On Thursday, a prominent developer, YouTuber, Twitch streamer, and journalist posted a video titled This might be the end of WordPress. It was very harsh. In that video you’ll hear him say about me, “he’s a chronic hater” (7:55), “seems like he’s been a pretty petty bastard for a long time now” (10:22), “I hate this shit, I hate when people are assholes and they get away with it because I’m doing it for the greater good, the fake nice guy shit. I’ll take an asshole over a fake nice guy any day, people whose whole aesthetic is being nice, I hated it.” (11:25), “Honestly I’d rather the license just be explicit about it than this weird reality of ‘If you get popular enough you can still use it but the guy who made WordPress is going to be an asshole to you.’ That seems much worse than most open source models.” (14:39)… it goes on.
Ouch!
However, one of my colleagues Batuhan is a follower of Theo’s and suggested I engage with him. It turns out we were both in San Francisco, and he was game for a livestreamed, no-conditions interview at his studio. I believe discussion is the best way to resolve conflict, that’s why my door is open to Lee Wittlinger, Heather Brunner, Brian Gardner, or any WP Engine or Silver Lake representative who wants to talk to resolve things.
Saturday afternoon I went to Theo’s studio, we had a vigorous two hour debate and discussion with some real-time chat polling that also changed my mind on a few things, and his, too. I left feeling like I had a new friend. ️And met some awesome cats. Check out the video.
ThePrimeagen > Theo
Anyway, Lex needs to be next.
It was a good discussion. Thank you for the openness.
NGL. I love your candor, but for the sake of preserving your brands image, can you work with a team to get some language together that doesnt make you sound like such a hater? I genuinly believe in WP, but your attitude and ability to speak with such a glib attitude about something that does seem very nuanced is interesting.
Great discussion. Love that Matt “believe discussion is the best way to resolve conflict”. Would be interesting if Lee answers his invitation to a public discussion.
Good on you for putting yourself out there, Matt! Take care of yourself and get plenty of sleep this week. 🙂
Matt didn’t answer the questions directly, this interview feels like a way to soften the mood without resolving anything
Is Theo’s interview also available as podcast? Seems like there’s isn’t one, but it would be handier to listen during a walk or drive.
As far as I know, he don’t publish podcast format.
Where is the cats XD
Play some chess bro. More than just capturing a pawn. Think about the consequences of your actions on the end users. Walk a mile in their shoes.
Great discussion, I watched it until the end! From the discussion I understand that dialogue with honesty can clarify this rising issue. I agree that communication strategy are very much needed especially for people in leadership positions.
Watched the whole thing. It’s still crazy to me that so many think a Private Equity Firm getting their way will do more good for the community than the guy who created and maintained the open source software. If all you cared about was money WordPress would’ve been very different today.
GO MATT! Silver Lake & WP Engine = Greedy investors
It does viewers a disservice when an interviewer places themselves centre stage .
The seating arrangement, intentional or not, was indicative of an interviewer placing themselves forward and in a self-promotional position. Facing the camera rather than the interviewee .
Theo repeatedly made the point that Matt should have handled things better . Regardless of the value of this critique, no viewer wants to have to wade through a repetition of this point – ad infinitum .
Presumably Theo thought repitition would be a good setting of the scene for his transparent and nacissistic pitching for a job as Matt’s dispute resolution consultant towards the end of the session . Delusional . Sad . Embarrasing .
Despite my concerns about the motives of the interviewer it was interesting and informative to hear Matt’s clarifications . Hopefully WPEngine will respect their customers enough to come to a reasonable settlement of this long running saga .
Matt, I am totally impressed with the way you handled this discussion. Not only did I see humility but a desire to mediate this case and achieve a solution to the benefit of the community. Unfortunately because of the media this is going unnoticed.
I attended my first WordCamp this year and had the privilege to be a speaker at WCUS24 and initially your approach shocked me and I felt as thought it came across “arrogant”.
Now that I have done research and based on what has been communicated thus far, I understand your motives and I stand with you on this.
It is unfortunate that WPengine customers are suffering and perhaps other hosts can provide support. Perhaps it is a bit aggressive but I totally get it.
My hope is that people hold Salt Lake to the same standard and that this is dealt this in a manner that allows WordPress to thrive.
I wish you all the best!
The interviewer mentions barbershops paying $5 a month to host their sites. WPEngine has never been cheap; their cheapest plan is $20 a month, and they have multiple add-ons. They are not a cheap hosting company. To get what I get on wordpress.com for $25 a month, I would have to pay at least $400 a month on WPengine. I have no skin in this game, but I looked at WPEngine many times over the twenty years I’ve had WordPress blogs, and they were always a high-priced offering. So my assumption is that they do make quite a bit of money.
What bothered me the most Matt was:
1. You ruined the WCUSA ending
2. You aired your dirty laundry
3. You’ve fractured the community
4. You attempted to extort WPE (no, I’m not a customer)
5. You hijacked temporarily the ACF plugin (yes, I’m a customer)
6. You adversely affected over a million WPE customers who had nothing nothing to do with any of this
7. You attempted to strong-arm a host who actually does contribute a lot to WordPress (hosting, WordCamps, LOCAL, ACF, Genesis, support WordPress customers with hosting issues, etc. etc.)
Your behavior has been perceived as unprofessional. It’s not about taking sides; it’s about building the community which you have now harmed.
I wish for you to go away and ride off into the sunset. You act as if you own our Open Source community, and guess what, you don’t Matt.
I listened up to 1.29. It seems from my limited knowledge Matt’s niceness and WPengines ruthless business acumen are at fault here. The co-lateral damage, as Theo is focusing on, is to WPengines customers who had no idea anything like this could impact them. That issue lies with WPEngine to resolve; they allowed their customers to be in that position.
Slightly off topic but maybe some parallels. I recently had a plugin developers who were holding me to ransom over their latest plugin version. They actively stopped the old version of the plugin working unless you resubscribed. I worry that what will damage WordPress more if developers use the ransomware model.
A lot of businesses make money from the foundation WordPress has provided, if it’s demonstrable that you start to abuse that i can understand that nice people start to get legal.