I started writing this post while on a hopping flight from Kozhikode to Bangalore to Pune. The night time layover hours in Bangalore allowed me to write down some thoughts about the WordPress community and some things going on in the project.
I have mostly not commented about the WordPress situation over the past two months. This is partly because I have not been keeping well for almost a month. Additionally, I dislike reading or adding to hot takes on social media. These often do not stand the test of time.
I currently contribute efforts to the WordPress Community Team as a Program Manager and along with being a member of the Incident Response Team.
Locally in Pune, I am leading WordCamp Pune 2025. This is a very experimental event with only workshops. Each workshop has several facilitators. The focus is that all attendees should learn or teach something to each other. This will help each attendee to hopefully interact with the WordPress software from the next day onward.
I work on these things self-sponsored. This means no one pays me for doing this. Not since the year 2020.
A week ago, at WordCamp Kerala, Sheeba Abraham and I had the opportunity to conduct a hands-on workshop on building a block theme using the Create Block Theme plugin.
There were some WIFI issues to begin with but getting dozens of new WordPress people to start building a block based page was great to experience. I personally find the Create Block Theme plugin a better onboarding experience for the block editor than any other theme out there. But that topic is for another day.
Back to the WordPress situation. I prefer the word “situation” and dislike the word “drama”.
The WordPress Situation
Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress and also ultimate lead of the project, is also the CEO of Automattic, a company that runs the hosting service WordPress.com, WPVIP, WooCommerce, Tumblr and many other things.
The owner of the WordPress trademark is an entity called WordPress Foundation. Automattic holds the commercial rights to the WordPress trademarks. This means they can monetise the trademarks or even sub-license it to other entities.
WP Engine (WPE) is a hosting company that was criticised by the WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp US 2024 for being inadequate contributors to the open source project.
He also suggested that WPE is misusing the WordPress trademark, for which only Automattic holds the commercial license to use and sub-licence it.
WPEngine has gone to court. Automattic and Matt Mullenweg have also responded and all parties have lawyered up.
I am not a lawyer, so I won’t comment on the trademark and licensing dispute between Automattic, WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, and WP Engine.
Some community members disagree with Matt’s position and have left the project. Some have paused contributing. There have been heated discussions on several Slack groups, forums and of course Twitter/X on topics, such as Matt Mullenweg’s leadership to the direction of WordPress.
Who do I think is right?
Since the days I started organising WordCamps in Mumbai about 10 years ago, I have had some very successful names in WordPress tell me that their sponsorship to an event was more or less like charity.
Some claim that their success in selling their WordPress theme or plugin to several thousands of paying customers was contribution enough.
It is like some person who becomes rich and buys a lot of cars and a private jet and says they contribute to society by simply being rich and spending money. This is obviously absurd. Those roads, electricity network, waste collection, public parks are the commons that benefit society and all of comes from taxes. We all have to contribute to the commons and if you are richer, you need to contribute more.
Taking advantage of the commons with a taker-like approach, often called an example of the “tragedy of commons” has and will always be a concern for any open source project or open system.
I am not suggesting that we have a tax collection system in WordPress. That wouldn’t really work well. But if a company is making hundreds of millions of USD in revenues and sponsors only one or two individuals on the WordPress project, then at the very least, the leader of the open-source project, by all means has the right to call out this “taker – like” approach.
Freedom to take from the commons without giving back might exist in open-source. But that freedom doesn’t mean one cannot be called out for the “taker-like” approach by leaders of the project. In many ways, I think it is a primary duty of the caretakers and leaders of the project to call out this practice.
In that sense, I do think Matt Mullenweg is right!
There are many actions I might disagree around WordPress.org — but that is the nature of open-source. As long as I have the space to disagree and commit, I do not feel any disagreement should lead down to the road of disengagement.
That said, I do miss my comrades who have left the project or paused their contributions. I don’t necessarily think they were wrong in their choices. Choices are hard, complicated and nuanced and I respect their choices and them as people.
Harking back to the Community of the old!
In the background of this situation, some in the WordPress community have complained about how the community is not the same anymore. I hear them out, but I also feel that it is important for them to listen to this feedback.
I might not be articulating this as well as I would like but I have some thoughts on this.
I am very wary of people who think they understand the size, scope and impact of WordPress, and the vastness and diversity of its ecosystem. Most people who are confident in estimating WordPress remind me of the story of the blind men and the elephant.
The community was not always welcoming. I am from India (South Asia) and many of us from South Asia have ignored slights and small micro-aggressions from time to time.
To share an example, I have been told plenty of times by someone from North America/ Europe that my name “Aditya” sounds wonderful or fantastic. I am guessing this is their way of making the sole South Asian person on a call feel welcomed.
But exotifying my name or ethnicity to make me feel comfortable is irritating. People like me will mostly ignore such experiences along and collaborate.
The community is by no means perfect, nor was it ever perfect for many. But a lot of us have always chosen to stay in the project and get things moving. Mainly because we got to learn things, teach them to others and enjoy our time.
Yes, the WordPress community is for all. And we all should strive to keep it that way. But it was always a “work in progress” and continues to be so. We should always be mindful of this.
In conclusion
As I started this post with WordCamp Kerala, I want to end it on that note. Sheeba and I were conducting a workshop on building an FSE block theme for people new to WordPress.
The time given to us was a bit condensed and we were finding it difficult to help 40 -odd attendees configure Playground and download the CBT plugin and get started.
I noticed Hardeep and Saurabh, both WordPress stalwarts, were in the audience. They offered to help out and I recruited them on the fly.
Now we were four instead of two and covered a lot more people and a lot faster. It felt like a bunch of random jazz musicians trying to help each other with our familiarity and WordPress being the music I guess.
While our concert was not perfect by any means, we knew each other enough to collaborate and pick up from each other. I was down with high fever and on medication while the workshop was taking place. Despite that, it was the most fun I seemed to have had in months!
Soon we were seeing questions being asked. Some moved around a few blocks on the homepage and raised their eyebrows and gave that look. That look of surprise that they just figured out something cool and started building things. ♥️
What’s there to not love about this?
So yes, I am not going anywhere and I will continue contributing to the WordPress project in various ways, as far as I can see.
Long live and prosper WordPress! 🖖
Credits: Trickle down economics meme suggested by Hari Shanker R
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