On a scale of one to Howard Hughes, how concerned are we about WordPress?

In case you missed it, WordCamp US 2024 ended on a very wild note, with Matt singling out WP Engine as enemy number one. To be clear: the main takeaway here is that Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, is very concerned. If you didn’t get that feeling from his presentation, then you missed the point of his speech. And it’s not your fault, because the speech missed the mark.

There’s a few truths to get out of the way. In terms of substance, Matt is completely correct about WP Engine. As a longtime customer who has launched hundreds of sites on the platform, the squeeze from private equity, the “enshittification“, is clearly setting in. The massively decreased performance. The recurring downtimes. The dip in support quality. The constant, aggressive emails to our clients trying to scare them into ever more expensive plans. It is happening. He’s not wrong.

And yet, no one is really is really focused on that, they’re distracted by just how off-the-mark Matt’s presentation was. Let’s be frank: his WCUS speech did not achieve its goal. (If you haven’t watched it or are unsure of what I’m talking about, watch that first, read his latest posts, then come back.)

The night before the speech, a small group of us had the opportunity to spend twenty or so minutes with Matt and get a peek into his headspace. He had already published the infamous blog post, but I don’t think anyone was expecting his speech to be quite like that. At that meeting, I asked him a lot of questions about the future of Automattic, ranging from how he sees Pressable and WordPress.com, how we should think about big investments into open source (specifically with Laravel taking their first big round), why he reversed his decision to suddenly put more resources into Tumblr, and much more, until Matt Medeiros kindly pointed out that I was hogging the conversation. I could tell Matt Mullenweg is worried about WordPress – but who isn’t?

I’ve been trying to think of what I’d write about this whole situation. There’s been a ton of great posts, from Noel Tock, Kevin Geary, Jonathan Jernigan, James Giroux, and more. Read them all, they’re all worth your time even if I don’t agree with everything they say. I didn’t really know what I would add to the conversation and was considering moving on with my life.

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought about experiences I’ve had with people who are at the top of their game financially and thus insulated from the broader conversation. I decided that what I wished most was that Matt had workshopped his speech a little bit more, maybe tried it out on a trusted (i.e. not on his payroll) audience. I wish he’d gotten a bit more feedback, spent some more time on the presentation, and really clarified his approach in order to get a maximum impact.

So what I have here is my thoughts on what I would’ve said if Matt had asked me for feedback before he gave that final speech at WCUS and before he started tweeting about it. I’m not saying that he should’ve asked me particularly, but it doesn’t hurt to get a few second opinions. And I got the sense that no one in his orbit was really in a position to lay it out straight for him. The entire point of making that speech was to try WP Engine in the court of public opinion after all.

So, if Matt had asked me for help with his presentation, which I agree contained a necessary and important statement, here’s what I would’ve said.

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Matt, great presentation. Love the energy. But let’s workshop a few things so that it goes over well instead of completely alienating your intended audience and leading to yet another massive backlash.

Number one, you’re really not setting the context properly. You see, in the broader ecosystem, there’s already a dominant view that Automattic is profiting off of WordPress, that you’re raking in the cash, making a ton of money off of the contributions of the open source community. So let’s start by addressing that.

Let’s make it clear that Automattic, along with a bunch of other companies, are doing a lot to keep the lights on at WordPress, that there’s a huge infrastructure, from one-click updates to the plugin directory, that are a big reason for the project’s success. And someone is paying those bills. Let’s start there, with some positive examples of contribution for the community to grok with.

Then let’s drop the staged reading and the musical cues. We don’t need it.

Next, you have the whole section about Silver Lake and private equity- that’s good stuff. Of course people might point out that Automattic has investors, so let’s address that as well. We don’t all understand the nuances of this, so give a little context into how tech companies are funded and what those numbers look like.

Then you get to the big slide. You show the WP Engine logo. Boom. Mic drop. And the crowd is going to audibly gasp when they see this. But why? WP Engine is not the problem, Silver Lake is. So let’s keep the focus on Silver Lake. Don’t paint WP Engine as enemy number one, instead, lets first add some slides about how much WP Engine HAS done for the project.

LocalWP is a free local dev environment that is extremely popular and basically host-agnostic. People love it and for good reason. Advanced Custom Fields was struggling financially until WP Engine rescued them and poured a ton of resources and great people into the project. That’s great. WP Engine is still beloved, so we have to show that we remember that.

Now we say that Silver Lake owns WP Engine and is pushing the company to be more focused on profits over customer service. And they’re one of the few (only?) companies that’s solely selling WordPress. Automattic isn’t 100% WordPress. Neither is GoDaddy or many of the other big contributors. But remember that many WP Engine employees also helped shape WordPress as we know it today. Those employees are contributing. Let’s recognize that, then we say that we want to see more contributions, because in terms of profit, it’s extremely meagre. Show actual revenue numbers and employee numbers very much broken down. Include multiple companies for comparison. Show that you’ve done your homework.

Then, we have to address the fact that you were seen visibly upset at their booth during the conference. It’s gossip, yes, but it’s a thing that happened. You take the high road. You admit the mistake and say that you know the people at the booth are not the people who are setting these aggressive financial goals, they’re the people who came here because they love and support the community. Just like all the amazing Automattic employees, and people from all sorts of companies that came here to help. You thank them and let them know that they’re always welcome as attendees AND as sponsors.

Then- here’s the kicker. So. You see, no one really likes “cancel culture” or “callout culture” or boycotts or whatever you want to call it. No one likes it. No one likes the attitude of kicking someone out, of being exclusive. In fact, it makes a sort of Streisand Effect where they actually gain a lot of sympathy. It has the reverse effect. So, we’re not kicking WP Engine out. Take that out of the presentation. They’re always going to be welcome no matter what.

And, we also know that it’s extremely costly for WP Engine customers to have to migrate their sites and their client sites away to a new host. And when you own two competing hosting companies and are selling infrastructure to a third, it’s just a bad look to ask people to move away from WP Engine. So we’re not going to ask for that. We’re not going to make people feel bad for being their customer.

Instead, let’s start a grassroots campaign to encourage WP Engine to contribute more. We’re going to let Silver Lake know that they’re allowed to be here, but we all expect them to contribute even more than they already do, because we need them and their talented employees.

Let’s ask the audience to amplify our request- that WP Engine commit to putting more resources back into core. Let’s request it on social media. If you’re a customer, request it from your account managers and your contacts. Tag the leadership and ask them to chip in. Let’s put the social pressure on them to pitch in, because we know all of their employees want this, and as their customers, we want this too. We’re giving their employees ammunition to use internally as they advocate for more contributions. Let’s ask them to make a statement dedicating their commitment to core.

Core’s success relies on WP Engine’s plugins like DB Migrate Pro and open source projects like WP GraphQL. Those are great and we appreciate them, but we also need more help in core. We need more hands on deck to get Gutenberg pushed over the line. We need their ACF experts putting even more support (they already do so much) into projects like enhancing custom fields in core.

We don’t whine. We don’t shame. We encourage. We don’t bring up specific features like “post revisions” as if we’re unzipping our pants and pulling out a ruler. We lay out a clear and tangible path forward that includes everybody.

And the thing about WP Engine’s branding confusing people into thinking they’re the real WordPress? Are you kidding? No! Your hosting company is literally called WordPress.com. There’s no universe in which people will side with you on that one. Steer clear of that, please.

Then we end on a positive note. The future of WordPress is strong. Let’s talk about Showcase day at WCUS. Talk about Disney, NASA, Pew Research, Vox, Time, and so many others who use WordPress to make the world better. About the many webmasters at schools, at local government, and at higher education institutions who are freeing up resources by leaning into WordPress instead of proprietary CMSs. They’re here in the audience. They were speakers and volunteers and they have amazing stories to share if you’d just listen. Ask any one of them how WordPress has helped them make the world a better place.

WordPress is still making an insanely positive impact on the internet. And it’s going to keep making an impact.

And yes, like all areas of tech- and other areas like government, housing, finance, and more- there are places where private equity is causing massive societal problems, even inside of companies like WP Engine who we love and appreciate. But we can start by being vocal and letting them know that this is their moment to step up and contribute even more. We’re not here to shame, we’re not here to make their employees feel bad. We stand in solidarity with them, and together we’re going to make sure that any private equity firm who wants a seat at the table will earn it with contributions.

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Now, maybe that version of the presentation will still have drawn some detractors. Maybe it wouldn’t have lit up Twitter and Hacker News like the one we got. I don’t care. That’s fine with me. Because I don’t think the presentation we got was effective. It didn’t land.

What is a project lead? What is a leader?

There’s this misconception in WordPress that every Automattic employee has a ton of money and a squadron of developers at their command. That Matt can snap his fingers and make anything happen, but chooses profit instead. But that’s not really the truth.

Yes, there’s a reason WP Engine has outpaced Automattic in hosting and in revenue. They’ve focused solely on a specific niche. They’ve put huge resources into marketing. Yes, I would love to see Automattic do the same, especially with their products like Pressable and Woo. I would love to see Automattic say “no” to a lot of things that I don’t think are essential. But I’m not running Automattic.

At the end of the day, what I would like is that the person who is running Automattic- that amazing team that attracts many of the smartest people in the ecosystem and shines as a beacon for open source- I would like that person to step back into the community, to come to WCUS to listen and not just preach, to be willing to admit that there’s a big divide, but that we come to bridge divides, not encourage them.