Breaking the Status Quo: A Call for Change in the WordPress World

The WordPress community is facing a significant challenge, with co-founder Joost de Valk calling for a change in leadership. This comes in the wake of Matt Mullenweg’s announcement of a holiday break for WordPress.org and the ongoing Automattic-WP Engine legal dispute.

A Need for Democracy

De Valk stated, "We, the WordPress community, need to decide if we’re okay being led by a single person who controls everything, and might do things we disagree with, or if we want something else. For a project whose tagline is ‘Democratizing publishing’, we’ve been very low on exactly that: democracy." He referred to Mullenweg as a BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life), arguing that Matt is "no longer Benevolent, and because of that, speaking up in public is a risk."

A History of Influence

De Valk acknowledged that due to Yoast’s contributions to WordPress, he "did get some say in where WordPress went, though never officially, and never when it went in directions that Matt disagreed with. Over time, that influence became less as Matt tightened his grip on the project. I think that tightening was in part a cramp. Wanting to control more what people were working on, because the project wasn’t progressing fast enough in the direction he wanted it to go in."

Support for Change

Takis Bouyouris, another co-founder, also came out in support of de Valk, stating, "I think it’s time to let go of the cult and change project leadership. I’ve said it before: we need a ‘board’. We can’t wait with doing that for the years it will take for Automattic and WP Engine to fight each other out."

However, not everyone agrees with the call for change. Andrei Lupu expressed his opposition, saying, "Let me nuke my WP career with an honest question: why would we follow a board of people who sold their products when they peaked? No one is perfect and I’m not sure if switching from one person’s vision to multiple people fighting for influence of a ‘board’ is a good thing."

Support for Matt Mullenweg

On the other hand, @ViaEth expressed support for Matt Mullenweg, stating, "All of this started after WPE couldn’t continue to leech off the #WordPress branding. All of these blog posts and whining just proves @photomatt right. Companies want to suck WP dry if this was purely about altruistic reason they would just fork the codebase and fuck off."

A Different Perspective

Jesse Nickles, an SEO enthusiast, also expressed his opposition to de Valk, saying, "Despite my desire to want to give you another chance as a ‘thought leader’ or whatever else, 2 things are seared into my memory… first, the fact that Yoast SEO was always, and still is, one of the most dishonest and tricky plugins in WordPress history."

A Path Forward

Morten Rand-Hendriksen published an article titled "After WordPress", outlining two possible paths forward for the WordPress community:

• Mullenweg releases his iron grip on the project, brings in proper governance, creates a more equitable ecosystem economy, and steps into a role of visionary leader instead of micromanager.
• The community organizes, takes every lesson learned over the past 20+ years, combines with a vision for what the world will need going into the next 10 years, and builds a new platform to stand on.