Automattic vs WP Engine  ## Metadata - Author: [[WP Minute - Learn WordPress]] - Full Title: Automattic vs WP Engine - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [#wordpress, #opensource, #community] - #open_source - #wordpress - #advocacy Author: [Trent Lapinski] Source: [Twitter/X Thread] Reference: [https://x.com/trentlapinski/thread/1839760451376165135] date created: {{date:2024-09-26}} {{time:15:00}} --- # Title: Automattic vs. WP Engine: Community Perspectives on WordPress Governance ## 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-diversity-equity-inclusion-and-belonging-assessment) - ✅ [Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - 🔍 [SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - 🎯 [Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### References: Include a list of sources consulted and cited in the article. ## 📝 Summary: This note reviews Trent Lapinski's Twitter thread about the ongoing controversy between Automattic and WP Engine. The key points revolve around the control of WordPress, the role of contributors, and broader questions regarding community governance. Lapinski discusses transparency issues in WordPress governance and questions the concentration of power, suggesting that open and community-driven solutions are essential for the ecosystem's health. ## 📖 Main Content: Trent Lapinski's perspective on the ongoing Automattic vs. WP Engine debate raises concerns about the governance and power dynamics in the WordPress ecosystem. The issues at hand involve questions of control, transparency, and how the community can assert influence over WordPress's future direction. Lapinski emphasizes the risks associated with concentrated control and calls for increased transparency and collective governance. He highlights the importance of community contributions and questions whether the decisions being made by Automattic align with the spirit of open-source collaboration. By drawing attention to these dynamics, Lapinski encourages members of the WordPress community to take a more active role in governance and consider the implications of corporate influence on the future of WordPress. ### 🗒️ Notes - Trent Lapinski raises concerns about the concentration of control within Automattic. - Suggests this may lead to potential conflicts of interest. - Advocates for more transparency in decision-making processes. - Calls for increased community engagement in WordPress governance. - Encourages contributors to take an active role in shaping policies. - Questions whether Automattic’s control truly serves the community's best interests. - Discusses the importance of maintaining WordPress as an open, community-driven project. - Emphasizes that corporate control could threaten the core values of the project. - Argues for a more democratized governance model that involves various stakeholders. ## 📖 References: - Lapinski, Trent. [Twitter/X Thread](https://x.com/trentlapinski/thread/1839760451376165135) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. Lapinski argues that the concentration of power in Automattic presents risks to the broader WordPress community. He suggests that without proper checks and balances, key decisions about the platform may be made without input from the community members who rely on WordPress for their livelihoods. 2. He also asserts that for WordPress to remain an open and truly community-driven project, its governance structure must be revisited to ensure diverse perspectives are represented, and corporate influence is balanced with the needs of everyday users and developers. ## 📰 Newsletter: 🚀 **Community Pulse on WordPress Governance: Automattic vs. WP Engine** 🌐 In our latest WordPress community highlight, we dive into Trent Lapinski’s insightful thread exploring the growing tension between Automattic and WP Engine. The conversation centers around transparency in decision-making and the risks of concentrated control in WordPress governance. Lapinski calls for more active community involvement to keep WordPress true to its open-source roots. Feeling passionate about WordPress governance? Let us know how you think we can keep our ecosystem thriving for all users and developers alike! 🔗 [Read the full thread here](https://x.com/trentlapinski/thread/1839760451376165135). ## ✅ Action Items: 1. Assess how Automattic's governance practices align with open-source principles. 2. Develop a series of guidelines for fostering transparency within large open-source projects. 3. Investigate governance models from other open-source projects that could be applied to WordPress. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: 1. A more democratized governance structure in WordPress could lead to greater community satisfaction and increased contributions. 2. Transparency in Automattic’s decision-making process will foster stronger trust within the WordPress community. 3. Corporate influence without community checks could lead to a divergence from WordPress’s open-source principles. ### 📊 Methodology: - **Data Sources**: Conduct interviews with key contributors, Automattic employees, and WP Engine representatives. Analyze contributions and decision-making processes in other major open-source projects. - **Research Design**: Comparative analysis between WordPress governance and other open-source models. - **Techniques**: Qualitative analysis of community sentiment through surveys and social media discussions. ### ❓ Questions: 1. How can WordPress governance be restructured to better reflect community interests? 2. What measures can be taken to ensure transparency and avoid conflicts of interest? 3. How do different governance models impact the success and community engagement of open-source projects? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Explore how different governance models in open-source projects impact community trust and participation. - Analyze the correlation between corporate sponsorship and contributor engagement within the WordPress ecosystem. - Investigate community-led initiatives to increase transparency and accountability. ### 💡 Implications: - Enhancing governance transparency may lead to a stronger, more resilient WordPress community. - Community engagement could improve if contributors feel they have a genuine role in decision-making. - Establishing clearer guidelines for corporate contributions might foster healthier collaboration and reduce friction. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: **Readability Level**: The thread’s content is accessible, but the technical terms regarding governance and corporate influence might require simplification for general audiences. 1. **Visual Learners (Spatial)**: - **Present**: Limited visual aids. - **Improve**: Add infographics to depict governance models and power structures. 2. **Aural Learners (Auditory-Musical)**: - **Present**: None. - **Improve**: Recommend an audio summary or a related podcast discussion. 3. **Verbal Learners (Linguistic)**: - **Present**: Rich in analysis. - **Improve**: Include more real-life examples and analogies for better understanding. 4. **Physical Learners (Kinesthetic)**: - **Present**: None. - **Improve**: Suggest actionable exercises, like analyzing governance models of other open-source projects. 5. **Logical Learners (Mathematical)**: - **Present**: Logical arguments about governance. - **Improve**: Add structured breakdowns of different governance models. 6. **Social Learners (Interpersonal)**: - **Present**: Encourages discussion. - **Improve**: Include links to community forums for further group discussion. 7. **Solitary Learners (Intrapersonal)**: - **Present**: Reflection on governance. - **Improve**: Include personal reflection questions. 8. **Naturalistic Learners**: - **Present**: None. - **Improve**: Use nature-based analogies to describe organic vs. hierarchical growth in communities. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment: - **Screen Reader Compatibility**: Alt-text descriptions for embedded images and links need to be ensured. - **Keyboard Navigation**: Evaluate accessibility for keyboard users and suggest necessary improvements. - **Contrast and Readability**: Ensure that color choices meet accessibility standards. - **Text Resizing**: Recommend adjustments for scalability without breaking layout. ### 🌍 DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) Assessment: - **Cultural Relevance**: The thread lacks diverse examples. - **Improve**: Introduce culturally diverse case studies. - **Inclusive Language**: Ensure gender-neutral language is used. - **Neurodiversity Support**: Suggest breaking down longer sections into simpler parts. - **Representation**: Add more voices from underrepresented groups in WordPress governance discussions. - **Psychological Safety**: Include disclaimers for sensitive topics around control and corporate influence. ### ✅ Logical validity: - **Sound Reasoning**: The arguments about needing transparency are valid and backed by examples of other open-source projects. - **Logical Flow**: There is a clear progression of ideas. - **Logical Fallacies**: No fallacies noted; the arguments are presented clearly and logically. ### 🔍 SEO Evaluation: 1. **Keywords**: - **Are target keywords present?**: Governance, WordPress, Automattic, WP Engine. - **Keyword Placement**: Keywords appear in main headers. 2. **Meta Description**: - **Present**: Needs a concise meta description summarizing the content. 3. **Title Tag**: - **Present**: Relevant but could be more focused. 4. **Headers (H1, H2, H3)**: - **Present**: Properly structured. 5. **Content Length**: - **Detailed**: The content is detailed and informative. 6. **Internal and External Links**: - **Present**: Links to the original thread and relevant discussions. 7. **URL Structure**: - **Concise and SEO-Friendly**. 8. **Image Optimization**: - **Alt Text Needed**: Add descriptive alt text. 9. **Mobile Optimization**: - **Responsive Design Needed**. 10. **User Engagement**: - **CTAs for Engagement**: Encourage discussion and provide links to community forums. 11. **Schema Markup**: - **Missing**: Add FAQ schema for improved searchability. 12. **Social Sharing**: - **Present**: Social media sharing buttons could increase visibility. ## 🎯 Conclusion: Trent Lapinski’s Twitter thread highlights critical issues of governance, transparency, and power in the WordPress ecosystem. To maintain WordPress as an open and community-driven platform, there is a need for structured, transparent governance that involves contributions from all stakeholders. Engaging in these discussions and reflecting on the future direction of WordPress will be key to its sustained success. [View the original thread on Twitter](https://x.com/trentlapinski/thread/1839760451376165135) Short Summary for [Automattic vs WP Engine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU) by [Merlin](https://merlin.foyer.work/) The Great WordPress Showdown: Automattic vs WP Engine - Unraveling the Open Source Community's Role in WordPress Control [00:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=17) Debate on Automattic vs WP Engine in WordPress community [02:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=162) Discussing the reasons behind current events [07:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=453) Concern about the future of Wordpress ecosystem [09:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=587) Focusing intensively on contribution in the WordPress community. [14:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=867) WordPress open source focus on end users [16:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=1018) Importance of financial transparency in the WordPress project [21:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=1262) WordPress core software and wordpress.org are different but equally crucial. [23:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=1383) Concerns over WP Engine's behavior and impact on the WordPress community [27:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=1643) WP Engine is using millions of dollars of resources for free from WordPress.org. [29:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=1761) Discussion on making revenue from WordPress updates and security [33:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2015) The future of WordPress and its open-source nature [35:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2141) Many internet users are unaware of the technology powering websites. [39:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2396) Discussion on Matt not owning WordPress and concept of forking [42:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2521) Comparison between community open-source and commercial entity backing open-source projects. [46:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2781) Importance of contributing to different levels in the project [48:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2891) Discussion on receiving funding for core contributions [51:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3113) Discussion about sponsoring events and community contributions [53:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3237) Debating on contributions to WordPress Community [57:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3465) Importance of documentation and policies in WordPress community [59:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3596) The need for trademark license in WordPress agencies [1:04:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3845) Automattic is the best steward of Wordpress [1:06:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3965) Take care of yourself and know it's okay to step away if needed. --------------------------------- Detailed Summary for [Automattic vs WP Engine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU) by [Merlin](https://merlin.foyer.work/) The Great WordPress Showdown: Automattic vs WP Engine - Unraveling the Open Source Community's Role in WordPress Control [00:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=17) Debate on Automattic vs WP Engine in WordPress community - Discussion on who controls WordPress and the influence of open source community - Exploring the relationship between Automattic and WP Engine in the context of recent events [02:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=162) Discussing the reasons behind current events - Exploring personal observations and thoughts on Matt and Automattic - Reflecting on the amount of criticism faced by Matt and Automattic [07:33](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=453) Concern about the future of Wordpress ecosystem - Agree on the existence of a problem but uncertain about the solution - Suggests letting the free market and community address issues rather than direct intervention [09:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=587) Focusing intensively on contribution in the WordPress community. - Collaborating with colleagues to drive new contributor dashboards experience. - Exploring tooling to assess and enhance transparency in contribution efforts. [14:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=867) WordPress open source focus on end users - Open source WordPress is focused on delivering a great end user experience. - Matt believes in delivering WordPress to the world for everyone to use. [16:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=1018) Importance of financial transparency in the WordPress project - Speaker's history with open source and WordPress - Call for transparency in project expenses, specifically from Automattic [21:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=1262) WordPress core software and wordpress.org are different but equally crucial. - The shut-off of the plugin directory APIs highlighted the importance of the aggregation and delivery of open source code by Matt. - People are realizing the significance of contributing to and being prepared for potential changes in the aggregation and delivery of open source code. [23:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=1383) Concerns over WP Engine's behavior and impact on the WordPress community - Matt expresses disappointment and frustration in having to take a confrontational approach after failed attempts at negotiation. - Discussion on the need for clearer policies and accountability to rebuild trust within the ecosystem. [27:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=1643) WP Engine is using millions of dollars of resources for free from WordPress.org. - WP Engine has until midnight on September 30th to set up their mirrors of Wordpress and other resources. - If WP Engine desires, they can run their own mirrors of wordpress.org, including the plugin directory, theme directory, and update servers, as it's all open source code. [29:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=1761) Discussion on making revenue from WordPress updates and security - Conversation about the perspective on WP Engine - Consideration of the impact on other web hosts [33:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2015) The future of WordPress and its open-source nature - Discussion on the potential impact of charging for WordPress licenses and the stability of the platform. - Reflecting on the history of WordPress community reactions to changes like the introduction of Gutenberg, and pondering if open-source WordPress will continue to lead the way. [35:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2141) Many internet users are unaware of the technology powering websites. - WordPress is a common platform for website hosting. - The future impact of current events on web technology is uncertain. [39:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2396) Discussion on Matt not owning WordPress and concept of forking - Matt not owning WordPress may not lead to productive conversations as people are confused about the ownership structure - Suggests bringing together smart people to discuss WordPress ecosystem rather than forking the project [42:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2521) Comparison between community open-source and commercial entity backing open-source projects. - The importance of documenting policies and procedures for transparency. - Rebuilding trust through documentation and open communication. [46:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2781) Importance of contributing to different levels in the project - -0.1 - Different levels of contributing like making plugins and tutorials are crucial - -0.2 - Emphasizing the need for core contributors and the value of even small contributions [48:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=2891) Discussion on receiving funding for core contributions - Several core contributors in the comments section are interested in receiving funds for their contributions. - Some are core committers and are seeking recognition for wanting to be funded. [51:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3113) Discussion about sponsoring events and community contributions - Debate about the impact of sponsoring large events and the value of community contributions. - Suggestion to consider greater transparency in event sponsorships and their impact. [53:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3237) Debating on contributions to WordPress Community - Discussion about WP Engine's pledge to contribute 8% to the WordPress Community - Different forms of contributions like organizing, volunteering, and sponsoring discussed [57:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3465) Importance of documentation and policies in WordPress community - Encouragement to document and adhere to policies for the benefit of the community. - Recognition of the positive impact and desire for continued growth in the community. [59:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3596) The need for trademark license in WordPress agencies - Discussion about the need for a trademark license for WordPress agencies - Uncertainty about using the WordPress logo and branding [1:04:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3845) Automattic is the best steward of Wordpress - Despite controversial events, the speaker remains committed to WordPress and its community. - Encourages understanding and support for individual employees caught in larger company issues. [1:06:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU&t=3965) Take care of yourself and know it's okay to step away if needed. - Focus on self-care, get rest, eat well, and shower. - It's okay to take a break and come back when ready. - Document Tags: [[wpdrama]] [[wordpress]] [[wp engine]] [[matt mullenweg]] [[open source corporate contribution]] - Summary: What's happening with Automattic vs WP Engine https://thewpminute.com/automattic-vs-wp-engine-heres-what-we-know/ - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBuHwQpwAU [Music] what I wanted to do is keep playing that video intro because I have covid it's the worst week to get covid when you've built a 15-year career on covering WordPress news only to get to the most uh anticipated week for WordPress news uh but here we are thanks everyone for joining if you can hear us see us okay let us know uh in the chat it's going to be an interesting topic today as we uh dive deeper into um the seven layers of hell I don't I don't know what we're what we're getting into here uh but this debate of automatic versus WP engine uh what is WordPress who controls it what do we have as an open source Community what do we have as a community say in all of this stuff do we do we not I don't know uh if you're in the chat let us know say hi uh Mark samansky already there uh probably dming me right now why why why wasn't I on the show man that's probably what he's saying to me uh but two wonderful guests Friends of the show Courtney Robertson and Brian cords welcome folks to the program thank you so much for having me on that it's been great to follow the WordPress news in the 15 years I'm pretty sure I was out pushing baby strollers listening to your podcasts back when my not so Littles were even little fantastic fantastic it's why we call him the podfather of Wordpress you know yes it's a dangerous title to take in in podfather of podcasting because uh I am friends with him actually and uh uh you know I don't want to take that title from him so letting folks roll in um I have up on the screen the uh blog post that we have up on the wp minute automatic uh versus WP engine what we know it's just a timeline of events if you've not seen it yet in fact let me go ahead and copy paste that um into the chat Eric carvac and I uh put this together yesterday he put it together mostly while I was in a fever sweat laying on the floor um and we just have the the resources to the season letters that went out um and a timeline of events which has stopped since yesterday unless you have know something um new that we should add um definitely let us know you can check that out and then at the bottom we have a bunch of uh Community notes um from folks around the space I really want to focus on the why today um if we can unpack the why we think this is happening um and you know maybe go into an actually sorry Brian I just remembered I didn't add your latest post uh but I will um as we go through here want to unpack the why we think this is happening um I'm going to start with my why which um I think a lot of people aren't going to be too happy with maybe my stance on it I don't know um but I started drafting a blog post I've been hinting about this on the live stream for a while um I started drafting a blog post uh let me just pull it up and just so I can prove it I'll show it on the screen um in the lovely bear app which I use and I started this in July 25th that might be hard to see for some um but I started in July 25th it was titled if I was running automatic and this came after I saw Matt on the wp product Talk podcast something really hit me with his I guess demeanor on the on that show and it was almost like man he felt a little tired um just tired is the way that I saw a little bit how I feel today with covid I started writing out these bullet points about if I was in his position what would I do um and for many years we've heard a lot of criticism of course of of of Matt and and of course automatic and the thing I rarely hear is um you know really giving credit to automatic I'm not going to make this like an aut automatic apology um but I I never really hear about gee you know they do put a lot of money they do put a lot of resources we might not agree with where it's going and and how things are be being done but I do feel like he does take a lot of heat and at the same time he has a lot of stuff on his plate and it he seemed like he was tired and I started to think if I was isn't his shoes the thing I would do is strip out anything that is a distraction at automatic and I hate to say it but I I'll say it like simple note love the app love the product why are we focusing on it at automatic um I know any other product that's not WordPress get it out of the way and triple quadruple down on investing in WordPress that's step one of this article I was going to publish I don't think I'm going to publish it anymore step two was rip the bandaid off and rip the bandaid off is something that I've been hinting at for or talking about for a while where we might go to wordpress.org one day and see get the best WordPress at wordpress.com download that free WordPress in tiny little eighto font right below it and that's this rip the Band-Aid off moment I think we're seeing right now happen with WP engine and this is what's interesting to me because I don't think this is a typical map blowup response I think this is a calculated thing and he sees WP engine as this particular threat um to automatic and automatic is the vehicle in his eyes I'm not saying this is this is how I perceive it automatic is the vehicle to keep WordPress alive because of all the investment and commitment he's had through it and I think we are really challenged with this particular moment because we don't we don't understand it fully the details internally it's easy to punch up we're not really punching down to we're punching up to him I think in a lot of these situations and I think he is doing this for WordPress the software not for WordPress the community and this is why this is such a challenging thing right now he sees WP engine as a threat he would have to to go this nuclear though I don't like that phrase um and he's doing it in in a way where he thinks that this is the this is the right move to protect automatic and protect WordPress and I actually I guess I would say I would agree with this position I don't agree how it rolled out like a lot of things um but I agree that if I was in his shoes I would also do my damnest to defend and protect automatic because he sees something happening at WP engine I feel and maybe above that with Silver Lake where he's like yeah I got to this is the move I'm going to make and um I mean is it fever mat like he had last time or is it calculated no this is a commercial defense I have to make I think it's a commercial defense he has to make and again I don't agree with it or the way that it rolled out but I understand why he's doing it and I do feel like yeah big corpse who are using Wordpress to this degree should also give back anyway that's my long-winded approach to how I perceive this moment and we can break it into different parts let me start with you Brian because maybe you can address the wpn and stuff more specifically or you can defend not defend but you can present your position in this and how you see it yeah um I've written a bit about it I think the the smallest summary I can say is that I agree there's a problem and I don't know that I fully agree with the solution that's being taken I'm also not 100% convinced that the problems at WP engine are something Matt needs to solve versus letting the free market and the community sort of find their way to to to solving it but at the end of the day I do think that he needs to really I think he's very concerned about the future of Wordpress and I think that's coming much more clear and I think we should all be concerned concerned and it's not that WordPress the code base it's really WordPress the ecosystem and and the health of everything around it and the contributions and and I'm not going to say it's not that he's not you know innocent in the problems that we're having but it is definitely a turning point and it's definitely you know not unreasonable for him to start saying hey like you said rip the Band-Aid off if you're here for WordPress these are my rules and and going to start following them and I think that's totally fine I would just love to see it start there and then and then start cutting off people from plug-in updates like let's do that's fine maybe uh you know for those of us who actually like this is affecting us and we're hearing from clients now like look give us give us a little Ro uh Runway here and and say what you want and say what you expect and let people make up their minds and uh I don't think that's an unreasonable thing for him to say and I don't think it's unreasonable for WordPress to to need to focus this intensely Courtney anything you want to add to that largely we're in agreement on those things um you know I've been three years at goad him um and Matt and I spoke after his covid fever uh and and he knows he can connect and chat and that's good um that's really in the past at this point and contributing is very much Forefront on my mind constantly a lot of the work that I get to do it's an honor to do is in the context of communicating you know as a word Camp organizer this past week I organized contributor day and it was a blast and I loved being able to reach out to all the people that make word press possible that were ready to onboard more contributors it's amazing I have friends at some of these other companies that have been working on their strategy as well for how they show up to contribute and seeking ways to um open the opportunities for more contribution on the clock it's something that I am working on as well at my place of employment and it's also something I'm working on with Hari Shankar uh who is employed by automatic together we're the ones driving the new contributor dashboards experience and what I began with was looking around in the rest of Open Source Beyond Thor press bubble because surely this is not unique to us getting funding for contribution and I found some tooling that helps us assess where we currently are and making it more transparent um I've shared with Matt on a couple of calls recently like other Twitter spaces and such that the pledges for five for the future from the perspective of a team rep well they could be kind of gamed and inflated and also it could be people contributing bursts some of my co-workers were also lead organizers for other parts of Work Camp us that took more effort than the part I played and they will contribute heads down in bursts for months and then they're done for you know nine months out of the year or something um so the who shows up on the daily and what gets done for contributing I want to see more transparency involved in that and um I shared on the Twitter spaces that that Andrew Palmer and tia were hosting Matt came to that one and I shared that at times it feels like a moving Target you know if we see that the WordPress Foundation page has been modified that that feels like it has shifted and um the wording on that one was just revised recently I would like to see Brian's idea of you got to give us a little bit of Runway this isn't fair to the visitors of these websites um to be caught in the crossfire of all of this and so be clear in what the governance and the rules are give people time and um increase transparency in the communication my question at I was up first for Matt's Q&A I usually try to ask him questions at these big Flagship word camps my question to him was largely around tell us what you've been doing behind the scenes because we don't know that story this is all like fresh news to us and so um it's eroding trust to just bring something like that and I I feel like he knows that I do think that we need to to fund contributors there's no question in my mind um I was delighted to help give money to people that were table leads at contributor day that were not there on any organizations dime if they were if any of the organizations were listed on the sponsor page people that were there not employed by those organizations or sent by those organizations got a little bit of funds for it just for being there and that was amazing and I got to help with some of that but you know there's a lot more to do and there's a lot more that needs to happen every across all the teams inside of Wordpress which are found at make. wordpress.org you see all the teams there's a lot of work that needs to happen and we do need to take care of the commons but we need to have clear governance that says here is how we will take care of the commons and what the expectation is not just an aspirational goal but be very transparent with it and and also reasonable in the deadlines yeah no I agree what let me ask you this question Courtney um because this this this event that's happening now is is really exposing uh a feeling that I've had for a while that open source WordPress to Matt and and not that any of us have never questioned this before but the open source WordPress side is really for the end user right like he he again me just theorizing here with again just Co brain but he's open- sourcing WordPress and this open source WordPress in this community of Wordpress I think in his in his heart actually is for the end user to enable somebody to enjoy using Wordpress largely all of us here watching and going to word camps are you know we're enjoying building WordPress too and shaping it and all this other stuff but I think he really feels he's delivering the end user experience for users and while he knows that we are we are important I think it's his gift again this is his gift to the world is I'm giving everyone WordPress to use it and that's really where his focus is in this and he will defend that till the dying breath and unfortunately us are the the Canon F along the way which is I know a harsh a harsh thing but my my direct question is because you are somebody who gives back tremendously right if there's a 242 people watching right now as far as I can see on the on the streamyard thing and everyone should be giving you a round of applause for all the work that you've done but I'm curious like knowing what you know now like does this shift your desire to want to give back to the community you thought we had like we I thought we all had control of this this and after this experience like oh damn you can just turn off.org like that I guess I guess we don't all have like the control and power of Wordpress and maybe forking WordPress isn't so easy what are your thoughts on like how this shakes the community I think your concept of Matt's Legacy being you know I don't know if I've ever shared this actually and I hope Matt kind of hears this um I was sitting in a classroom one evening late at night trying to get content for my students published somewhere it was 2005 probably and um WordPress was I want to say it was like around two do there was a version of Wordpress that never actually shipped so it was the version before that that I got uh I think it was like 2.3 that I started using and whenever I found it friend of mine recommended it to me and I went looking trying to figure out what's WordPress and I read the Four Freedoms that begin with number zero but that's a open source thing that's not a WordPress thing so I read the Four Freedoms and what that means and I thought that's something that I fully support that's the first exposure I had already used moodle I had already used jyla I was not new to open source holistically I mean you could even argue at that time Linux when I was in college was very much open source I've been an open source user for a long time but that was the first that I really grasped the concept of what we're what we're doing as a project so that's that's some years ago I've been with the project in some sense using it since you know version two um knowing what I know now I'm still thankful for the way in which automatic does financially contribute to the project I think that there are areas to improve the trust so ways to improve the trust we know that Matt shar's receipts cool I would be am I would be delighted if we knew what the actual expenses of the project are I'm not asking for M more of Matt's personal receipts what I'm asking for is Let's Be transparent in what we know about the expenses of the project let's understand uh how much of that is automatic or Audrey or Matt's pocket like just who's covering what pieces of which things um how can others that wish to also help cover some of that do so um you know we already split up the costs of Meetup among those that are sponsors Global sponsors of camps so there are some areas of the project where the costs are distributed but I think that there are some areas where we could continue to improve that um continue to strengthen the trust so that we don't end up in this spot you know if I could rewind things um Morton really pushed on governance uh I so appreciate Morton um it didn't quite go or needs to go and I don't know the reservations necessarily from Project leadership about that because at the time I was taking some years away from the project having little babies uh so I was a little bit out of the mix I was watching some stuff on watching the streams online but I really wasn't following as closely at that era but I would love to understand what is the reservation in publishing this this information um what is the reservation in in encouraging additional hosts to to take part how do we educate the WordPress ecosystem about how the rest of Open Source tends to run fund itself down everything from how do we write a proposal to having that proposal get accepted I don't want to get bogged down in overwhelm of procedures but I feel like we're almost so opposed to having procedures as a project that now we're seeing eventually this had to happen right Brian in your latest arle you said I'll never understand the crowd that believes contributing to Wordpress is just lining Matt's Pockets I mean in the sense that it helps automatically raise Capital sure but WordPress has been helping us all in the ecosystem make more money let's not take that for granted not a complete Mt apologist I feel like you and I align together on on this stuff um your thoughts so far yeah I mean I think the breakdown I was trying to say is that there's there's code for wordpress.org and then there's 's or for WordPress the core software and then there's wordpress.org which is this much wider sort of thing that's that's just different but extremely important and I think what we saw this week when the plug-in directory apis were shut off to somebody um I think what we saw was that you know we have the code and it's open source and it's this great thing but what's really made WordPress popular is something like a plug-in directory that Aggregates all of this open source code and provides it and Matt controls the aggregation and delivery of all of this open source code that all of us were kind of just taken for granted you know we were all just kind of you know letting letting Matt kind of be in charge of that and and I think that was fine because I think it helped us out a lot but I think now people are starting to realize okay this is what I'm contributing to which is totally fine but you just have to be prepared to say like if he wants to flex and shut those things off um he he totally has a right to do it and we were all more than happy to let him host that oh getting e yep speaking of man Matt I think you're still playing the live stream hello hello so I can hear you twice tce you can hear me twice are you still playing the live I'm not playing the live stream but I am in the streamyard so just edit Echo cancellation how about now hello hello okay great we can hear you now perfect uh Matt thanks for joining um as we uh as we mentioned we were just talking about the Articles and stuff that folks were posting but I know you have a short amount of time I've got five minutes for y'all so what what would you like to talk about thankfully it's called the wp minute uh we've got minutes by the way I hope you appreciate that I am doing all these things things and W engine is not showing up to these decks they're not going on press they're not talking to journalists they're not because and why is that yeah uh Matt so I think the the biggest question I think maybe on a lot of people's minds is why go this nuclear route uh in front of our biggest stage in the US um when so so much of this impacts our friends family colleagues of of many years uh in a short amount of time why the nuclear nuclear option now you know I have been trying to avoid this for years been meeting with them and as their text messages that they publish showed I was trying to call them and everything and say hey I I don't want to do this but they just kept delaying delaying delaying delaying so um yeah I was really trying everything I could to to not have this happen but they refused to do any sort of deal and you know stop violating the WordPress trademark does this mat go ahead Cy I I would wonder moving forward uh if we could see more documented policies basically about so that we to move forward we need to rebuild trust in the ecosystem and what I would like to see is um documenting what the appropriate amounts basically are in certain instances and the consequences of that and maybe a little bit more Runway if customers and their website visitors become collateral a little bit more Runway I've been running wordpress.org for 21 years I'm aware never Happ that time this is I don't expect it to ever happen again WP engine is uniquely bad in how they've behaved and how they've taken advantage of free WordPress out resources how they've done this legal thing that now like covers all this WordPress networks lack and members and everything like that like they are unique among all the hosts so uh this is really just a Silver Lake WP engine thing it has nothing to do with anyone else Matt uh just help us understand my theory is when you say open- Source WordPress is for everyone my take is everyone is the end user like this work that we all put into it you especially is for the end user to experience and enjoy WordPress is that who you think of when you defend open source so vehemently is the end user to publish words and to get access to this WordPress thing um that's the question is it is it that end user yeah I mean we we design software and we have a vision for it and hosts deliver that and WP engine modifies WordPress and they deliver their version of it right so they have it to remove the meetups widget and the news widget right now they hack it to remove the attribution for woocommerce to make money and they just do that for themselves so um they get they completely control your WordPress they when you you're not like using our WordPress you're using their modified version of it when you run WordPress on WP engine that's why I say WP engine is not WordPress so they can also hack it to change the update servers or you know whatever else they want to do if they want to provide service to their customers because when they prom us on their website we provide updates and plugin updates even charge for plugin updates by the way you can get plugin updates for free from jetpack or any other host they charge $3 a month for it so they should be providing that service Brian any question from you before I yeah I think the one question a lot of people had was like some of us were WP engine customers just because because they've been around for a long time we have a lot of clients this morning I'm already getting emails from clients because their sites are going down obviously due to issues where plugins are trying to update and are failing I don't think it's catastrophic but I think what would have what would been the reasoning against uh saying what the situation was going to be and then saying and vote with your dollars to a different host and then saying you know you have a reasonable amount of time a few months or a few weeks to to make that transition and and get that Community Support yeah I think that's a really good point actually and something I've been hearing a lot so I'm going to see if there's something we can do because you know WP engine by the way 1.5 million sites uh they're using millions of dollars of wordpress.org resources in compute CPU time engineering time everything like that to serve their customers so um we've been giving them that for free they're paying nothing for it they have no trademark license they know anything um so I realize the customers are impacted I'm going to see if we can do something to help them out today um and then you know you know say like maybe midnight on September 30th you know WB engine has until then to like set up their mirrors of Wordpress at work and everything all the code is open source they can mirror they can run their own update servers they can run their own everything like it's all open source codes so they can run it what if this creates more mirrors of we five minutes though so final question yeah last question what what if if this opens up more mirrors of wordpress.org which was something that was like marketplaces in the past is is that something that could happen from from this if W if they wanted to run a mirror of the plug-in directory and the theme directory and update servers and everything like that they're welcome to do so it's all open source code it's all GPL so they're they're if they have the technical ability and want to spend the money to do so they're welcome to I have spent tens of millions of dollars to do that and provide that free to the WordPress Community which they are using for free so uh hopefully they can do the same for their customers because they're making half a billion a year charging people for WordPress updates WordPress security Etc so all right I've got run thank you so much thanks Matt all right so there's that um I don't know how much that clears things up but maybe uh I'll have a chance to sit down and talk with them in the past I mean in the future I think that it it it doesn't it doesn't help it's certainly just his point of view on on WP engine uh and I think it sounds like we're all kind of doing that like you know I mean any web host is and and certainly certain levels of of obviously giving giving back and I I think hopefully that's the clarity that comes out of this once again I will go back to my original theory of this is a rip the Band-Aid off moment for him to be more strict clear if it's even clear but this is like the Line in the Sand we're moving forward uh no comment from you Courtney obviously on this but like I think all web hosts moving forward are going to be like okay we saw that Line in the Sand with WP engine and I guess we all have to now think about that more clearly and maybe more web host now turn to him and go uh should we do that deal now before this happens again um to us in the future um yeah so I I don't have a strong takeaway obviously short short short amount of time that he had here but uh maybe we'll talk to him in the future about it I know budget season planning is going on right now for next calendar year and um I encourage folks not only to look at if your place of employment is leveraging WordPress I would encourage everyone to consider not just because of this instance but also because of the people that you know if you're watching you know people that are contributing to our press I promise um so couple of us right here so um and I'm expecting Matt to get props on 67 this Matt to get props on 67 I think um so look at the stack of tech that you've got the open source that you depend upon whether that be WordPress Andor the rest um you know my my employer is also sponsoring openjs the JavaScript project uh we are also sponsoring the work in phpcs which trickles over to wpcs the code sniffer areas making sure that um that compliance is there you know we want to make sure that those things stay on and phpcs was nearly in trouble this year like nearly gone this year um so it's really important that you look at all of the dependencies whether that is in what you're serving to your customers or that is the tools that you depend on for the job that you have or any layer of the organization know your open source dependencies and take a look because we don't want that person in Nebraska to not be able to pay the rent yeah I think people misunderstand how much we all rely on this huge you know the modern website now from the plug-in directory to node and composer and all these tools coding standards tools all these sorts of things it's modern websites are really a house of cards and everything from PHP you know all the way up to Wordpress uh these these things are all extremely fragile and extremely run by open source communities in a lot of ways and I think Matt's just drawing out the difference a little bit here in in a very aggressive way that we need to start saying hey if you know if he's going to start charging for access to the the plug-in directory then of course I think people who build plugins will have to start saying okay is that where I want to put my code or not and uh you know what are the Alternatives I'm going to put it on GitHub which is owned by Microsoft I'm going to put it in other places so I I think it's it's drawing attention to a much larger issue in a in a very uh fast way aggressively accelerated way yeah yeah um yeah s re had posted a question sorry I meant to read that uh how do we Square I spend Millions on WordPress and I am charging Millions uh for WordPress sub licenses uh I don't know I again I I I tend to think that this is the moment um where yeah things change in uh in WordPress and the it it shows how brittle this all is I saw a meme photo the other day I don't know what it was a bunch of like shapes and stuff like stacked on top of each other and there was like wordpress.org as like the the toothpick that was holding the whole thing up and I was like yeah if you remove that there's a lot of this stuff this stuff crumbles my question is is does OP does open source WordPress the software win or continue to win continue to lead the way after all of this five six years ago whatever it was eight years I can't remember when Gutenberg was announced we saw an exodus of wow we don't want this thing and a lot of people were like I'm done I'm trying something new I'm leaving and I saw some people trickle back in this is largely different and what do we think do we think the market just says no we we're here because we still we're still going to use use WordPress and we're still going to use the ecosystem and we're still going to connect with our community even though that's the answers we just got from from from Matt like does WordPress still win at the end of the day because it is open source and we've all committed so much into this I shared a a clip recently from if anyone's watched the movie Ender schem the way we win matters um and if you've watched the movie you'll you'll get the the reference that's there um winning WordPress is not done yet I think that the vast majority right now of people that are accessing the internet have no idea what's powering the websites that they're visiting if they host websites they may or may not know that it's WordPress running it even if they could see WordPress when they if they log in they may or may not even do that right so they might just have someone to publish all of that I think um we're not at the point yet though we're starting to be seen outside of the WordPress bubble for those that might be tuning in um uh I think that there's a lot of people that are in the WordPress bubble that think this is this is really the end um I'm not there yet I tend to think that the average people have no idea what's powering the internet at all other than I turn my computer on um so I don't think that we're running that risk yet but I will say that the way that we get through this current cycle of news and what's going on will impact that so it could still be going in either direction um but the idea of you know in Enders Game the way that we win it's not just that WordPress takes over 50% or 80% or whatever it's how we get there it's how that we sustain ourselves through this moment and how we choose to show up and navigate this challenge yeah I had a bunch of thoughts that I had wrote or notes I had written down before the live stream of course and then uh uh Matt showing up has sort of changed that slightly um when I hear people say we got to replace them fire him fire him air quotes not going to happen but let's say that does happen I I don't know I don't know what we get after that and and that's the part that really worries me the most is who do you replace Mullen wag with right um like strictly speaking somebody who sits in between automatic or sits at the top of automatic and and wordpress.org what what do we get if we replace Matt a board of directors like the same thing coming from the top of Silver Lake into automatic like is that what we get and is that what we want uh it's hard to defend after that five minute Spiel that we just saw but I also worry like up until this point there was a CA there's a there's a chaos in Matt this ambiguity which also had like this weird balance in other words WordPress wasn't the biggest question is like what is WordPress and I think he keeps that chaos going of like what is WordPress straddling the middle line whereas ah you replace Matt you bring in a CEO from another experience and they go it's webflow now you know it's Drupal now and they just go those direct markets and there's something ambiguous about WordPress I just can't put my finger on that I think I don't mind that there is no direct path as weird as that sounds what do we get if we replace Matt anybody have thoughts on that I I do have thoughts on that because I do see a lot of replace Matt and and go the governance project and all those sorts of things and I think it's really hard to articulate a better situation you know say we put together a group would it be every every large company that has the most money so WP engin gets a very big seat at that table you know I don't think there's going to be a way that's going to make everyone happy um I would say I think people should read uh yost's blog post that he posted this week where he just talks about you know not replacing Matt but just augmenting him with a group of Industry leaders that can at least sit around and give advice because um you know at the end of the day there's a lot of people in our community that I think everybody trusts and I think that would we would all love it if they had a an an you know an ear to the king so to speak but um you know the idea that that Matt's just decide not to own WordPress and shut down.or and and and call it a day like I just don't really think that's a conversation that's going to take us anywhere constructive because I don't really see it happening I don't think people are very confused about Matt owning wordpress.org and then this WordPress foundation and they they get very confused that that the foundation is some sort of Avenue to controlling WordPress and it's just not and it's just not the way it works and so um you know I think on the other hand getting Matt to just bring together some more some more the smart people that are are building this ecosystem um whether he listens to them or not but at least we can like have them in a room and get their opinions on it that's roughly my thoughts like this this project is Matt's life work I don't see him stepping away and I'm not necessarily even still asking that he do so um I do think that it would be insane infrastructure for everyone to Fork so except for pup press if anyone seen pup press thumbs up on that my dog's gonna get a seat on the fork of word press I was like what the hell is pup press it's it's it's a great you need to go look it up press yeah someone forked WordPress it was the folks who red dolly um so that was fun but um series forks I don't think are are a realistic option um what does governance look like moving forward now I up until days ago I wouldn't dare whisper this word because it would evoke Morton and [ \_\_ ] probably watching so Hi friend but um you know as I as I've learned about other open source projects and looked at others that have models similar to ours and what their Community has faced um and also how their their version of I know Matt doesn't appreciate the title bdfl uh but that's the that's the model that we're operating under right and so it was a community open- source project uh in comparison to woo that is a commercial entity backing an open source project so there's some nuances to that um but other other open source projects that have a bbfl what are the takeaways that we can learn from them Andor how their community that is dependent upon that communicates back and forth with that person in authority and do we just continue I mean I'm on a soap box basically but let's just continue documenting every little Nuance that we can document about here's the policies and procedures so it's really transparent um and I think that that itself would would rebuild the trust that needs to happen because if it I understand WP engine I I understand the concerns of how much they have or have not given I understand the concerns that my friends that have worked there have faced as well um it's just still though if it could happen to them could it happened to anyone else and so document document document and it's not fun to document but it's the way to build trust and stick to it I want to hear from uh the audience if you have any questions uh use hash Q for the question is that what the kids do hash Q qon I don't know put a q ask yeah Mark let us know is it lit is it Q tell me uh and I'll search for it and we'll try to answer those up answer those questions as uh as we wrap up and also uh leave a comment let me know are we still choosing WordPress after all of this is this still our favorite CMS of choice I mean I know this bias is a WordPress podcast but um tell me what you feel about picking WordPress uh moving forward I reached out to uh Jonathan Nolan as well uh to see if he wanted to join to talk about his take on the ghost side of things um he couldn't make the the live stream but that would have been a great sort of counter um to this conversation um last question for the panel uh again as we wrap up contributing to Wordpress is it good enough that we make plugins service customers talk about WordPress uh promote WordPress and support our community is is that good enough or do we need to engage in the formalities of let's say five for the future and all the tireless work that that Courtney does as part of make teams where do we draw the lines like I think we're hearing it from Matt on how he draws the lines how do we draw the lines how how do you both feel like ah you're giving back you're you're you're contributing where where do we draw those lines I want to give a shout out at this point to uh Tara clay amazing person I was a subcontractor be before Tara before I was working at goded um and Tara and I were chatting the one day about what I was doing with the wpcc the wp Community Collective as a means of Matt has said that the foundation has will never fund contributors out of the foundation's expenses um there's a tweet for that and I can track it down for the recording for later but um I think if your business is dependent upon it you have some means of giving back and if your give back is I personally do not have time to go to all of the places and find all of the things and figure out where to do whatever one of the Alternatives that Tara proposed was that she would be up for paying the equivalent of a premium license per year as a donation to fund the work at the time we were doing fundraising for Alex Stein to be sponsored for half a year part-time and accessibility Alex has done so and that was amazing but that concept of at any scale if you're really dependent upon this for your livelihood then there are means for contributing to the project and I would love to continue increasing that transparency so that if someone says I gave financially the that it's not frowned upon when compared against show me your core props on a release right that's not an equal comparison level yeah I mean I I'll add to that this is what I wrote about this morning which is that there are the different levels of contributing and it it's definitely contributing to make plugins make tutorials do all that writing all that stuff and that stuff is important and we need more of it and we need more of that from the community and I argued that I think Matt Maybe values that side a little bit and and but at the same thing we also need core contributors we really do we really need people working on core and if you're the smallest of businesses there's amazing developers that you can literally pledge five bucks a month to and it may not seem like a lot but it's just the tiniest bit that these are just core contributors most of almost all the ones that you can sponsor they're not working for Matt they're not working for automatic they're just there and the community could really put in a lot more effort I think to just throw a few dollars a month I think it would add up um and then there's that middle section which is all of theor infrastructure and I think that also needs contributions but at the end of the day that is Matt's playground and so you do have to when you put something in the photo directory when you put a plugin in the plugin directory you do have to do it with the caveat that you're putting it in Matt's playground and if he wants to bring more contributors to that playground he'll probably have to give them a little bit bit more of that uh transparency and a little more representation on that side of it but I think those other ends the content and the core code those two are just uh critical there's a couple of folks that I see over in the comments section that I know would be happy to receive funds as core contributors a couple of them are core committers and and then some um please raise your hands over in in the comments to let people know I don't want to out folks that may or may not want outed so please let folks know if you would like to be recognized for rece seeking funding wanting to be funded also Aaron jorban nice transition there uh this weekend I you see these instruments back here I play the El Aaron Jan's question is what are we doing for ourselves this weekend well I've got kids so I'm gonna do whatever the schedule is for them maybe a soccer game because it's the fall in the Northeast but also this is an electric F string mandolin and over here is an electric seven string violin uh and I plan to play them very loudly and aggressively Courtney you know what you're going to now Brian's going to go get his collection I have this thing about people with guitars in the background you all want to show it off right there it is right right there yeah go ahead has a Mando too he's got a whole piano behind him turn around let's go I know I know yeah you know what I can't get rid of that piano so that piano is my Albatross uh we do actually there's a Eddie veter hosts a annual music thing in dhini Beach this weekend so I will be at Eddie vet's Music Festival down in dhini for at least a couple days or couple parts of the afternoon for small chunks of time where we could find babysitting so it'll be a musical weekend for both of us it's fantastic I do I want a work Jam like online somehow it'll be terrible but it'll be fun this is what I mean people people with guitars in the background this is what happens the whole podcast gets derailed um I'm just kidding uh do want to Workshop this idea in the future not on this episode but um what does a new mirror of.org look like and how could that even happen right uh folks in the audience stew on it hit me up with your your ideas I'd love to to Theory craft that on another uh episode of the wp minute let's hit some of these questions before Co brain takes over and Brian has to go as well let's just jump into some of these things to Rapid Fire some of this stuff uh Matt said WP was uniquely bad thoughts on that uh quickly for me not bad but uh yeah I think anyone getting that making that much money should also do more is my general feeling uh anyone else want to hop on it if next if not I'll go next to the next question I I'm sure Courtney can't hop on it um I don't think they're uniquely bad but uh but I do think um people should be aware that their tools are very popular and like ACF and local and we do want those tools to be well supported and we want core to be well supported and they make a lot of money they can they can do it how do you feel about pressible offering to biyo WP contracts good faith tactics speak out against a competitor I think that's just Matt saying hey put up a landing page and say that we'll buy out the wp engine contracts I think that's about as far as that one goes uh who's next on Matt's list um hopefully not the wp minute uh what if the S what if Scott Kingsley Clark what if a company size of WP actually did a complete five for the future with millions of dollars of contributors and two to three times the size of automatic contribut listen I've been saying this when GoDaddy was Under Fire from Matt uh last time uh I forgot what I titled the the post I think it was what if GoDaddy created a WordPress or something like that um yeah it would be this is and this is my point with WP engine and my time when I wrote about GoDaddy yeah these are Big entities that could bring in 2030 developers I mean it's large a lot of money of course and on paper doesn't make sense to these Brands but man wouldn't that be a thing of like I said before calling Matt's Bluff with air quotes and these bigger entities to come and say okay here's 30 devs in front end designers and designers let's go and you know let's see what happens and I think um when you'd have that much that many people representing um the project that it would make a tremendous impact so I think it would be good anybody else want to chime in nope question thoughts that Matt is basically saying sponsoring word camps doesn't count as contributing to the community Matt is basically saying sponsoring word camps doesn't count um I don't know if I particularly jump on that yeah go ahead all right so uh yes no is my answer officially um but also I would encourage folks to look at how other open source projects handle their events and what the event sponsors get for it so uh when I was at open source Summit it was interesting to see that um part of the agreement of the sponsors is that they get they either have a slot that is their company presenting something or they get to select somebody to be a speaker at an occasion um I think that there are some nuances to this that I want to be very thoughtful in this my team at work directly handle sponsoring events um so yes you'll find me in booths at WordPress events but also I think that there's some increased transparency that we could do there as well around what sponsorships get you um to really consider it if it's a marketing or if it's a uh not a marketing effort because if you think about Flagship camps like word Camp us um just a thought how many of you interacted last week at word Camp us with people that are in purchasers that are not staff from some other company that happens to be there um I don't just curious on the attendee breakdown and we'll see probably some of those numbers after the surveys are compiled at the end that was my non-answer an answer that's a non-answer another question that came through when will WP engine pledge 8% of the revenue to the WordPress Community as bad as some make it seem from Matt that around the ballpark for automatic let's hold them to the same standards okay um yeah I'm kind of I am still kind of neutral on that like I I feel like everyone who contributes to Wordpress it it's helping everyone so everybody should be contributing to Wordpress um but we could debate the 8% and and how much other stuff WP does uh or doesn't uh I saw another question that didn't have have you organized a w Camp I have not but Courtney 70,000 of them no I I've attended a lot of them over the years usually ones I could drive to I you know on the Mid-Atlantic region um I've only started going to ones that require PL trips in the last several years with my current employer I have only organized a contributor day at word Camp us I've been a table lead at a lot of them I have volunteered for literally the very first way I contributed to Wordpress was I volunteered to check in guests uh for Work Camp Mid-Atlantic in 2009 before we had Work Camp Central as our governing group Brian were you gonna say something I was going to say also Courtney like there's a difference between organizing volunteering and sponsoring and there's a lot of overlap a lot of sponsors help organize help volunteer but yeah there that you it's not just sponsoring you can organize you can volunteer those are 100% contributions to the community that a lot of people do uh outside of their working hours DK Hansen a friend of the show hadam on and also not a matician if you someone ignored your request for years or months and it could harm your business and potentially millions of others what would you do to protect every what would you do to protect everyone uh that you could uh again we don't know the full details and I think that's part of the uh friction here is um has it been years or months has he directly been asking or um it it again it just feels like feels like and maybe we'll see it when uh if it does get to court though I don't think it will I have something tells me they'll come to an agreement and they probably will start paying U to avoid all the legal stuff um but uh it does feel more like he was just maybe sick of something not happening at WP engine or um they were about to do an IPO or do something even crazier and he was like I'm G to put a stop on that um again because we don't have all the details uh yeah he could publish a paper trail and take it to the community I think and hopefully he's ready for that yeah uh let's see any other questions here uh wow you should be supporting the guy that has given you great income for years talk about biting the hand that feeds you uh wow wow listen I I ALS I can also see both sides of this too 100% like it's hard for me you know to be in the in the position to criticize why I always criticize uh Matt in leadership and and not automatic and I've said this and I and I know I I come out sometimes as an automatic apologist because I do so I know so many people at automatic like the folks on this panel know so many folks at automatic and I think they all do great work and sometimes um I don't think it's fair to uh beat up the folks that represent the 4,000 is hours um that are being committed because I think a lot of them are trying to get WordPress done right for the good of of of us all um I would also say the same I mean I I first met Matt 2009 in New York um all along my my encouragement is always in the direction of let's document document document and make policies that we can all adhere to um and Matt has been approachable for me over the years I I would not be where I am now and have been teaching WordPress in schools and boot camps and to adults that were retraining during the pandemic without Matt and Mike starting this thing and without them continuing to show up um I think that it is still absolutely important to recognize that there is good in what we have here for sure and I want to see that Thrive and continue so my my own personal take is that um I might not agree with the way in which things are unfolding right now but I've been civil I've been approachable and friendly and I feel that Matt has the same respect back for me but I I don't know another question just uh came in what do you what do you think about the results or the current results of uh the Twitter poll uh and let me just thr that up on screen I did put it in chat whoops cut everybody else off uh I did put it in chat before let me try to zoom in here uh so it definitely looks like uh it was probably dropped in the automatic slack Channel because because the results went from uh resoundingly automatic in the Place uh to automatic just uh running away uh with election season 869 votes and automatic is at 58% uh in favor this is just a Twitter poll that I put out automatic versus WP engine um I'm with automatic certainly winning the way so hey if anyone is watching uh from WP engine throw it in your slack uh don't forget to subscribe to the wp minute uh throw it in your slack and uh vote uh for your uh your preferred stance there got a couple more questions and then Brian and I and everyone else have to leave what do we have um here I saw some other do other WordPress agencies need to get a trademark license as well or have gotten one in the past uh first time I've heard about it since this whole debacle came came to the front and center but it is something I worry about now um that I call myself the wp minute uh I'm not trying to guide anyone to say that I am WordPress or uh this is uh official automatic news or anything like that but yeah I think we're all sort of scratching our heads can we even use that anymore I don't know I don't have the answer I 3D printed WordPress logo earrings and gave them out uh at word camps over the past year I didn't have them with me last time but I'm curious to see where this goes to earrings uh do you think Matt is doing this for what he perceives to be the greater good of Wordpress or the money again um like I said at the beginning this is him preserving WordPress for the end user and automatic is the best vehicle in his mind to do it how I see it that's how I see it I I would agree I would agree that he perceives what he's doing to be for the greater good of WP I would agree with that part yeah yeah uh and I know I like I say this all the time like he still not as you know I don't I don't know anymore know I was going to say like he's not the CEO who like shows up in Lambo at the word Camp events or comes in on a helicopter and you know so but I don't know there's that CEO and then there's this CEO I don't know which one you want to deal with at least this one shows up for five minutes I don't know all right uh one last question here and then we're going to wrap things up I thought I saw another question oh from my ex colleague at pagley Dave good to see you Dave uh do you feel that WP engine's popular plugin ACF should count as giving back to the community I am I know a lot of so I'm I don't know I'm in the middle on this one because it is a commercial plugin yeah it's like super powerful tons and tons of people use it I'm in the middle can I be in the middle on this one I don't feel like it's giving back like fully but it's a great plugin that they also make money with it's one that when I had uh been working at modern tribe and was starting to Pivot to uh teaching in the boot camp my leaders there indicated specifically I was asking hey what do you need for a what is your standard to rank someone as a junior Dev or further and immediately came up that is one that many of the employers expect that you know inside and out I would also give a shout out in the chat to Scott Kingsley Clark who is lead Dev at pods um uh again in the middle so there is uh some wording around if you have a community plug-in that is considered part of contributing if there is not the commercial aspect to it if you don't have a further nudge for any upsells anywhere um it's a tricky spot I would like to see that hashed out further I would say also the developers that work directly on ACF um that team like Ian and Liam and and a lot of the people there they do contribute what they do requires them to be very very like Leading Edge with what's happening in Gutenberg and stuff and they're they're in the issues they're in there they're working on they're contributing it 100% so also just want to specify there are individuals in these teams that are 100% helping out core WordPress and then there is a larger company that has a commercial product that yes is very popular popular and important but is is definitely there to keep people in their ecosystem and make money which you know is is perfectly fine all right so we're going to wrap it up we're going to go round the horn really quick so at the end of the day for me anyway uh automatic is still the best Steward of Wordpress in my opinion I'm still here for WordPress and uh the community do not like how this all played out largely like most map bombs that happen um but uh yeah I am still you know here for WordPress uh I'm still behind it and still part uh still excited to be part of uh the community you know and I was just real quick note I was watching that guy that that that live streamer uh coding live streamer guy and what I really hate is when like these guys who are in some other kind of uh coding architecture and they're like WordPress is still around come on bro like where where have you yeah the laravel kids are all into PHP PHP is one its comeback thanks to larl and Symphony I think yeah like what are you doing with your 0.02% of the internet okay that's how I feel thanks to larel and their Lambo driving CEO who uh is in is in the code every day and listens to the community for sure uh Brian your parting words um and where we can find you where we can find you yeah so my parting words are um that I think we should all just see where this plays out and continue voicing strong opinions but also just remember that everybody that works at all these companies really are caught in the crosshairs of something bigger and if you see individual employees posting or whatever you know what the they're they're saying what they believe and they're doing what they need to do so I don't think I think people need to be a little nicer in those places and uh you can find me at um brian.com YouTube Twitter X and uh in all the good slacks including WP minute course Courtney Brian you closed that so well um darn you stole my answers except that uh mine is Courtney rdev you can find me as Courtney rdev on Twitter and most places that use the underscore if not try the H the the hash um really take care of yourselves this week it's it's a lot and I represent one of those organizations that is watching what's going on um take care of yourselves this week thank you for as a community how you are uh on the whole handling this situation it's it's hard in all regards get yourself real food not junk food get yourself a shower get some sleep we'll get through this um and then it is also fine that if you have reached your limit and you need to step away I had reached my limit not only because I was having young children but I took three years away from this project for a few other reasons and it's okay to step away not knowing if you're coming back but welcome back if you choose to come back um I think I'm waiting to see how this plays out been too I've been eating nothing but Oreos on this covid trip uh so probably not probably not good everybody else uh thanks for watching thumbs up if you like today's live stream subscribe to the channel uh I think I might do another WordPress tutorial if people care anymore after this although fitting that the last video posted was about Drupal so it could have been a sign uh that it's time uh time to Pivot uh the channel thanks for watching Everybody thanks for hanging out don't forget to share it and let folks know we see you next time on the wp minute bye friends, Automattic vs WP Engine, WP Minute - Learn WordPress, 01j8wbvpkendfb82kt4xb55nrd.