If I close my eyes I can still smell the pages of well-worn books and feel their dusty spines, walking down the quiet aisles of the public library in the small town where I grew up. It wasn’t one of those libraries with fancy architecture or ornate decorations, but there were several small nooks where people could hole up and get lost in their reading selections. I spent hours alone in those corners completely absorbed in whatever was my latest obsession.
The library was one of the few places I was allowed to walk to by myself. I remember wasting entire days and weeks researching everything there was to find on various subjects of interest – the possibility of time travel, English poetry, lucid dreaming, political memoirs, philosophy, the list goes on.
My family didn’t have a lot of money for lessons or traveling, and many times I felt painfully stuck in the small town where I lived. The public library was my gateway to the world, an outlet for my boundless curiosity.
That old adage – “Knowledge is power” – is something that I feel like electricity every time I step into a library, even today. I’m instantly overwhelmed by how much there is to learn and enjoy. Libraries are magic.
My experience is certainly not unique. It echoes that of library lovers everywhere. We all know that libraries are one of the last free public spaces, and there is something sacred about that which should be protected. Access to published works should be shared – this is a moral imperative that is intuitively understood by friends of the library.
WordPress embodies this same democratizing force on the other side of the publishing coin, empowering anyone with an idea to share it, start a business, or organize a community. Creators of all backgrounds can share their expertise to a global audience without the boundaries of traditional publishing. As open source software, it’s available for anyone to use and modify for their own purposes.
People are often surprised to find out that WordPress powers 43% of all websites. There are many reasons for its popularity. One of them is contributors’ relentless commitment to making WordPress easy for anybody to use. I’ve had a front row seat to see the blood, sweat, tears, and meticulous care contributors put into this project to get the details right. They have made it possible for ordinary people to tell their stories and find a voice in the world.
WordPress’ GPL licensing and its leadership are two other factors that I believe have been fundamental to its success and longevity. And on this point I want to address the current news: WP Engine is suing WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Automattic following a public dispute over trademark infringement and the hosting company’s lack of contributions to the core open source project.
During my 10 years of writing WordPress news at WP Tavern, I have certainly disagreed with some of Matt’s decisions, have actively encouraged his critics to hold him accountable, and have amplified their voices in my articles as part of my commitment to serving the public interest in my reporting.
I frequently withheld my personal opinions from my articles. Now that I am no longer reporting on WordPress, nor presently active in the community, I want to state that I fully believe in Matt’s leadership of the project. I’ve seen a lot of renewed talk around governance due to this current situation, which has prompted me to comment on the matter.
There is no bureaucratic governance model that would do a better job of delivering on user freedoms and the improvements to WordPress’ user experience than what Matt has done as BDFL. WordPress stands as a north star among copyleft software projects today, thanks to the 19-year old kid who had the preternatural good sense to adopt the GPL license. Matt will never change WordPress’ license. His leadership in upholding the GPL has had a profound impact on WordPress’ economy, enabling it to thrive and dominate the CMS market.
I don’t pretend to understand the nuances of protecting trademarks. I’ll leave that to the lawyers. Adding to what is already a painful and complicated legal quagmire, there seem to be many unhappy people co-opting this situation in order to belabor other tired, unrelated grievances.
Certainly, I think this situation could have been handled better from a community perspective, but you’ve got one human guy responsible for a lot. I believe Matt is acting in WordPress’ interest long term and is the best person to continue setting the strategic objectives for the project.
Nobody blinks an eye about fighting for more corporate support for individual unpaid maintainers but when you try to do this at scale, wow – that is difficult to navigate. I don’t envy that job. Following the harrowing xz-utils backdoor attempt, I am convinced we need to stay acutely aware of the dire need for financial support for OSS maintainers. With 60% of maintainers unpaid, and many of them thinking of quitting, our critical infrastructure is at risk.
Yes, I understand that it’s the tactics he’s using in fighting for OSS support that have been contentious. We all grew up in this space together, and after weathering many heated conflicts, we’re bound to see missteps on both sides of this conflict. I believe in the power of friction as a positive force for open source projects, and I hope something good will come of all this.
It’s heart-breaking that this situation has come to legal action, and I wish they could have solved it with a professional mediator or through some other means. It’s been said before but all the money sunk into litigation could be spent on OSS maintainers.
There are many details we will probably never know. I don’t fully agree with how Matt has handled this matter, but I will not support any governance model that doesn’t have his leadership at the forefront. WordPress is his life’s work and his legacy. No design-by-committee model is going to give you the same consistent, decisive, nonstop forward momentum that we have experienced with WordPress thus far. After 21 years of delivering on this, I believe Matt is uniquely qualified to steer the project forward. His leadership has built something truly extraordinary.