Stages  ## Metadata - Author: [[Crossword]] - Full Title: Stages - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/48122dd3-97c2-4c27-8b5c-2ccc45ec6cb4 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Processing Grief Over WordPress Crisis** - Luke describes going through the stages of grief over recent WordPress controversies involving Matt Mullenweg. - He admits the situation has affected his mental health, relationships, and work. Transcript: Luke Jonathan, about a year ago, Matt Mullenweg posted through the WordPress.org Twitter account about the Baylight Bridge or lights. I don't know, the Bay Bridge, some San Francisco thing. I don't know. I don't live in the States. Through the WordPress.org account. And this received a bunch of criticism. And you know what my first reaction was? What? Oh, this is a one-off. This isn't going to be a problem. Yeah. He said WordPress dot org belongs to me, but, uh, you know, it's probably just, uh, he's probably just going through a hard time or he's just turned 40. Maybe he's having a bit of a midlife crisis. I was in denial. What makes you think that? Well, now that this whole clown show has progressed, last week I was angry. I was angry at me. Okay. Are we working through stages? Yeah. These are the stages of grief. In fact, I've been quite angry, and it's affected my mental health. It's affected my relationships. It's affected my work. And I don't think I'm the only one, right? I think there's a lot of people out there who are being kept up at night by this crazy that's happening in the WordPress ecosystem. But you know what? Then I went into the third stage, bargaining. And I started saying things to you, Jonathan, like, you know, maybe if only this could happen. If only maybe WP Engine could recommit. I said this to a friend, wouldn't it be good if WP Engine just came out and said, you know what, Matt was right, we're not committing enough. We will put in 8% from now on, we promise, on the condition that Matt steps down. I think that would be like an ideal outcome. And I started going through all these, what if scenarios in my head, and we've talked about what if this and that and the other in this bargaining stage. And now, Jonathan, I am just depressed. I'm in the fourth stage of grief. I'm over it. I'm sad. I'm hopeless. I'm feeling hopeless. I'm feeling like it's all over. ([Time 0:00:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/91048bd9-89ea-448e-b4af-e5e85692f5ef)) - **Contrasting Open Source Success Views** - The podcast contrasts Matt Mullenweg's and DHH's very different views of open-source success. - Matt seems profit- and growth-focused while DHH prioritizes created value over captured value. Transcript: Jonathan I think the thing that got me today as I was reading Matt's response, his public response to DHH. It's almost this, maybe I'm really early and it's the denial. I'm not really seeing this. This isn't really happening. It doesn't make sense. Am I actually reading this? It's like this disbelief. Is this really playing out? And been seeing people make similar comments for some time. And now that I'm paying more attention, looking back, it's like this, this, this isn't, I mean, this is new in a couple of a number of important ways, but also not that new. I just perhaps haven't noticed. Luke So just to recap for our audience, DHH, who I personally am a big fan of, and we've talked about extensively on this channel, he is one of the two founders of Basecamp and Hay. Hay, by the way, is an amazing email platform. I used to use it until I switched to iCloud. I know you use it, don't you, Jonathan? Jonathan Yeah, I still do. And the broader context, of course, is Ruby on Rails. Luke Right. So he's the equivalent of Matt in the Ruby on Rails community, the benevolent dictator for life. And he's also a writer and a blogger. Not one, but two blogs that were polite, well-reasoned, imploring, and requested in a very, very gentle way that Matt do a little introspection. And then Matt wrote a response. Jonathan And he didn't describe it in the same terms that you did. He described it as an abomination of a headline and quite sloppy and shared that he felt forced to reply publicly, which he then did. And I found myself like, why is this being written? Why are we reading this right now? Why are these comparisons being made? And I mean, to each their own. And I was having a hard time with it. Luke This is just schoolyard bully. That's what this is. Matt is being a real meanie. And he says things like, I think you should explore with a therapist or a coach about why your great ideas can't scale. And sort of like giving off these vibes of like, we're way bigger than you are. 37 Signals has had some great ideas, but it hasn't been as as Automatic is. Why are you still so small? Literally, he asks that. Jonathan It gets right to the heart of what does success actually mean? There's all these implications about success. And up until this point, what's making me wonder is, have we all been playing a different game or playing in the different uh like schoolyard like what's what's going on here and dhh's Response he published a a blog post only like a couple hours afterwards and his concluding line was thou shalt not lust after thy open source users and their success after he sort of broke Down this idea that, okay, how do you define success? He's like, I'm happy to see people building all this stuff on Ruby on Rails. My success isn't measured by what I've been able to capture. Luke Yeah, yeah. But not the value that I've captured, but the value I've created. Yeah. Jonathan Up till recently i would have assumed very similar thinking on matt's part and the recent the series of actions is making me question like well i would have assumed i would have assumed For instance in reading this post from dhh who doesn't reference matt directly but is clearly a response to it, that up until this recently, oh, this is something that Matt could have Said. There's similar ideologies, similar projects, and what we're seeing instead appears to be a very contrasting ideology, which is, to me, really surprising. I think that's what I'm struggling with. It's like, shouldn't these two leaders in our space be like have pretty similar shared values in the open source ecosystem? ([Time 0:03:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f41495d0-762a-465c-b78d-4124c15a3099)) - **Advanced Custom Fields Takeover Controversy** - The hosts recount WP Engine's controversial takeover of the Advanced Custom Fields plugin. - The takeover involved broken trust, technical errors, and forced WordPress.org to change plugin ownership rules. Transcript: Jonathan I've been wrong. Luke And you get some of this attitude through the WordPress.org Twitter account, which has also been bullying people on Twitter. Like, what's happened here, you know? Like, Matt has just, something has switched in his head. Hopefully it's switched. Maybe it was like this all along. Suddenly he's become profit-focused. Suddenly it's about growth. Suddenly it's about potential for revenue. It's about money. And also, at the same time, he's like saying, well, who are you on Twitter to contributors and being just not very kind. Scott Kingsley Clark did his farewell post on WordPress Make. Jonathan And he's been on the Fields API project for a long time, put in a lot of time and effort into it, and has been like a positive part of the community. And Matt's publicly supported him. He's invested in the pods project, put resources into that. And after Scott's long post, the only thing that Matt responded in the thread was, would you like your accounts deactivated? And it was like, it just felt very, I mean, there's a practicality to the question, sure. But like this, this doesn't, it just, it felt so Luke, I've, I've really enjoyed, uh, is the, uh, enjoyed a strong word. Luke You've really enjoyed contributing to WordPress and this is where you're signing off. Jonathan No, I've, I've enjoyed the opportunity that you and I have had, like I've had with you to process. This has felt like therapy for me over the past couple of weeks, like going through this together. And I see this concerning trend of this becoming like a Luke and Jonathan reacts. Not concerning because that wouldn't be interesting, but that it's going to continue to happen. There's going to be more and more things. I know. Luke It just needs to stop. WP Engine are doing it smart. They're going, oh, there's controversy here. There's a legal thing here. Zip. No more talking. It's a legal thing. We don't talk about it anymore. Jonathan But being then forced to talk about it, like the advanced custom fields move right uh required a like there's two million plus people that are like affected by this installations that Luke Yeah and it's uh and the goal the the that it takes to say oh we forked the plugin it it was not this is not a fork it's a bad rename it's not even a full rename because you missed a bunch of advanced Custom fields labeling. You even missed WP Engine logos were still shipped with the plugin. And it's a takeover. Things were broken too. Jonathan Like sites, there were people on Reddit saying like they're having to fix stuff over the weekend because of this. What did someone say? SCF for stolen custom fields? Luke I'm a member of the plugin team, as you know. And we internally had to have a discussion about how are we going to have to update the rules to allow this because it's not allowed. This does happen sometimes. Right. It happens in people saying, oh, I want to take over that plugin. And we have a process that needs to go through in order for that to happen, including primarily the previous plugin owner signing off on it, right? The previous plugin owner has to say... Jonathan You mean it doesn't usually happen in like a day or something? Luke Definitely not. And it requires the consent of the previous plugin owner. So we had to update the rules. Now the rules state that if the previous plugin owner has been banned, then the official WordPress.org account can take it. It's kind of funny because when all this stuff went down before WordPress.org took over ACF, but after WP Engine was banned, we had people reach out to us and say, oh, can I take over the ACF plugin? I'll maintain it from here. And we laughed them off. Like, no, you can't do that. ([Time 0:07:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4846f6e9-bad5-4304-8f58-db6bd69c5214)) - **Philanthropy vs Leadership Behavior** - Matt Mullenweg’s philanthropy contrasts his aggressive actions but may also signal complexities in leadership style. - There is tension between personal generosity and community leadership conduct. Transcript: Luke Hold on. Just to come back to the article, you know my favorite line in it? What was your favorite? David, perhaps instead of spending $2 million on a race car, you should do some philanthropy and links to Matt's generous philanthropy. I know you're not supposed to brag about philanthropy, but I've decided I need to brag about philanthropy. And here it is in a blog post. Luke, what's the next stage after depression? Acceptance. Okay. The question is, am I going to accept that WordPress is over and I need to find a new career? Man, and not just me, it's all of our listeners almost certainly, you know, that thousands upon thousands of businesses, of households that depend on this, maybe millions of people Will need to look for a new job. ([Time 0:11:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b975808f-de53-41a9-a6d3-133ae7f39b60)) - **Ongoing Uncertainty in WordPress Future** - The situation around WordPress governance remains unresolved with ongoing drama and surprises. - The hosts feel stuck in shock but see a need to take action for the future. Transcript: Luke Go on, predict. I want to know what you really think is going to happen or have I missed another option? I don't know, Luke. Jonathan It feels like we're probably not even halfway through the shock portion. It feels like there's been something consistent every week for weeks now. And it's clearly not over. There's more that's going to drop. There's going to be more surprises. Luke And one avenue that this could end through is Foundation holds the rights to the trademark and has licensed that to Automatic. Matt is one of three people on the Foundation. There are two other people who we don't know who they are really for sure. Like people don't really know them. But they're not involved in the project and they probably just work for Matt. But if somehow maybe someone can get through to these people, maybe Matt can be ousted from the WordPress foundation. Is that a possibility? That'd be a nice ending, wouldn't it? All right. So I don't think it's a possibility. Jonathan I'm also, I don't think that would be a nice ending. There's more going on here. What I've been left with is, all right, what do we do? Where's the room for creative energy? Where's the room for value creation? I don't know. I'm not sure where I'm at in the stages, but I feel ready to move on. Like I want not, not move on from WordPress, but like do something about it. ([Time 0:13:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6f015444-662a-4a4b-839a-07324781b787))