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People. PEOPLE.

I know I've told you multiple times in the past when Matt Mullenweg posted something that you needed to go read it, because it was wild.

But Matt Mullenweg just posted something new. And you REALLY need to go read this one, because it is W I L D

wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkp…

Joost/Karim Fork – WordPress News

wordpress.org

reshared this

in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Jer Warren
iceshrimp - Link to source
Jer Warren
• •
"When I see what people create with WordPress, some days I feel like I’m grinding pigment for Leonardo da Vinci or a slitting a quill for Beethoven."
in reply to Jer Warren

Jason Lefkowitz
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Jason Lefkowitz
• •
@nyquildotorg Oh that's just the START
In the meantime, on top of my day job running a 1,700+ person company with 25+ products, which | typically work 60-80 hours a week on, I'll find time on nights and weekends to work on WordPress 6.8 and beyond. Myself and other “non-sponsored” contributors have been doing this a long time and while we may need to reduce scope a bit | think we can put out a solid release in March.
@Jer Warren
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Jer Warren
iceshrimp - Link to source
Jer Warren
• •
I have heard a lot of people complain now that Matt doesn't even code. That the bulk of his coding work on WP is found in the Hello Dolly plugin installed by default, yet has the nerve to say these folks have a lot of opinions but not a lot of code.
in reply to Jer Warren

Jason Lefkowitz
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Jason Lefkowitz
• •

@nyquildotorg And on top of that he has the nerve to talk about all the process the WordPress project has around what goes into a release, when 90% of the dissatisfaction with him in this whole crisis has come from him demonstrating that he personally can sidestep all that process whenever he feels like it.

The NERVE

@Jer Warren
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Ben Royce 🇺🇦
mastodon - Link to source
Ben Royce 🇺🇦
• •

"Both are men I have shared meals with and consider of the highest integrity. I would trust them to watch any of my 15 godchildren for a day."

ah yes, the "godchild horde protector" project role

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Jason Lefkowitz
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Jason Lefkowitz
• •
"Forking is beautiful, and forks have my full support. That is why as of this moment the following people who have discussed a fork have been officially excommunicated"
That's why periodically | think it is very healthy for open source projects to fork, it allows for people to try out and experiment with different forms of governance, leadership, decision-making, and technical approaches. As I've said, forking is beautiful, and forks have my full support and we'll even link and promote them.
To make this easy and hopefully give this project the push it needs to get off the ground, I'm deactivating the .org accounts of Joost, Karim, Se Reed, Heather Burns, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen. | strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join up with their new effort.
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Jason Lefkowitz
mastodon - Link to source
Jason Lefkowitz
• •

And let me point out two other details that make this missive classic Photography Matthew:

1) He drops this absolute banger on a FRIDAY NIGHT

2) Somehow, for some reason, it is dated as having been published tomorrow

in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Jason Lefkowitz
mastodon - Link to source
Jason Lefkowitz
• •

TechCrunch has picked up the story of Photography Matthew's latest blog tantrum. If you want/need context, they do a pretty good job of providing it.

techcrunch.com/2025/01/11/matt…


Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of contributors planning a fork | TechCrunch

 Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress community members, including two with plans to fork WordPress.
Paul Sawers (TechCrunch)
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Jason Lefkowitz
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Jason Lefkowitz
• •

"Woke up to a phone full of pings that @photomatt has…publicly announced he’s deactivated an account I haven’t logged into since February 2020, for an OSS project I haven’t been involved with since then, and am not involved with now.

Must have been a bad batch from his dealer."

x.com/WebDevLaw/status/1877979…

in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Rachel Lawson
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Rachel Lawson
• •
or a really good batch.
Honestly, this is starting to get worrying now. The community is not a given.
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Dan Sugalski
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Dan Sugalski
• •
these super geniuses were all minted about the same time and all were heavy into “performance enhancing pharmaceuticals”, if i remember right. Maybe that explains 2024, it’s when amphetamine brain rot set in for all of them at about the same time.
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Jason Lefkowitz
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Jason Lefkowitz
• •

"Another thing that came to light yesterday was that the WordPress Sustainability committee was shuttered after a core member, Thijs Buijs, stepped down. In a post on the WordPress Slack, Buijs cited the '2025 drama' post on Reddit as the reason he was leaving, and called for a change in WordPress community leadership. In response, Mullenweg responded in part with '[t]oday I learned that we have a sustainability team', and closed the channel."

anderegg.ca/2025/01/11/wordpre…


WordPress is in trouble

Since I last wrote about WordPress, things have gone off the rails. This after a brief period when things were blissfully quiet.
Gavin Anderegg
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

alpha1beta
mastodon - Link to source
alpha1beta
• •
I've known Ryan forever - he's a solid guy and has dedicated most of his life to open source. Matt is such a Trump.
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Elias Mårtenson
mastodon - Link to source
Elias Mårtenson
• •
and now TC is down. They're hosted by Automattic. Maybe a coincidence.
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

scmbradley
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scmbradley
• •
according to Wikipedia, today is photography Matthew's birthday...
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Bram Moreinis
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Bram Moreinis
• •
@xerophile I am considering this as microcosm of of US politics: overtaken by dark triad psychology & behavior, leaders break shared faith in distributed ownership and role participation of/in the institution, replacing democracy with “choose your fighter”. So hard to rebuild shared faith. Tragic! Drupal was more careful about distributing governance and maintenance functions.
@Sarah Grisham
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Glyph
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Glyph
• •
every sentence was a full journey into the Batshit Dimension, I can barely even parse this. What the hell
in reply to Glyph

Glyph
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Glyph
• •
I have not even had time to absorb the off-the-wall flex of “15 godchildren” yet
in reply to Glyph

Jason Lefkowitz
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Jason Lefkowitz
• •
@glyph Bragging about how many godchildren you have feels like stolen valor
@Glyph
in reply to Glyph

Jen ​
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Jen ​
• •

@glyph I thought you were overselling it until motherfucker said

the SEO space, an industry known for making the web better


with a straight face. :neobot_what:
@jalefkowit

@Glyph @Jason Lefkowitz
in reply to Jen ​

Jason Lefkowitz
mastodon - Link to source
Jason Lefkowitz
• •

@SymTrkl @glyph No, I think that's him sarcastically taking a shot at Joost. "Why would you follow this guy, he comes from SEO, yuck."

(Admittedly it's hard to tell, because ironically for someone whose blog proudly announces he's been blogging since 2002 Matt is a really bad writer)

@Glyph @Jen ​
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Jason Lefkowitz
mastodon - Link to source
Jason Lefkowitz
• •

@SymTrkl @glyph Note that the next line is him shitting on Crowd Favorite, a company that was founded to bet on WordPress in 2007, long before anyone else was betting on it, as "a small agency"

crowdfavorite.com/about/histor…


History - Crowd Favorite

As an original contributor to the WordPress Project, our founder, Alex King set the tone for Crowd Favorite's commitment to Open Source Solutions.
Crowd Favorite
@Glyph @Jen ​
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Glyph
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Glyph
• •

@SymTrkl I suspect he is in fact sober but I have not really seen someone projecting this level of kinda-serious kinda-joking manic Posting Energy without truly monstrous amounts of stimulant abuse.

I mean scratch that I have _never_ seen energy like this before, that’s just the closest analogue I can think of

@Jen ​
in reply to Glyph

Jason Lefkowitz
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Jason Lefkowitz
• •
@glyph @SymTrkl The fact that these bombs keep dropping on weekends would chime with that. You can imagine a scenario where during the week he's surrounded by underlings who keep him busy attending to things. But then it's Friday night and there's nobody around to keep the chocks in place
@Glyph @Jen ​
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Glyph
mastodon - Link to source
Glyph
• •
@SymTrkl yeah, last employee leaves the building, “are you okay matt? You should go home” “sure, will do soon” and then his first thought is to *immediately* do a key bump at his desk, hop online and violate some court orders
@Jen ​
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Harish Narayanan
mastodon - Link to source
Harish Narayanan
• •

@SymTrkl @glyph And remember in the elden times when Photography Matthew keyword stuffed wordpress.org with hidden text for SEO and ad money?

Or am I just that old?

@Glyph @Jen ​
Unknown parent

Jason Lefkowitz
mastodon - Link to source
Jason Lefkowitz
• •
When the smart companies reach a certain size, they have someone sit the white guy CEO down and say to him "I know you think sarcasm and wit are the same thing, but the share price depends on you understanding that they aren't"
This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

sysop
mastodon - Link to source
sysop
• •

There's this bit too:

automattic.com/2025/01/09/alig…


Aligning Automattic’s Sponsored Contributions to WordPress —

Making the web a better place
Mary Hubbard (Automattic)
in reply to sysop

incorrect horse battery staple
mastodon - Link to source
incorrect horse battery staple
• •
@iam_sysop
So everyone else is organizing to fork, so Automattic is stopping maintenance of Wordpress core to spite them, fork continues to develop, Wordpress stagnates......... Automattic benefits, how????? 🙃 🙃 😵
@sysop
in reply to incorrect horse battery staple

Jason Lefkowitz
mastodon - Link to source
Jason Lefkowitz
• •
@be @iam_sysop We're way past rational strategic thinking now. This ship is on impulse power
@incorrect horse battery staple @sysop
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Mobile Suit Larry
hometown - Link to source
Mobile Suit Larry
• •
@be @iam_sysop impulse still implies controlled flight, seems more like "venting plasma from the port nacelle and the core ejection system has failed" to me
@incorrect horse battery staple @sysop
in reply to incorrect horse battery staple

sysop
mastodon - Link to source
sysop
• •

@be
My reading of it was basically either stop suing us or we're going to stop working on WordPress --

Which -- Matt's got his money - the rest of the people in that organization - probably not so much. They'll be the ones who feel it if the wheels fall completely off.

It seems like Matt basically wants to take his toys and go home, but is pissed that he can't because WP is way bigger than him. The logo, the name, and the money are all he has and that's useless on it's own.

@incorrect horse battery staple
in reply to sysop

incorrect horse battery staple
mastodon - Link to source
incorrect horse battery staple
• •
@iam_sysop Yes and that threat is just not a threat when they're already forking.
@sysop
in reply to incorrect horse battery staple

Jason Lefkowitz
mastodon - Link to source
Jason Lefkowitz
• •

I don't think any of these people have officially said they're joining a fork... yet.

It's more just unspoken subtext of what they _are_ saying. We want governance changes, we want product direction changes. When stakeholders in a FOSS project start asking for stuff like that, "... or we'll fork" is a sort of implicit corollary. Like, we're trying this the polite way, in hopes that we don't have to do it the impolite way.

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)
Unknown parent

Jason Lefkowitz
mastodon - Link to source
Jason Lefkowitz
• •
@be @iam_sysop I think he thinks he is calling their bluff. He is telling them where they can put the polite way. If they want the project to change course, he is saying, the polite way is not gonna make that happen.
@incorrect horse battery staple @sysop
Unknown parent

Jason Lefkowitz
mastodon - Link to source
Jason Lefkowitz
• •
@glent @ShiitakeToast Howard Hughes lost his mind, and it took decades for the rest of the world to find out. A well-run corporation can keep erratic leadership under wraps for a very long time
@Glen Turner @Shiitake Toast
Unknown parent

Glen Turner
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Glen Turner
• •
@ShiitakeToast That's the thing, your company gets to a certain size, you pay people to do this stuff. They'll even put "quotes attributable to Mr Mullenweg" which he doesn't even have to utter.
@Shiitake Toast
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Ben Zanin
mastodon - Link to source
Ben Zanin
• •

@glent @ShiitakeToast not only do I vehemently agree with this, I'll go one further: it's the raison d'être of the corporate structure. It is supposed to build a business that is resilient to the faults of any single person, up to & very much including its senior leadership positions. Any company not managing this feat is whiffing one of its most crucial goals.

(Not sufficient, of course, only necessary. You still have to make payroll, have income, not alienate your workforce...)

@Glen Turner @Shiitake Toast
in reply to Ben Zanin

Jason Lefkowitz
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Jason Lefkowitz
• •
@gnomon @glent @ShiitakeToast If I ever manage to build my business into anything significant, I expect at some point the board will come by to take the keys to my fedi account away. I will have to console myself by racing carbon-fiber catamarans crewed by Ivy-educated supermodels
@Ben Zanin @Glen Turner @Shiitake Toast
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Esther Payne
mastodon - Link to source
Esther Payne
• •

that post was negging from start to finish.

The shitposter in me would also like to advise librematt.org is free. Although that would play into his ego.

in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

scmbradley
mastodon - Link to source
scmbradley
• •
"Joost is a self-proclaimed leader in the SEO space, an industry known for making the web better" I genuinely can't tell if this is supposed to be sarcasm or not.
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

jeremiah
hometown - Link to source
jeremiah
• •
I would give a journalist, I don't know, 10 dollars to ask "why are you such a petty little cock about everything?"
Unknown parent

Jason Lefkowitz
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Jason Lefkowitz
• •
@dysfun Who even knows anymore. It’s just this goddamn rock we all have to drag uphill forever now
@gaytabase
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

guites
mastodon - Link to source
guites
• •

and then in the "forking is beautiful" post he drops this:

>WP Engine is the most confusing fork of WordPress [...] This is the one fork we recommend not touching with a ten-foot pole.

Lmao such support

in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Phillip
mastodon - Link to source
Phillip
• •
@puppygirlhornypost2 This is WILD. He’s doing an excellent job at scaring away any potential new customers. Who knows who his next target will be? Safer to just avoid WP entirely
@Amber (deilannist)
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

BiPolarBear
glitchsoc - Link to source
BiPolarBear
• •

I'm a bit out of the loop with the WordPress fiasco.

Is this fork a good thing or a bad thing?

Unknown parent

Jason Lefkowitz
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Jason Lefkowitz
• •
@APBBlue I occasionally have to remind myself that the general run of humanity is not professionally obliged to follow this madness. The lucky bastards
@Amy Maybe
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

ash, legally
sharkey - Link to source
ash, legally
• •
what did I just witness
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

ash, legally
sharkey - Link to source
ash, legally
• •
i get the feeling. and i may be woefully misreading. but it sounds like he thinks he's being absurdly funny with every sentence.
in reply to ash, legally

Jason Lefkowitz
mastodon - Link to source
Jason Lefkowitz
• •
@darkphoenix There is a Type Of Guy who thinks sarcasm is just the height of humor. These guys are commonly known as “assholes”
@ash, legally
Unknown parent

Jason Lefkowitz
mastodon - Link to source
Jason Lefkowitz
• •
@stevelord My big question at this point is whether the cause is metaphorical drugs or actual ones 🤣
@Steve Lord
in reply to Jason Lefkowitz

Julianoë
mastodon - Link to source
Julianoë
• •
watching everything about all that *vague gesture* as a person who works almost daily with WordPress is... somewhat depressing. This + all the "social media lords bending the knee to Donald Trump" news feed makes you really wonder how long will we keep accepting that 40-50 yo manbabies f*** our shit up again and again.
The 2024 word around internet and digital was #Enshitification. May the one for 2025 be #Governance. We have to stop relying on Unstable Dictators For Life
#governance #enshitification
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