Automattic Minus Matt  🔗 **Source:** [Automattic Minus Matt](https://tedium.co/2026/09/10/matt-mullenweg-automattic-leave-absence/) > [!note]+ Document Notes > --- > tags: [wordpress, automattic, matt-mullenweg, corporate-governance, open-source-leadership] > author: Ernie Smith > source: Tedium > reference: https://tedium.co/2026/09/10/matt-mullenweg-automattic-leave-absence/ > date created: 2026-09-10 > --- > > [!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 Do not quote or attribute any other line to the named author. > # 🏷️ Title: Automattic Minus Matt > ## 🧭 Table of Contents > - [📝 Summary](#-summary) > - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) > - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) > - [📚 References](#-references) > - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) > - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) > - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) > - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) > - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) > - [❓ Questions](#-questions) > - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) > - [💡 Implications](#-implications) > - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) > - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) > - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) > - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) > - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) > - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) > - [🔄 Refactor Appendix](#-refactor-appendix--automattic-minus-matt) > ### 🔗 References (in-page) > - [🗒️ Notes — timeline of the 2024–2026 dispute](#️-notes) > - [✅ Action Items — WordPress governance and FAIR relevance](#-action-items) > - [🔄 Refactor Appendix — atoms and permanent candidates](#-refactor-appendix--automattic-minus-matt) > ## 📝 Summary > - **What happened (reported fact).** Automattic's board suspended Matt Mullenweg from the CEO role and placed him on an involuntary leave of absence; the news broke via 404 Media, which Smith links and cites directly. CFO Mark Davies has temporarily taken over as CEO; Mullenweg keeps a board seat but not the CEO title. Per a Slack message Smith quotes from the 404 Media report, Mullenweg says he received the board's resolution 50 minutes before the meeting, asked repeatedly for time to have it reviewed by independent legal counsel, and was denied. > - **What's Smith's interpretation, not fact.** Everything about *why* the board acted — that Mullenweg "forgot that he was simply a steward of a community," that he "couldn't stand the idea that someone else was making lots of money" off WordPress — is Smith's inferred motive, not a quoted or sourced statement from Mullenweg, the board, or Automattic. Smith says as much himself: there may be personal issues behind the scenes, he writes, that "we're not privy to," and "we don't know." The framing that this is deserved accountability — that it "would be completely reasonable for a board" to act on the damage — is Smith's editorial judgment, not a reported board rationale; Automattic hasn't published one in this piece. > - **Why it matters.** This is Automattic's second public crisis tied to Mullenweg's conduct in two years. Smith ties the board action to a documented pattern he and other outlets reported earlier: severance offers to employees who didn't back the 2024 WP Engine fight (TechCrunch), a public feud with plugin developer Joost de Valk (Search Engine Journal), a stated freeze on WordPress core feature work (Tedium's own January 2025 piece), a block on WP Engine's access to the plugin directory that a court later forced Automattic to reverse (Tedium's December 2024 piece), and watermarking of an internal Automattic chat platform to trace leaks (404 Media). Each of those is a previously reported, separately sourced event — Smith is citing his own and others' prior reporting, not asserting new facts about this week's suspension. > - **Key stakeholders.** Automattic's board (Mark Davies as acting CEO), Mullenweg himself (CEO-turned-board-member), WP Engine (the 2024 antagonist, not directly a party to this week's event), Automattic employees who lived through 2024's severance offer, and the wider WordPress open-source community whose governance has been entangled with one company's internal leadership fight. > - **Risks and tradeoffs.** Smith names one directly: Automattic is privately held, so the piece can't rule out an undisclosed financial trigger behind the board's move — he flags this gap rather than papering over it. The larger risk he doesn't name explicitly but the facts imply: WordPress's open-source governance has no formal separation from Automattic's internal HR and legal disputes, so a boardroom conflict at one company becomes news the whole WordPress ecosystem has to interpret. > - **Bottom line.** The reported facts here are narrow and sourced (suspension, temporary CEO swap, one quoted Slack message). The moral of the piece — asking whether it's "too late to get some of that goodwill back" — is Smith's opinion column wrapped around those facts, built on his and Tedium's own prior WP Engine coverage rather than new reporting of this specific event. > ## 📖 Main Content > Smith opens with a rhetorical either/or: is the bigger tragedy a creator losing control of their life's work, or a creator's grab for control alienating the community around it? He argues Mullenweg has now lived out both versions in two years. The first, per Smith's own September 2024 Tedium piece (linked in the article), was Mullenweg's WordCamp speech attacking WP Engine for allegedly under-contributing to WordPress despite its commercial success — a dispute that produced lawsuits from both sides and became, in Smith's description, one of the biggest tech stories before AI news displaced it. > The second event, and this piece's news hook, is Automattic's board suspending Mullenweg from the CEO role this week and installing CFO Mark Davies as interim CEO — reported first by 404 Media, which Smith links and quotes. The one piece of direct, sourced testimony in the article is a Slack message Smith attributes to Mullenweg via the 404 Media report: he says the board gave him the removal resolution 50 minutes before the vote and refused his repeated requests for time to get independent legal review. Mullenweg keeps a board seat; Smith adds a dry aside that the only thing working in Mullenweg's favor there is Robert's Rules of Order — a joke, not a legal analysis, about how little procedural leverage a minority board member has. > Beyond that quote, the article states plainly what it doesn't know: whether personal issues or an undisclosed financial problem — invisible because Automattic is private — factored into the board's decision. Smith is explicit about this gap rather than filling it with speculation dressed as reporting. > What follows is Smith's argument, built from previously reported events rather than new facts: employees were offered severance if they didn't support Mullenweg's 2024 actions (TechCrunch); he publicly sparred with WordPress plugin author Joost de Valk (Search Engine Journal); he stopped WordPress core feature development, per Tedium's own January 2025 reporting; he blocked WP Engine's plugin-directory access, which a court forced Automattic to restore (Tedium, December 2024); and Automattic watermarked its internal P2 chat platform to trace leaks (404 Media). Smith uses this chain to argue the board's action, whatever its undisclosed trigger, isn't disproportionate given the pattern. That conclusion, and the motive Smith assigns to Mullenweg — protecting his own upside from WordPress's commercial success — is inference and opinion, not something Automattic, the board, or Mullenweg is quoted saying. > **Terms worth defining:** "Leave of absence" here is involuntary and board-imposed, not a request Mullenweg made — distinct from a voluntary sabbatical. "P2" is Automattic's internal blogging-style chat/discussion platform, referenced only by the 404 Media link Smith cites for the watermarking story and not explained further in this piece. > **Contested/uncertain:** the board's stated reason for the removal is not quoted or summarized anywhere in the piece — Smith infers it from the 2024–2025 pattern. Whether "personal issues" or financial pressure at the private company played a role is explicitly unknown, per Smith's own hedge. > ## 🗒️ Notes > - Framing device: what's the bigger tr #### Matt Mullenweg takes an involuntary leave of absence from Automattic, the company behind WordPress. Let’s hope he uses his time away thoughtfully. **What’s the bigger tragedy?** That a creator gets separated from their life’s work, or that the effort to assert control over that work just alienates the creator from the community they built? In the past two years, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has let both situations play out in his name. The first, [which kicked off two years ago](https://tedium.co/2024/09/25/wordpress-wp-engine-open-web-negative-effects/) with a fiery speech at WordCamp, put the open-source project at odds with some of its largest supporters, while forever tarnishing Mullenweg’s good-guy reputation. The target of Mullenweg’s ire was WP Engine, a company that had built successful brand in the WordPress ecosystem, arguably upstaging Automattic, the company that has traditionally led the WordPress project. Mullenweg believed WP Engine didn’t do enough to support the open-source project. WP Engine disagreed. Everyone sued one another, and it became perhaps the biggest tech story in the months before everyone became obsessed with AI. Things quieted down for a bit, only to pick up in a big way this week after Automattic’s board suspended Mullenweg from his CEO role and put the WordPress creator on a leave of absence. The news, which [our pals at *404 Media* broke](https://www.404media.co/wordpress-automattic-ceo-matt-mullenweg-put-on-leave-of-absence/), suggests that whatever had gotten into Mullenweg in 2024 had now extended to the company’s board. “I received the resolution 50 minutes before the meeting start, and requested repeatedly for time to have it reviewed by independent legal counsel, even a few hours, which was denied,” Mullenweg wrote in a company Slack channel, according to the report. He’s now been temporarily replaced by the man he claims conspired against him, Automattic CFO Mark Davies. (Mullenweg still has a role on the board, but given that the board just removed him from the CEO role, something tells me that the only thing working in his favor there are Robert’s Rules of Order.) [](https://www.computerchronicles.blog/subscribe/)[Computer Chronicles Revisited](https://www.computerchronicles.blog/subscribe/) ###### [Sponsored By Computer Chronicles Revisited](https://www.computerchronicles.blog/subscribe/) /uploads/mullenweg_wordcamp.jpg)Mullenweg, as seen at last year’s European edition of WordCamp. Side note: He may be one of the most photographed celebrities on Flickr. He literally has hundreds of Creative Commons photos going back to the very beginning of that service, including at least one photo with [Jeff Bezos](https://flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/438086995/) and another wearing a [cool hat](https://flickr.com/photos/loiclemeur/3402484944/). ([WCEU/Flickr](https://flickr.com/photos/wceu/54580429260/)) The dramatic, sudden removal leaves a lot of questions up in the air about Mullenweg, particularly what might have been happening behind the scenes and whether he had done anything to necessitate such a dramatic move beyond what’s already public knowledge. There may be some personal issues behind the scenes that we’re not privy to. It‘s possible that the controversies of the past two years have created a financial hole that we can’t personally see because Automattic is a private company. We don’t know. But what we do know suggests that a leader that many believed held a Zuckerberg-like iron grip around his company is in fact at risk of negative performance reviews just like anyone else in the organization. I mean, after all, his first name is literally in the name of the company. It’s not to be forgotten just what sort of chaos he wrought in the months after the WP Engine blowup. His employees were pushed to [take a generous severance](https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/17/automattic-offered-employees-another-chance-to-quit-this-time-with-nine-months-severance/) if they weren’t behind his public actions. He began sparring with online foes, no matter if they were important to the history of the WordPress project, [like plugin-maker Joost de Valk](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-leader-mullenweg-silences-joost-de-valk/539387/). He intentionally [stopped progress](https://tedium.co/2025/01/10/wordpress-automattic-open-source-business-challenges/) on WordPress feature updates, and blocked WP Engine from using a plugin repository that, up to that point, had been free—and that a court eventually [forced Mullenweg to walk back](https://tedium.co/2024/12/14/wordpress-wp-engine-reaction/). And in an effort to prevent leaks, the company even took the step of [putting unique watermarks](https://www.404media.co/automattic-wordpress-p2-watermark-leakers/) on a private chat platform to tie any leaks to a specific individual. It wasn’t that Mullenweg disagreed with the way WP Engine made money off of WordPress that was the problem. It was the fact that he turned this disagreement into a my-way-or-the-highway fork in the road even for passive observers. He forced his open-source community to choose a side. That cost talented people jobs, and that discouraged people who hadn’t already invested in WordPress to look elsewhere. In that light, it would be completely reasonable for a board to look at the damage wrought, ask themselves, “Why are we letting this guy run our business into the ground,” and take action. Yes, Mullenweg made this tool and fostered the environment that made it valuable. But he also let other people build on top of it, and eventually, a community flourished. And seemingly overnight, he forgot that he was simply a steward of a community. It was everyone else that made the community important. All because he couldn’t stand the idea that someone else was making lots of money from the idea that he personally chose to open source. That this is only a leave of absence speaks to the fact that he matters to the WordPress community, even if he’s not exactly that community’s favorite person right now. But it was clear to even a casual observer that he needed to be kept in check two years ago. Now that there’s smoldering wreckage in the form of the consequences of his actions, is it too late to get some of that goodwill back? ###### Interim Links **This is a Nathan Fielder household,** and right now we’re really amazed about the existence of *You Can See Everything*, the documentary featuring Elizabeth Holmes just days before she goes to prison. [There’s Oscar talk for the thing](https://variety.com/2026/film/awards/nathan-fielder-you-can-see-everything-elizabeth-holmes-oscars-1236854109/)—including a possible Best Picture showing, which a documentary has never received in the history of the Academy Awards. Can’t wait. Play **Old game, new tricks:** There’s a new *Super Mario Bros.* glitch that involves a vine that can be dropped into any level … if you’re playing a two-player game. [Speedrunner Kosmic shows it off here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JdZVMDvlF0). While Mullenweg is taking some time away from Automattic, maybe he can get into speedrunning. **Shout-out to Asahi Linux,** which finally released an [M3-compatible version](https://asahilinux.org/2026/09/m2-episode-1/). May all Macs someday have Linux support out of the box. -- Find this one an interesting read? [Share it with a pal](https://tedium.co/2026/09/10/matt-mullenweg-automattic-leave-absence/)! And thanks to [Computer Chronicles Revisited](https://www.computerchronicles.blog/subscribe/) for sponsoring. (On a personal note, I’m psyched to promote a printed newsletter. We need more of those!), Automattic Minus Matt, Ernie Smith, 01m25rr5n13mnv168gxz7wvayx.