Freedom in WordPress?  ## Metadata - Author: [[WP Minute - Learn WordPress]] - Full Title: Freedom in WordPress? - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: [#WordPress, #open-source, #community-governance, #enterprise, #future-of-WordPress, #marketplaces, #humanitarian] Author: Matt Medeiros and No Talk Source: WP Minute Livestream Reference: [Freedom in WordPress?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9geT6vaG_jU) date created: 2024-10-02 15:30 --- # Title: Freedom in WordPress? Livestream Analysis ## Table of Contents: 1. [📝 Summary](#-summary) 2. [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#notes) 3. [📖 References](#references) 4. [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) 5. [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) 6. [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) 7. [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) 8. [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) 9. [❓ Questions](#-questions) 10. [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) 11. [💡 Implications](#-implications) 12. [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) 13. [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) 14. [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) 15. [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) 16. [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) 17. [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ## 📝 Summary: The livestream, featuring Matt Medeiros and No Talk, dives into the ongoing discussions within the WordPress community, focusing on issues like the role of WP Engine, the mirroring of wordpress.org, and the challenges of managing WordPress at scale. Key topics included Matt Mullenweg's leadership, WP Engine's potential moves to mirror the WordPress repository, and the future of community governance within the ecosystem. The discussion also touched on how WordPress's open-source model fits into broader market dynamics, highlighting the tension between maintaining independence and the pressures from major hosting providers. ## 📖 Main Content: The discussion offers insights into the ongoing conflict between WP Engine and Matt Mullenweg regarding wordpress.org and the control over the WordPress ecosystem. Matt Medeiros and No Talk explore how WP Engine's recent developments could reshape the community's perception of governance, innovation, and user freedom. They speculate about WP Engine's motivations behind potentially cloning wordpress.org and creating a separate plugin/theme marketplace, as well as Automatic's reactions to these movements. Key highlights include: - **Tension in WordPress Governance**: Matt Mullenweg's stance on WP Engine's involvement and the broader implications for the WordPress community. The conversation emphasizes that Matt has a significant influence, but the community also desires more structured governance and transparency. - **Marketplace Competition**: WP Engine's possible development of a HubSpot-style marketplace, which could lead to vendor lock-in, thereby affecting plugin and theme developers' autonomy. - **WP Engine’s Role**: A deep dive into WP Engine's position within the enterprise WordPress market and its relationship with other hosting providers and WordPress products. The concern is about how its decisions impact the WordPress ecosystem's integrity and the availability of open, flexible tools. - **Enterprise WordPress and Market Segments**: No discusses Human Made’s focus on the enterprise market and how competition, particularly from new CMS tools, is shaping business decisions and growth strategies. The conversation highlighted a shift towards focusing on specific market segments and delivering tailored solutions. ### 🗒️ Notes - **Matt's Role in WordPress**: - Matt Mullenweg plays a central, often polarizing, role in decision-making and maintaining the wordpress.org repository. - Tensions have escalated over Matt’s public critique of WP Engine’s strategies. - **WP Engine’s Marketplace and Mirror**: - WP Engine is rumored to be working on a mirror of wordpress.org to support plugin/theme updates independent of automatic. - There are concerns that this could lead to a centralized control over plugins/themes under WP Engine, akin to vendor lock-in. - **Human Made’s Enterprise Strategy**: - No Talk shares insights about Human Made’s focus on enterprise WordPress, highlighting the challenges of competing with proprietary CMS platforms like Wix or Adobe. - **WordPress for Humanitarian Causes**: - No’s experience in Ukraine has demonstrated how WordPress can be used for good, especially in humanitarian and nonprofit sectors. - **Community Sentiment and 5 for the Future**: - Many in the community feel uncertain about contributing under the “5 for the Future” concept due to a lack of clarity on expectations. ## 📖 References: - Livestream video: [Freedom in WordPress?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9geT6vaG_jU) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1. Matt Medeiros expressed that many in the WordPress community are passionate about contributing, but there is frustration over the ambiguity surrounding how much contribution is considered sufficient. He called for a clearer structure to encourage participation without the fear of triggering negative reactions from leadership. 2. No Talk mentioned that while there are concerns about WP Engine's recent actions, they also present an opportunity for the WordPress ecosystem to evolve and grow in new directions, especially if more players take up active roles in community-driven governance. ## 📰 Newsletter: 🔥 **WordPress Community Update: Navigating Governance and Independence** This week, we’ve seen some major waves in the WordPress world! WP Engine and Matt Mullenweg have been at the center of discussions, with debates over a possible mirror of wordpress.org and what that means for plugin/theme developers. WP Engine may be gearing up to launch a new marketplace—sounds cool, right? But it also raises questions about vendor lock-in and autonomy. Meanwhile, No Talk from Human Made shares insights on WordPress in humanitarian efforts—an inspiring reminder of what open source can do! Dive into the full story and join the conversation on how we can keep WordPress thriving and independent. [Watch the full discussion here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9geT6vaG_jU). ## ✅ Action Items: - Evaluate how WP Engine's moves align with broader trends in the open-source and enterprise WordPress markets. - Consider drafting guidelines for open-source contributors about what constitutes meaningful participation in "5 for the Future." - Develop a strategic approach to marketplace involvement that supports plugin and theme developers without compromising autonomy. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - WP Engine’s involvement in mirroring wordpress.org will lead to increased fragmentation within the plugin/theme community. - Clarifying “5 for the Future” contributions will improve overall community participation rates. ### 📊 Methodology: - **Survey plugin and theme developers** to assess their perspectives on a potential WP Engine marketplace. - **Analyze community engagement data** before and after clarifying “5 for the Future” guidelines. ### ❓ Questions: - How can WordPress maintain its community-driven ethos while hosting providers pursue more commercial control? - What steps can be taken to ensure contributors feel their efforts are valued and well-directed? ### 🔮 Future Research: - Investigate the impact of commercialized WordPress marketplaces on community developer income. - Explore the balance between enterprise growth and open-source freedom within the WordPress ecosystem. ### 💡 Implications: - Future research could help clarify the best practices for balancing enterprise solutions with the need for an open, community-driven platform. It may also highlight the need for policy changes that safeguard the community's independence. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment: - **Visual Learners (Spatial)**: - **Present**: The livestream format provides a visual component, though more visual aids like slides or infographics could improve clarity. - **Improve**: Suggest adding visual representations of the market dynamics discussed. - **Aural Learners (Auditory-Musical)**: - **Present**: The audio discussion itself is a key strength for auditory learners. - **Improve**: Provide downloadable audio summaries for convenience. - **Verbal Learners (Linguistic)**: - **Present**: Rich language and real-life examples are used throu - Summary: Join Matt Medeiros and Noel Tock discuss Freedom in WordPress. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9geT6vaG_jU&t=1s [Music] it's a marathon week for WordPress news we're back with another live stream uh this time joined by no talk of human made no welcome to the wp minute I appreciate it mat uh we all know the topic dour uh earlier this morning I went for a run well I I did a pelaton then I went for a run uh not afraid to holay from the wp drama yeah not afraid to admit that I jump on the pelaton every uh every now and again for the young kids in the crowd I know they're all making fun of me by being on a stationary bike I'm sorry not doing Brad Williams CrossFit but I came back and I was like man you know lots of people are getting you know rightfully so very emotional about what's happened with the wp engine Auto V automatic stuff and with Matt but I'm not hearing Solutions I'm hearing like emotional hopes and dreams and a lot of like we should do this we should remove that uh wouldn't wouldn't it be great to have like freedom in WordPress but I'm not hearing how we get there and I'm not presenting a how we get there because I don't know either but maybe we can like hash some of this stuff out on today's live stream got questions drop them in the uh in the in the question box wherever you're watching this video before we get too deep into that stuff no what have you been up to with human ma these days um so I I have a bit of a mix of uh work these days um so I I guess many people do know that I am um majority of my time I'm out in Ukraine uh where I do various humanitarian work and then I've also evolved that to Beyond humanitarian work um and yeah it's been a it's been an amazing journey in terms of I guess continuing the WordPress ethos in many ways uh because WordPress is open source it's it's benefited Humanity in many ways um and then you try to extend that in other fields uh but what's been I guess amazing out here is that it yes it's War it's humanitarian crisis and surprisingly WordPress has also been a big part of the response here uh many of the thousands of new Charities that popped up are built on WordPress be it for prosthetic limbs humanitarian Goods fpv drones uh highrisk evacuations nonprofit media uh and more and it's you know it's powerful to know that the software you work on and that everybody on that everybody else works on here too uh has such an impact uh it's software of humanity and it's a privilege to be a part of and that's why despite you know the wp drama I think it's amazing to be um to be in the presence of contributors in community who keep going and even you know today ship the first iteration of Wordpress 6.7 and WordPress Humanity this planet needs this kind of software at a fundamental level yeah that last part is uh is very important it's something that is uh that I 100% agree with because it goes beyond and I think this stuff gets lost a lot in in the discussion of how WordPress is being made like we get into these little narrow um um viewports of oh this is a blogging tool versus this is a web design tool versus this is a CMS I mean I see it as some of these points that you've just described like this is software that impacts Humanity at various levels that aren't just the freelancer building her you know web design business or you know the school educa uh the the the higher ed system that needs a 3,000 you know college CMS installation like this is for like humans we need to get words out we need to get structure content out for these hot spots that are happening might only be there for a month six months a year but these are things that are very very important and um yeah I see WordPress as far beyond the viewports of freelancer or CMS kind of thing um what other and you have so you have human Ma and you have Altus right let's frame what alus is for the discussion today because we will obviously be talking about wpm yeah 100% um so human made and alus both serve the enterprise we try to give Enterprise the best WordPress experience possible um that is as simple as it is you know and and I think everything we've built out over the years um since 2011 and Beyond really um has served Enterprise and you know even when we Departed the VIP program back then it was because you know we didn't really see all the features we wanted uh we wanted to try it ourselves also and you know that gave us a really unique perspective that complement then the other players that are also doing Enterprise and all of that is kind of coming together where we now have to scale Consortium which is multiple Enterprise agencies coming together um so really just you know despite uh the the challenges you see in the economy today and um a lot of competition a lot of AD spend a lot of stimulus checks going to you know these headless composable cms's and all all this other stuff where you know trying to provide um just a great service platform uh outcomes for uh Enterprises across the globe let's talk just briefly again we're going to we're going to get to the to the uh the topic of the day but let's talk about uh the the business side of Wordpress agencies for a moment I came back recently from W Camp us I believe your business partner was there I think I saw him going the a lot of our team was there yeah uh I didn't get a chance to chat with him uh but I've heard mixed things I ran an agency for a decade which was nearly a decade ago at this point but uh you know running an agency was tough man it's it's tough to run an agency I you know I feel like you're always one paid check away from bankruptcy you know getting paid from the client uh and it's it's it's not an easy space it's a fun space but also not an easy space what's the temperature and you see a you're from a different Vantage Point like you have this Global presence but what's the temperature of agency space these days for for delivering WordPress projects yeah I'd say it's it's a mix of factors um I definitely spoke about this at uh Work Camp Asia in terms of just the overall WordPress economy um I I guess my my most recent thought was the amount of SP like the ratio of sponsor space in terms of squared meters versus um you know the the net new amount of sites that are launched on WordPress is is probably at an all-time high or alltime low word anyway just uh there's it's just extremely competitive um in the space now like it's you know we had our honeymoon phase uh that was you know there was a really steep growth curve uh we've seen WordPress um market share if we can call it that you know the the mystical 43% um Plateau um so you know regardless if you believe in that number or not it's it's still you know you're still following a certain Trend over years which used to be very Steep and now it's quite flat um there's a lot of competition there's a lot of pressure and you know we still believe that WordPress is probably one of the best Solutions in Enterprise today uh but there's a lot of work that's needed around not only than selling ourselves but also selling Enterprise WordPress as a concept from a product marketing perspective um and then just the the sort of challenges we face in the economy uh you know us was probably the fastest to kind of come out of challenging times and and still that's not for sure Europe is somewhat behind and then Asia is still lagging quite a bit um so yeah it's a tough time uh to be in the game I feel like we're learning a lot uh we're having to adapt um you know we're having to pick up skill sets that we didn't necessarily or that we took for granted maybe 10 years ago uh in terms of you know building out a very comprehensive sales and marketing team or commercial team um and yeah I'm very proud of you know how far we've come in that regard but yeah you're right it's it's a it's a tough environment but ultimately um with a lot of the budget budgets uh Enterprise budgets maybe being you know focused towards Ai and other like emerging technology do companies really want to hold on to large license costs and large maintenance costs of proprietary cms's that do the same thing as WordPress um you know like these are the the kind of more macro things that I'd say we hold on to and where we see a lot of opportunity within the Enterprise space and when you say there's a lot of competition I just want for clarity sake is it competition like there's more word press agencies coming on board and there's it's harder to sell amongst ourselves or are we getting external pressures in competition from other cms's and and platforms throughout the world probably a bit of both but I I I'd probably look to how is WordPress marketed to the rest of the world so Gartner and Forester still don't they still haven't opened up the category of Wordpress they haven't they don't understand WordPress as a open source piece of software they understand it or G yeah they both understand it as WordPress VIP uh which makes it obviously like quite challenging in that regard for uh the broader ecosystem um but yeah I there's there's still there's there's been a massive marketing push from the whole composable headless kind of space and then some of these players like Adobe and sore creating these more comprehensive suites with personalization AB testing customer Journey orchestration um so that it it it feels like a much larger uh product whereby by CMS is just a sub subset of that and I guess you know a large part of the economy went through either this you know this large all-in-one suite and then got disrupted by The Headless composable ads and players that came in in into to the space and we've never had a very strong product marketing position towards that so we we we interface with the market where we can but it's not that Enterprise WordPress is just re receiving inbound leads uh as much as it should lots of times we we're wrapped at least you know some of the conversations I have we wrapped up in h we're losing ground to Wicks and web flow is that a thing in the Enterprise maybe not the wick side of it I don't know maybe with Wick Studio you see it but is web flow a thing is framer a thing like when you're in the Enterprise space aside from the will build something for you with a headless with headless components is there a another player in the ring who's more of a a name plate that people can identify to um I'd say it's quite fragmented once you pass you know aquo druple and WordPress um it also depends if are are you are you competing for the primary CMS are you competing for the secondary CMS and that's where I'd say you know web flow and Wix Wix Enterprise like really nice page and well put together it's it's good positioning um HubSpot uh Pages or hubot SP CMS I'm not sure what it's called that's a very popular secondary CMS um so there's a lot of players in there the more comprehensive hey this this can be your primary web experience um that's that's a difficult conversation and also we haven't as in Industry come up with a very comprehensive sort of list or Marketplace that's very interoperable with all the Enterprise Tech and sure we have Integrations for Salesforce we have Integrations here we can use apis to connect to various things but we haven't productized that Marketplace layer uh around Enterprise specifically to say here's your you know oneclick nextjs WordPress project starter kit uh that is on wordpress.org or somewhere else I don't want to uh skip over the primary CMS versus secondary CMS because I think it's important that people understand this and and help me understand this because I thinking of it the way that uh I am I want you to to to clarify it so when I was selling Enterprise hosting at pagely for example many years ago uh WordPress was a secondary CMS because some of the brands I was playing with they were like Hey we're a marketing team uh they won't let us touch the big CMS over there we need something we can move faster with and WordPress is a great solution for that therefore that is the secondary CMS in this massive Enterprise that we have is that a fair statement secondary being like H teams can move faster with this yeah that's extremely Fair um it's the pragmatic cheap solution hey we don't have that much budget um and it's and it's been a a great marketing strategy for WordPress get your foot in the door uh and then grow from there you know try to either grow vertically up you know in this particular department where you are in Enterprise or grow horizontally because other teams here about how this has worked and there's ready to approve vendor and procurement um so then you're able to grow from there and we've you know certainly made those experiences but that is a Bottoms Up approach to which is a hacky way because we're always lowbudget uh we we don't have Global spend that's you know being used uh for all agencies uh and that's very different than an adobe that will come in and maybe Target everyone host dinners invite you to the conferences uh and you know fair play there's there's there's nothing wrong with all these things uh but it is a very impressive go to market strategy then versus our more Scrappy let's say approach to things sounds a little bit like the sales team at WP engine when I was selling against them back in the day in beig Le um you know I I've always looked and we'll start to Pivot over to having the the discussion about uh of course the the stuff happening this week uh Pig Le bootstrap company of course everyone well not everyone but I guess uh folks who've been in the game long enough know that Josh treble Sally streble both start of the company uh bootstrap no outside investors we were very much against the grain of uh you know the typical big uh hosting providers out there they eventually sold to uh GoDaddy but I competed with WP engine quite often uh you know with clients and it was very a very typical um Enterprise sales uh that that I was going up against they would come in they would big clients would tell me hey WP engine's willing to fly out they're willing to demo to us uh they're going to undercut your contract by 30 40% uh these were things things that you know a cash strap business not strap but a bootstrap business couldn't really compete with and WP engine was and maybe still is these days it's been a while um yeah typical sales uh Enterprise sales and um lots of money uh involved on that side of the spectrum and WP engine is nowhere near like the Adobes and the microsofts of the world that will go out and sell this stuff um my tweet this morning how much will it cost to clone and maintain a community-driven .org mirror how do we get Mass adoption because don't forget wordpress.org is hand coded into the uh to the bowels of Wordpress which host will support it right if if all of a sudden there the utopian world and all of a sudden there's another mirror out there that we can use will all the hosts support it um in the world that we know these days and what's that long-term sustainability um WP engine is seemingly about to do it right they've just said that you know people can now update plugins how does their iteration evolve um does it become a HubSpot style Marketplace and only available to Wordpress engine sites or WP engine sites long term is it a true Marketplace like what is it that WP engine is going to do with their mirror uh Loosely speaking how can we get this WordPress Independence is it even possible with all the stuff that people are asking for so I say all that uh to hand the mic over back to you and say what are your thoughts on a mirror yeah the answer is yes click after 40 questions yeah um i' I'd say there's so many ways to approach this uh because like the the bottomup approach in terms of hey we just need a a mirror because the mirror on ww.org is being blocked to us like that's that's one side of the story um and that just doesn't seem like the the big play and when I tweeted my thread the other day it was really about the kind of the top down approach to this where it's it's not necessarily how you build it but why you build it because doing this properly isn't about a Marketplace it's about power and power doesn't belong to the person who Forks the software but rather to those that fork the community and a Marketplace that does this effectively and has the right let's say has the right um Marketplace slash Community around uh extensions plugins themes uh premium functionality potentially uh giving people credibility and Authority for various work they do so you have profiles um that can start leading into um premium mechanics in terms of getting paid if your various uh if you have Pro um upgrades and things like that available to you uh because obviously you're a lot closer to the customer um a platform like that can can can act as organic acquisition uh WP engine does spend a lot of money on paid search um so you know part of this can offset um and this is not really only about um WP engine in this regard you know there's various players even wordpress.com you know created their own Marketplace they've they've brought these uh pieces in and they're able to create a better customer Journey for some of these customers that only know wordpress.com uh instead of having to you know faf around with going on.org how does this work and how does that work this is kind of the challenge with this whole ecosystem um and then the sort of other challenge to all of this is even if you go ahead and do all these things to what end are you trying to create a [Music] um out there so if you go on Wix or you go in Squarespace they're guaranteed to go after hairdressers anything with booking appointments and and all that like they they have crafted a journey for that that this is their strategic goal is to take on as much uh revenue or as much share of the revenue you generate uh on on your websites for your SMB for your business um so that they can be a part of that now likewise can you know something like WP engine do something like that too it's quite far for them they don't they don't promote themselves as going after any vertical or Niche I guess the closest thing would be flywheel which goes after designers so potentially you have an MVP there that has a lot of Premium Solutions uh that are just added on to uh the flywheel subscription every month uh potentially they're taking on transactions at some point whatever that may be uh you could easily see a world I guess um come together like that but the question is in my mind is are you trying which customer segment are you going after and you know to what end because what WP engine has achieved probably in my mind even with the 400 million uh contribution or not is they've probably done very well at the customer journey of Wordpress hosting uh manage WordPress hosting whatever that may be and maybe have even reduced churn for the overall ecosystem by providing a better experience there um so what what comes next to to what end would you create a Marketplace is it to capitalize on the Web Master the web Builder or is it the business owner yeah and I I so I think many things have come out of this event which even I didn't know having been in this space for for many many years but certainly like the the uh you know the toothpick holding up the the whole industry which is which is.org it can quickly get pulled out and really coming to light that Matt is funding it and and and controlling it you can either look at that as altruistic of being able to like spend all this money uh but we just don't know what is involved there like what that infrastructure looks like I saw somebody that was actively cloning it I saw a tweet fly by they were at like 600 gigs of like x amount of percentage cloned and just the sheer size of this uh repo never mind the traffic hitting it like the costs are pretty staggering I'd imagine for just uh one year of Maintenance let alone like sustaining it infinitely do you have a thought on like the size of that infrastructure and what that would run somebody to Independent World obviously obviously I think it is it is extremely expensive and you know Matt did share some numbers and um you know props obviously to him to for maintaining all that but I'm I'm assuming that if you want to achieve some sort of if your ambition is towards Wix and the squar spaces of this world then this investment may make sense for uh a new fold a god daddy WP engine whoever that may be um you know we we already moved on from the C panel hosting or before it was just the FTP hosting then we had the C panel hosting now we have the sort of managed where you have nice UI you have staging you have all these things um and now we really need more solutions than tools because we're just kind of there and this whole no no code movement is obviously working for a company like Wix that is able to push over a billion in Revenue yeah the you know um I think I I talked about this in my live stream yesterday with Mark there had to be something that Matt saw at WP engine happening that caused this and it was either he's literally telling the truth and saying man I've been asking for years about this commercial deal that's a whole other discussion that was that wasn't something I knew was actively happening I didn't yeah I mean we all found out yeah we kind of all found out about that that's like another discussion whether or not you agree with that model or not so it was either like he was literally chasing these these guys for for for years and he he just yeah he's just like I'm going to just put you on blast at the biggest event on the US side of things and uh I don't care what happens so was either that or maybe he knew they were going to do something like a cloned repo and create their own Marketplace and he didn't like that or they were going IPO and he was like there's no way you're doing IPO without me doing it first so I am going to put you on blast here there had to be something happening there and years ago I theorized that HubSpot would buy WP engine I I thought HubSpot would be a great like that idea acquisition for for WP engine I thought that's where they were going to go um but I I can imagine a world where if out of all the hosts I think somebody who's going to create that HubSpot Market play style it would be WP engine and that is pretty scary I think like cuz I think that kind of thinker at the enterprise software space they're not thinking about data portability and moving your site around they're going to launch a Marketplace and it's going to be vendor lockin for their stuff and I think maybe Matt thrust this on to us a little bit faster like this could be something bad that we don't realize now we're all cheering for WP engine to like save the day and then like a year from now we might be like holy they built a Marketplace that people can't leave or get software from if they went to GoDaddy or another host that's my theory on on this stuff any thoughts on like what happens to these marketplaces for players who can support it like a WP engine yeah again it comes back to the audience like would would I be a user of this Marketplace Maybe not maybe I'd still be using WP org and maybe a lot of other people would I think it's the expression of Wordpress here in a way that's not necessarily WordPress anymore uh Tumblr is a very good example of that right like it's social platform built on WordPress uh it doesn't compete with anything you or or I do on a day-to-day basis um and I think that's amazing um so if the you know if you really go deep into a Marketplace you probably really need to know what your customer Journeys are who your audiences are what the outcomes are um it's that that's to me that's almost expanding the market as opposed to cannibalizing it I I'd say the the more altruistic side of you know this discussion is I wish that you know coming back to the very beginning of Wordpress for Humanity and everything I guess I wish that hyper profitable companies would see this opportunity or rather privilege uh to be part of something greater to be involved in the discussions be thought leaders themselves um because the world is just in a challenging spot and open source projects like WordPress do their part in supporting a better future for all uh and if WP engine would be a larger part of this I think it would be a net positive regardless of you know where Marketplace aspirations go and and what they end up doing um it's yeah I I don't know how much of automatics jetpack competes with WP engines business stuff um you know WordPress VIP doesn't compete with lower tier blue host things there's there's just a lot of Market to go after uh if things are done properly and in many places WordPress doesn't necessarily need to be the end solution it can be a hybrid where it's part of the solution uh but it's not necessarily the thing at the Forefront let's say somebody launches a clone of wordpress.org uh pure clone like going after us yep they they're all coming after us yeah um what from your perspective what does it take for that to even build momentum is it well we just have to install this they have to get people to install this plugin to activate their mirror and that would allow somebody to start installing stuff from an independent Source how does that momentum even happen if somebody's like nope I'm going to do it I'm I'm all in I'm going to clone three terabytes and I got plenty of Bitcoin to power this thing for the next couple of years um how does momentum happen like how does that even POS how is it even possible from your perspective I think you have to incentivize the premium plug-in developers by giving them a higher commission I mean that's uh that's probably what what it is uh you saw adding in crypto to a certain extent where openc was like the big uh nft Marketplace and then a number of marketplaces did what was called a vampire attack by essentially because everything's visible you can see all the wallets and and how much they transacted with openc so you could give them a certain amount of tokens and if they did a certain level of activity on their platform too those tokens would get released and and all that and it was good money um and gave them enough time to play around and potentially like the new platform more um so I I think you know these kind of hostile takeovers uh which is what you're asking about um I I think has to come down to two things money or attention and attention probably ultimately leads to still ego or money um so it's going to it's going to be pretty Primal things I think yeah and and attention is like one of the hardest things that already exists in in the open source world of Wordpress right like I've got this idea I opened up a ticket uh where is everybody to support this idea I have to you know to bake into WordPress core to bacon to Gutenberg like we already struggle with that kind of backing and support um you know from a community-driven project is it still a community-driven project in in your eyes yeah absolutely I I I wouldn't see why not um yeah absolutely I said yesterday I've said it before but I said I said it again yesterday most recently that I I think this other this moment of ripping the Band-Aid off that Matt has done is clearly making us say that if you're voting for WordPress you're also voting for Matt unequivocally like this is this is he's in yes like your part of this is with him so that moving forward I think we all have to realize that fair statement your thoughts um yeah good question you you can say pass if you don't want it no I I like it's I um I think you know I think he's admitted himself that you know there might have been better ways to communicate all this um but ultimately I like I think his vision uh throughout the years and his perseverance and you know saying hey we're going to give back a lot and um the amount of time that automatic has contributed and amount of things they've sort of pushed has been a net positive for this growth like I don't don't think we'd be in d double digit numbers without him um so you know credit where it's due um you know does that mean that it's it's a p on everything for the future not necessarily I think it's you know it should be a discussion um I think you know we're at the size where there's a lot of smart Minds inside the community um you know yo wrote about it he's you know clearly has a lot of good ideas there was that project that Morton had put together on WP governance uh that was you know really really good so there's a lot of ingredients out there I I I think that bring us to the next level um and being able to try and pull those together in a way that is is almost like the the new layer of community for such a large project I I think would be very beneficial to its longetivity going to highlight two questions or two comments that came through the chat webba logic says I think Clarity is important it can't just be down to whether or not you trigger Matt on an off day 100% noad skateboarding people are confusing open source with altruism open source only means the licensing on the code it doesn't mean community-led governing body or ownership I also completely agree with that yeah I I'm really hoping I was really hoping then yesterday I saw Matt in in the wp builds live chat but I was really hoping out of this we we could get more clarity on five for the future and what contribution means and like how we can play with that because I love the concept from a slogan from a marketing perspective and for like encouraging people look 5% of whatever it is you do let's put it back into WordPress and let's get this thing going but then I saw Mt on a live stream and he was people are asking him like so what do contribution means and he says whatever's in your heart well like I need a number 40 hours a week yeah like I need a number and I and I hope we can get to get back to some clarity around that because ultimately we need that direction so that we don't have this ambiguity of like am I going to piss you off is this enough am I do am I doing the right thing because I think largely people won't mind the whole five of the future thing it just needs more clarity moving forward yeah I I agree with that and I'd say we're we're still in the midst of this mat automatic versus WP engine Saga and probably the dust needs to settle there uh before we can have these these more super detailed conversations on what is exact what is this exactly what is that because right now it feels very much like a uh you know football rivalry going down on the weekend or something and you're kind of waiting for the off season to be able to you know bring all the the pieces back together so that you can once again play another season but do so with rules that benefit all yeah um as we sort of uh wrap things up trying to do this in 40 to 45 minutes today because these conversations can can go on forever um folks if you have questions drop them in uh the chat whether about this or you know human made and the body of work that Nolan and his team have done throughout the years go ahead and and drop those questions in the chat uh where do we go from here I think another thing that comes out of this is now all web hosts are sort of like oh I I got to be careful of how I phrase WordPress and or where's that license thing like how can I get that so I don't get in trouble like what what's the ramifications for the web hosting industry you think moving forward after this are you waiting to see what happens or do you think people are already making making decisions moving forward it must be I mean the hosts have been so quiet throughout all of this so I part of me wonders are are they you know do they also have open questions about what sort of what what everything means and where everything is going um I really like the one blog I I forget his name uh who's always been posting the the sort of legal aspects of everything uh that's probably been my favorite posts on everything just because he's always clarified what means what and that's been extremely beneficial to me um but yeah it's I I like I I it comes back to Clarity yeah um and I I think the hosts are absolutely looking for that um and you know wondering what does this mean for them I'm I'm guessing they're probably looking at their own stuff their own product names and playing you know doing a bit of an internal audit uh to see you know have we misstepped anywhere uh we don't want to get caught out on this um I that would be my gut feeling uh but you know every the whole Center Stage right now is occupied by WP engine who haven't said much themselves um which is obviously quite interesting I have up on screen another great question that has come up through us all kind of learning about this licensing thing and uh the 8% of WP engines revenues which is 30 to 40ish million dollars a year roughly and people are asking well where does this money go and if if it's going directly to automatic and not the foundation how much of that monies uh is automatic putting back into WordPress my gut tells me a good portion of it um but we automatic and automatic does a lot more and I don't know how to phrase this but it's also like things like this that was posted yesterday the future of the Social Web is in good hands social media and its current form broken chaotic a new organizations the Social Web Foundation aims to change that uh and automatic is a part of that along with a bunch of other uh companies and brands that are behind this so I think when monies go into automatic um they're a good Steward for the open web which I know probably the best Steward out of all the large companies yeah I mean that's probably one way to look at it out say yeah and it's hard against the backdrop of stuff like this right because you know this stuff is what impacts our our branding our marketing of Wordpress when it's like you know you have these headlin lines of Matt calling WP engine uh cancer to the ecosystem and then you shutting shutting customers off who are just like by standards in this stuff and this is the stuff that really makes our job uplifting and WordPress thriving difficult when I do see see things like automatic is doing aside from WordPress that are cool things for the open web so will all the money go to Wordpress I don't know I think a good chunk of it will but also automatic does some other stuff where that money is going which is also benefiting uh uh the open way yeah I I guess the picture that some people are painting that the money is needed to fill some Revenue Gap that automatic has because automatic is failing or whatever I I don't believe that to be true um could could automatic do a better job of listing their contributions or breaking them out as a as as a sort of role model for other companies uh probably you know like it's they do a lot and if you really broke that all out I I think it it would not only be quite a large volume but also very diverse activities so it's not necessarily just about throwing money at one thing but also experimenting with different topics uh areas uh experimenting with different things not always succeeding uh and you know as as you say I think they're a good Steward in that regard yeah I was drafting a blog post people have been listening to this live stream heard me talk about this already this would be the last sort of thing we chat about but one of the things I not going to publish it uh anymore because of all this stuff uh cuz I don't need the stress and it's not going to add value uh but one of the things I was saying I writing this blog post what would I do if I was running automatic this was pre any of this stuff months ago I started writing it and one of the things I was saying was automatics just going to strip out everything that is a distraction products like simple note which I love you don't need it anymore pocketcast love it use it every single day as my podcast app automatic shouldn't focus it on anymore automatic should triple quadruple all the resources into WordPress that is the focus not even Tumblr man I mean I love the idea of Tumblr and WordPress get it out of here right anything that isn't directly WordPress get it out we need to focus on WordPress um you know because they do so much and uh I think hyperfocus is still going to happen and maybe this is that slight Direction where we're going to start to see commercial land of Wordpress focused uh excuse me commercial land of automatic hyperfocused on on revenues and growth uh for WordPress sake and I think that's this Band-Aid moment rip the Band-Aid off moment for me anyway any closing thoughts from you yeah I think you have a good point there and I'd say that's pretty true of any bull bear cycle where companies get a bit bloated do things they don't necessarily need to um I think I was listening to The Verge podcast over a year ago maybe two years ago even where Matt was talking about working on Tumblr and how that was one of the most humbling experiences for him he learned a lot and I think you know even if even if Tumblr doesn't necessarily belong in the automatic portfolio he still gets to bring that wealth of experience back into the WordPress space uh and I think that's extremely beneficial so um you know same for us at human made you know we we experiment with different things we we Tred to go a bit too large with the dxp sort of labels uh pull that back down to Cloud um you live and learn um it's kind of the space you know you're part of an expansionary Market called WordPress and then all all of a sudden you know it's 2020 we 2019 2018 things are slowing down a little bit uh in terms of the growth curve and then Co hits and that's really put you know put a breaks on break on everything you come back and work camps are half the attendance less you know in terms of global attendance Global activity um so I think it's a humbling experience for all of us to you know see what's in a portfol folio what makes sense how do we go to market um because WordPress overall WordPress uh numbers can decline whilst parts of the market can grow and that's you know absolutely the approach that we take with parts of Enterprise n talk from humanid you can find them at human made.com anywhere else folks can find you to say thanks uh at n Talk is the best place uh personally uh mostly Instagram these days because of uh doggy rescue in Ukraine so that's that's where it is and then for the more WordPress stuff it's Twitter so I try to separate the two a bit that's fantastic everybody else thanks for watching today thanks for tuning in the wp.com the wp minute.com subscribe it's the number one way to stay connected we'll see you in the next video, Freedom in WordPress?, WP Minute - Learn WordPress, 01j96hrc66190hhgk332m1htb4.