeds and doing napkin math. His thread ([read it here](https://twitter.com/trentlapinski/status/2098897669854785859/?rw_tt_thread=True)) is the most complete pessimist's case in circulation, and it deserves a careful read precisely because it is uncited. The short version: regaining a CEO title by swapping the board is the kind of thing that keeps securities lawyers in boats. Add a WP Engine trial that resumes at the end of the month ([docket](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69221176/wp-engine-inc-v-automattic-inc/)), a valuation the author says is down 83 percent, and a freshly departed CFO, and you get a forecast of missed payroll and a skeleton crew. What should WordPress people take from it? Not the courtroom predictions, which are speculation stacked on speculation. Take the one paragraph nobody disputes: WordPress needs to become an agentic system, not a data store with a nicer editor, and the project currently has no governance layer capable of making that pivot without one person's permission. That is the argument for [FAIR](https://fair.pm/), for [The WPOCC](https://www.wpocc.org/), and for every contributor team that has been waiting for permission to plan for a world where Automattic funds less. And a note on the second half of the thread, which reframes an entire trademark dispute as a man not handling rejection from a woman. It is a punchy line. It is also motive-reading without evidence, and it drags gender into a story that already has enough documented facts to argue about. Quote the first half. Let the second half stay on the bird site. ## ✅ Action Items ### DevRel - Draft a neutral explainer on what a board leave, reinstatement, and shareholder action actually mean for a private company, so community members are not learning corporate law from tweet threads. - Prepare a Q&A for developer events covering "is WordPress safe to build on" with facts only. ### OSPO - Model contributor-hours exposure: what percentage of active core committers, release leads, and infrastructure maintainers are Automattic-sponsored, and what is the fallback if that sponsorship drops by a third. - Review any enterprise procurement documents that describe WordPress governance and update them to reflect the actual dependency on a single company. ### Community - Publish a calm, factual community update that distinguishes verified events (the vote, the return) from predictions (payroll, layoffs, criminal charges). - Set moderation guidance for meetups and forums on discussing litigation and individuals without repeating unverified allegations. ### Core - Identify release-critical roles currently filled by one sponsor and document a continuity plan. - Scope what "WordPress as an agentic system" means concretely: Abilities API surface, MCP adapter, REST and WP-CLI parity for agents. ### Core Performance - Not directly implicated. Keep performance work sponsor-diversified where possible. ### Core AI - Own the agentic roadmap the thread says nobody owns: publish a public direction document for agent-facing capabilities and a contribution path that does not require a single approver. ### Core Program Team - Add a continuity risk line to release planning: which 7.x milestones depend on sponsored contributors who could be reassigned or laid off. ### Mobile - The mobile apps are Automattic-maintained; document the handoff plan if staffing shrinks. ### Playground - Playground is a strong candidate for agentic demos; coordinate with Core AI on agent-driven site building examples. ### Training - Produce a short learning path on open source governance models so contributors understand the alternatives being discussed. ### Marketing - Prepare messaging that separates the WordPress project from Automattic corporate news without sounding evasive. ### Support - Expect a wave of "should I migrate" questions; prepare a canned, factual response. ### Design - Not applicable beyond supporting communications assets. ### Documentation - Document the current governance structure plainly, including who can make binding decisions, so future threads argue against facts rather than assumptions. ### Photos and TV - Not applicable to this source beyond hosting any recorded community updates. ### Polyglots - Translate the community update; governance news travels badly across languages when it goes through rumor first. ### Accessibility - Not applicable to this source. ### Meta - Inventory WordPress.org infrastructure that is Automattic-hosted or Automattic-paid and estimate replacement cost. ### CLI - WP-CLI is a natural agent interface; align with Core AI on agentic command surfaces. ### Hosting - Hosts should evaluate FAIR mirroring for plugin and theme distribution as continuity insurance, independent of any legal outcome. ### Tide and Openverse - Openverse depends on sponsored infrastructure; confirm funding runway. ### Themes and Plugins - Directory review teams should document review throughput dependencies on sponsored reviewers. ### The WPOCC - Publish a transparent funding target tied to specific continuity roles so donors know what a contribution buys. ### FAIR - Use this moment to ship a clear "why federated distribution" explainer that does not depend on the outcome of any lawsuit. ## 🧪 Hypotheses 1. If Automattic-sponsored contributor hours fall by 30 percent or more within two release cycles, the next major release will slip by at least one month. Testable via contributor-hours reports and release dates. 2. Public court filings in WP Engine v. Automattic will not contain any criminal referral within twelve months of the trial's conclusion; the extortion claim is rhetorical. Testable via docket monitoring. 3. The thread's 83 percent valuation decline claim cannot be corroborated by any public primary source; it originates from secondary-market chatter. Testable by searching for a published mark or filing. 4. Community sentiment about WordPress's future correlates more strongly with Automattic governance news than with release quality, measurable by comparing forum and social volume around board news versus release days. 5. A published agentic roadmap from Core AI within six months would reduce the frequency of "WordPress has no AI strategy" commentary in developer channels by a measurable margin. ## 📊 Methodology This analysis read the captured thread in full, separated claims that are verifiable in principle (valuation, CFO departure, trial schedule, cap table) from predictions (payroll, layoffs, criminal charges) and from motive attributions (rejection narrative). It checked the body for any in-page links or cited documents and found none. External references listed are verification pointers chosen for being primary sources: the court docket, the company press page, project governance pages, and the two independent community initiatives. Logical assessment used standard informal fallacy categories and located each in the verbatim text. No outside reporting was consulted to confirm or deny the thread's factual claims; the analysis flags them as unverified rather than asserting they are false. ## ❓ Questions - What exactly did the board vote and reinstatement process look like, and were any directors removed or replaced? - Is the 83 percent figure a 409A valuation, a secondary-market price, or an investor mark? - Did a CFO departure occur in connection with the September events, and was it a firing or a resignation? - Which investors hold board seats or observer rights, and do their agreements include protective provisions that a board reshuffle would trigger? - What is the actual trial calendar for WP Engine v. Automattic? - Is there any documented evidence of a job offer to WP Engine's CEO, or is that claim sourced from the author's private knowledge? - Who inside the WordPress project currently has authority to set an agentic roadmap, and does that authority require Mullenweg's approval in practice? ## 🔮 Future Research - Build a public dependency map of WordPress project functions to sponsoring companies, updated per release. - Compare governance transitions in other founder-led open source projects (for example, Elastic, HashiCorp, Redis) for patterns in how communities responded to corporate shocks. - Track FAIR and The WPOCC adoption metrics as leading indicators of community-level hedging. - Study how litigation-era commentary on social platforms shaped contributor retention, using the 2024 to 2026 WordPress period as a case. ## 💡 Implications **Practice.** Teams should plan for reduced sponsored capacity now rather than after a shock. Agentic capability work is the one investment that pays off in every scenario. **Policy.** The project lacks a written mechanism to continue operating if its primary sponsor cannot; drafting one is a governance task, not a crisis task. **Security.** A distracted or shrinking Automattic security team is a plausible outcome of the scenario described; the security team should document coverage dependencies and cross-train volunteers. **Education.** Contributors need basic literacy in corporate governance and litigation to read threads like this critically; a short training module would reduce panic cycles. **Funding.** Independent funding vehicles become more credible when they publish specific, role-level targets. The thread's scenario is their strongest fundraising argument, but it should be made without repeating unverified allegations. ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - **Visual:** Weak. No diagrams, charts, or structure beyond paragraph breaks; the cascade argument would benefit from a flowchart. - **Aural:** Moderate. The prose has a spoken cadence and reads well aloud. - **Verbal:** Strong. Short declarative sentences, concrete nouns, and a clear narrative arc. - **Kinesthetic:** Weak. No exercises or interactive elements; readers are passive. - **Logical:** Mixed. The structure is if-then sequential, but the links are asserted rather than demonstrated, which frustrates logical learners. - **Social:** Moderate. It is a public thread inviting replies; the second post is itself a reply. - **Solitary:** Strong. Designed to be read and stewed on alone. - **Naturalistic:** Not applicable; no patterns from the natural world. - **Reading level:** Roughly grade 9 to 10 (Flesch-Kincaid). Sentences are short, but the vocabulary (fiduciary duty, injunction, down round, working capital) assumes business literacy. ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment 1. **Perceivable, text alternatives (1.1):** No images, so no alt text issues. Pass. 2. **Perceivable, adaptable structure (1.3):** A tweet thread has no headings; the capture flattens it to paragraphs. Screen reader users get no navigational landmarks. Partial. 3. **Perceivable, distinguishable (1.4):** Depends on the platform's contrast; the captured text itself is plain. Pass at the content level. 4. **Operable, navigable (2.4):** No headings, no link text, no skip structure. The horizontal rule separating posts is not announced meaningfully. Partial. 5. **Understandable, readable (3.1):** Language is English and consistent; jargon is undefined. Partial. 6. **Understandable, predictable (3.2):** Linear reading order, no surprises. Pass. 7. **Robust, compatible (4.1):** Plain text captured through Reader is robust. Pass. Overall: content-level pass on WCAG 2.2 AA with structural gaps inherent to the tweet format; profanity in the closing paragraph may be filtered in some reading environments. ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment - **Cultural breadth:** Narrow. The frame is Silicon Valley venture finance and United States litigation; no acknowledgment of the global contributor base. - **Inclusive language:** Weak in the second post. Reducing a corporate dispute to "a man's inability to handle rejection from a woman" invokes a gendered trope and assigns the woman a passive role in a story about her own company's success. - **Neurodiversity support:** Moderate. Short sentences and linear order help; undefined jargon and an unlabeled shift from analysis to motive attribution hurt. - **Representation:** WP Engine's CEO is not named and is defined entirely by her rejection of a job offer, which erases her agency as the leader of the company the author says was winning. - **Psychological safety:** Low for anyone employed at Automattic reading this; the thread predicts their layoffs as an inevitability without hedging. ## ✅ Logical Validity **Strong reasoning.** The observation that a board reshuffle to reinstate a CEO invites shareholder litigation is sound corporate-governance reasoning. The point that displaced directors retain standing through the shareholders they represent is correct in general terms. The strategic claim that WordPress needs an agentic pivot and lacks an independent governance path to make one is well argued and widely shared. **Fallacies.** 1. **Slippery slope** (paragraph beginning "If Matt cannot find another investor"). No new investor leads to reliance on revenue, which leads to missed payroll, which leads to layoffs, each step stated as likely without evidence for the transition probabilities. Fix: state the cash runway assumption explicitly and give a range rather than a chain of certainties. 2. **False dilemma** (paragraph beginning "Matt's only hope at this point"). The author presents a down-round buyout as the only path, then later presents a two-option menu (settle or lose and cut). Other paths exist: debt financing, asset sales, a negotiated settlement that includes governance changes, or investors accepting a recapitalization. Fix: replace "only" with "most likely" and list the alternatives being excluded. 3. **Ad hominem, circumstantial (motive attribution)** (second post, paragraph beginning "So this is really a story about a man's inability to handle rejection from a woman"). The author explains the dispute by an unverifiable inner state and dismisses the stated private-equity rationale without evidence. Fix: present the job-offer claim as a dated, sourced event and let readers weigh it, without asserting what it proves about motive. A fourth pattern, **speculation laundering**, appears where "just speculation" is acknowledged once and then every downstream claim inherits certainty. It is not a named fallacy but should be flagged. **Tone of voice.** Confident, prosecutorial, and increasingly personal, ending in sincere grief. The first post reads as an analyst's memo; the second reads as a verdict. ## 🛡️ DARVO Analysis DARVO describes a pattern used by an accused party: Deny the behavior, Attack the accuser, Reverse the roles of victim and offender. The thread's author is a third-party commentator, not a party to the dispute, so the pattern does not apply in its strict form. - **Deny:** Not present. The author denies nothing about his own conduct; he is not accused of anything. - **Attack:** Present in the ordinary sense. The thread attacks Mullenweg's judgment, competence, legal understanding, and emotional stability. This is criticism, not DARVO, because the author is not deflecting an accusation against himself. - **Reverse victim and offender:** Not present. The author positions himself and the open web as collateral victims, but he does not claim to be the injured party in the dispute itself. The thread does accuse Mullenweg of behavior that would fit a DARVO pattern (escalating against WP Engine after a personal rejection), but that accusation is unsupported within the source and is addressed under Logical Validity. ## 🎯 Conclusion **Bottom line.** This thread is a partisan, uncited worst-case scenario with one durable insight: the WordPress project has no governance mechanism independent of Automattic and no owner for an agentic strategy. The financial and legal predictions may or may not come true; the structural gap is real today. **Next steps.** Verify the three checkable claims (valuation, CFO departure, trial date) before repeating any of them. Publish a factual community update that separates events from predictions. Give Core AI and Core an explicit mandate to publish an agentic roadmap. Encourage hosts and teams to evaluate FAIR and The WPOCC as continuity infrastructure on their merits, not as a bet on litigation outcomes. Do not amplify the second post's gendered motive narrative. ## 🧱 Refactor Appendix ### Literature Split Pad ### h1: Board reshuffle invites shareholder action > [!quote] To get his CEO title back, if Matt stacked the board, held an emergency board meeting fired everyone then appointed a new board to reinstate him as CEO and fire the interim CEO then he now risks a shareholder class action lawsuit. #atom/literature/h1 ### h2: WordPress must become an agentic system > [!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. #atom/literature/h2 ### h3: Grief for the open web and unsolved governance > [!quote] I take no pride in this, as it means the destruction of the open web as we know it. Something I contributed many years of my life to building is now being destabilized and destroyed. It's a shitty feeling, and I wish we had solved open source governance more effectively so this never could have happened. #atom/literature/h3 ### Atomic Split Pad #### z1: Founder-led open source projects need a continuity mechanism independent of the founder's company The thread's most transferable idea is that a project whose infrastructure, staffing, and roadmap authority all route through one company inherits that company's every governance shock. The remedy is not to predict the shock but to build the mechanism before it arrives. Links to h1 and h3. #atom/zettel/z1 #### z2: Agentic capability is the roadmap investment that pays off in every scenario Whether Automattic thrives or shrinks, a WordPress that can be driven by agents through stable APIs stays relevant in an agentic web. The cost of not doing it is the same in both futures. Links to h2. #atom/zettel/z2 #### z3: Speculation acquires false certainty when it is hedged once and then chained A single "just speculation" disclaimer does not propagate; readers carry forward the confident tone of subsequent sentences. Analysts should hedge each inferential step or present ranges. #atom/zettel/z3 ### Fleeting Queue - f1: Check whether any public source corroborates the 83 percent valuation decline. #atom/fleeting/f1 - f2: Find the actual WP Engine v. Automattic trial calendar on the docket. #atom/fleeting/f2 - f3: Ask Core AI whether a public agentic roadmap exists or is planned. #atom/fleeting/f3 - f4: Note for the newsletter: quote the first post, skip the gendered framing in the second. #atom/fleeting/f4 <!-- deep-read:sections end --> 📄 **Full text:** [[Full Document Contents/Tweets/Thoughts on Automattic and WordPress.md|Thoughts on Automattic and WordPress: by Trent]] ## Highlights - To get his CEO title back, if Matt stacked the board, held an emergency board meeting fired everyone then appointed a new board to reinstate him as CEO and fire the interim CEO then he now risks a shareholder class action lawsuit. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m2dqmy25e2jfegr4h0npncjb)) - Note: Core governance claim: a board reshuffle to regain the CEO title invites shareholder litigation. - Tags: atom/literature/h1 - Matt’s only hope at this point is to find an investor stupid enough to buy out the other investors in a down round. If they’re even willing to sell. The other investors might prefer to sue and not sell just to stick it to Matt. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m2dqn7d024737e1hxjx7690q)) - Note: False dilemma: a down-round buyout framed as the only path, excluding debt, asset sales, or a negotiated recapitalization. - Tags: fallacy/false-dilemma - If Matt cannot find another investor all he has left is the companies revenue which is in major decline but he just fired the CFO. There’s a good chance they won’t be making payroll sooner rather than later. Which means more layoffs. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m2dqn4z3wztzsy8278m9x5dc)) - Note: Slippery slope: no investor to missed payroll to layoffs, each step asserted without evidence for the transition. - Tags: fallacy/slippery-slope - 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/01m2dqn013zj4r7k3s6mzj9mh2)) - Note: The most durable insight in the thread: WordPress needs an agentic pivot and has no independent owner for it. - Tags: atom/zettel/z1, atom/literature/h2 - I take no pride in this, as it means the destruction of the open web as we know it. Something I contributed many years of my life to building is now being destabilized and destroyed. It’s a shitty feeling, and I wish we had solved open source governance more effectively so this never could have happened. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m2dqn2dmj8nkk8zhk649kjy2)) - Note: Author's stance revealed: grief and a call for open source governance, which reframes the earlier predictions as advocacy. - Tags: atom/fleeting/f1, atom/literature/h3 - So this is really a story about a man’s inability to handle rejection from a woman. He only decided to go scorched earth after she rejected his offer to work for him. Which is why his decision was petty and personal, and so irrational. It ultimately had nothing to do with private equity. It had to do with rejection. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01m2dqna4z3w3zcppjy872qqs7)) - Note: Circumstantial ad hominem: motive attributed to an unverifiable inner state, with a gendered frame, dismissing the stated rationale without evidence. - Tags: fallacy/ad-hominem