Branding David

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1. 

   Great piece David. The best example to date that I’ve seen that concerns me greatly and illustrates some of the concepts you’ve discussed regarding Matt’s treatment of others is also the least talked about story of the year, oddly enough.

   I’m referring to Matt’s treatment of the guys at WPMUDEV.org / Incsub. Here’s there recollection of how they have been blackballed by Matt. http://wpmu.org/blacklisted-by-matt-wordpress/

   James and his team at IncSub have been making great contributions to the community for years (mainly MU and now BuddyPress) and continue to develop great products and plugins (paid and free). They are GPL compliant, continually highlight, link to and promote MU, BuddyPress and BBPress and yet are singled out and have pretty much been axed from the community. Their only sin appears to be that they are profitable and perhaps a threat (if only in ego) to Matt and crew. This is only a guess as Matt hasn’t responded to their posts and some his past remarks seem to indicate that their profitability is an issue for him; at the very least there seems to be a double standard: http://wpmu.org/wordpress-creator-reckons-itd-be-nice-for-us-to-go-bust/

   Would love to hear your take on James’s articles and your views on the situation in regards to them even though the MU circle / Mu topics are a little left of center….

   More importantly, thanks for having the balls to write a piece that may not be popular and may not exactly earn you tons of goodwill…. it would obviously be much easier to say nothing at all, which is why pieces like this are so important.

   - Eric
2. 

   This ties in well to a post I wrote a few days ago over at http://www.interconnectit.com/724/wordpress-distributions-are-the-future/ – creating distributions that can update themselves from third party sources could help create a disconnection between Automattic and the WP market.

   The problem is that if Automattic started to make decisions unilaterally that affected those distributions (especially commercial ones) then forks of WP would become inevitable in order to protect the businesses and communities around them.

   It means, frankly, that these are dangerous times for Automattic’s stranglehold on WP development. They’ve been good for WordPress, but I think their attitude is starting to disconcert anyone who runs a business around the system. And whilst I’m a great believer in open source software and WP I’ve found myself looking around elsewhere for other projects, including a brief flirtation with Habari.

   - David Coveney
3. 

   Wow. Nice work! Matt’s for sure going to put a hit out on you.

   - Brian
4. 

   Well, this is an excellent post, though just as Eric, I was expecting to see details about the WPMU.dev story as well.

   Anyway… a truly open-source community will allow any member of this community do whatever he pleases, as long as he doesn’t throw a bad light on the project as a whole.

   Blacklisting developers of premium themes and plug-ins is something that I never understood, something that is NOT in the “spirit” of open-source Wordpress.

   Also, seeing how some people adopt the GPL “spirit” just to be on the good side of Matt is ridiculous as well…

   Anyway, great job with the post!

   - Dumitru Brînzan
5. 

   While I agree with everything you’ve said I can’t help but wonder if you’ve placed a little too much emphasis on Automattic and too little on GPL.

   I too feel that the project is in a dire state but I think most of it went astray when people started trying to make money out of it. I just don’t see why anyone would bother developing for WordPress any more if they aren’t prepared to use their work to make money. Why let others benefit from your work?

   This is probably inevitable for very large projects, and I don’t actually blame anyone for it. I’m not saying anyone is in the wrong for trying to make money, just that it is the heat that melts the glue.

   - Andrew
6. 

   David:
   There have been rumblings of a WordPress foundation ala Apache or Mozilla precisely to avoid these sorts of conflicts-of-interest.

   Let’s face it: we’re all human beings and thus all not simply prone to mistakes but virtually guaranteed to make them. Have Matt and the core contributors made mistakes in their handling of the WP development process? Sure, and I think they’d cop to it immediately! Are the Incsubs of the world free from guilt? Most assuredly not.

   I think the Incsub guys actually misread Matt’s intentions (at least based upon publicly-available conversations/comment threads. There might be private conversations that contradict this). Yes, I think Matt views WPMUdev as a “competitor” to WordPress, but *not* to the .com. Rather, it’s a competitor to the .org. By creating “walled gardens” of themes and plugins, they are essentially making their own private fork of WordPress available to paying customers. They complain that Matt wants to run them out of business while they leverage the hard work and contributions of hundreds (if not thousands) of others, most working for free.

   As to Automattic not giving away their “crown jewels”, I call “BS”. They’ve given *everything* away under a GPL license (HyperDB, After the Deadline, and VideoPress come readily to mind) with the exception of Akismet’s server, and that’s purely a bit of security-through-obscurity, to be frank. If the spam analytics were widely-known, the spammers could do a lot more to route around them. It’s fairly analogous to Google’s search ranking algorithms — people guess at what they are and how they work in order to “game” the system, but they’re ultimately a step behind Google *because* they have to guess. I don’t think keeping spammers at bay is a bad thing in the slightest. (Oh, and I almost forgot: PollDaddy isn’t GPL’d, though it’s of marginal utility IMNSHO…)

   - Doug Stewart
7. 

   Personally, I feel like WordPress, and the community, is pretty healthy.

   Yeah, it might be harder to crack the top 10 developers list, and you can’t just release any old piece of crap theme and it get popular, but is that such a bad thing?

   I think time and monetization has been a good product filter.

   There is some conflict of interest between Automattic and the WP community … that’s inevitable … and there probably be a little more transparency in that regard … but it’s nothing that the community can’t navigate around.

   I mentioned this the other day on twitter …

   Q. Why do people love WordPress?
   A. Themes and Plugins

   As long as the people in charge don’t screw the people who create the things that make WordPress so popular, WordPress will be fine.

   - Nathan Rice
8. 

   Wow, great article David. As someone who just came on the scene around 1.5, it’s really interesting to hear the insights of those who have been around longer (I’ve always wondered who Michael Heilemann is).

   This is really an eye opener. Not because I suddenly think poorly of Matt or Automattic – but I’m absolutely guilty of “drinking the kool-aid”. The support and lack of criticism I’ve given Automattic and Matt in particular (at least in my own mind) are, in retrospect, way over the top, and a little scary.

   This post does a good job of putting things in perspective – and reaffirms the idea it’s good to question leadership, even when it’s not obviously evil.

   - Peter
9. 

   Excellent food for thought, David.

   However, you’ll have to agree that anyone can start a fork of WordPress anytime and create a new community around it based on different ideals and leadership.

   Automattic does have business interest in WordPress and it would be hard to find anyone who denies it. Thus the question is, which features and functionality would have been implemented (or not) differently, if the project didn’t have several core developers employed by Automattic.

   How are WordPress.com users different from those running self-hosted WordPress installations, and what development decisions would have been different if they were not considered?

   I think that Matt has managed to find a very good balance of WordPress functionality that should be left to plugins (80%) and that which goes into the core (20%). And based on my personal experience with design by committee, I doubt it would have been any better if left to a public vote.

   Features and functionality that we each want to see implemented in the core are so drastically different depending on our needs. No matter if a project is led by one person or a group of 100 developers, most of the users are left to trust in their decisions.

   It would be interesting to see if there any trac tickets that have not been implemented despite a huge support from most of the developers?

   - Kaspars
10. 

    There are a lot of generalities here. “Matt has made mistakes.” Care to expound on this?

    - Ryan
11. 

    I’ve certainly made mistakes in the past, and will in the future, but my intention and aspiration with every decision is to serve WordPress’ mission: to democratize web publishing with elegant, Free software.

    You overplay my role in day-to-day development quite a bit. The majority of decisions, direction, and implementation is driven by Mark, Peter, Andrew, and Ryan, who each have their own inputs from the wider community of contributors. Coordination happens in a weekly, open IRC meeting.

    I aspire for Automattic to set a good example for Open Source companies everywhere. We contribute vast quantities of time and code to WP core, helping WordCamps, open sourcing commercial products like VideoPress and Atd, and I have never seen another core contributor criticise the amount Automattic give back.

    And to some extent the proof is in the pudding. In the days of 1.5 we got around 2,000 downloads a day, now we get 40,000. Michael, who you mention as being with a different system, actually blogs with WordPress. (View source!) There are more plugins and themes and websites and just more choices than ever before. That didn’t happen by accident.

    That doesn’t mean there isn’t a ton of stuff to fix, but when I think of what’s wrong with WordPress I think of plugin compatibility, upgrades, media interaction, editing themes, managing roles, educating users, documenting APIs, load speed, WYSIWYG, custom post types, taxonomy intersections… there is so much left to do, and I can’t wait to tackle it.

    - Matt
12. 

    When I think of what’s wrong with WordPress I think of all the crappy themes and plugins.

    I’d much rather pay for a plugin or theme that guarantees future compatibility, upgrades, and high quality support.

    Matt is correct…. the proof is in the pudding, and I hope more high quality commercial plugins are released in the future.

    I’m so glad to not have to deal with the utter crap that makes up a large percentage of the WordPress.org Repository. I’d much rather pay for quality than settle for free crap.

    - George Burley
13. 

    I think Automattic could do the WordPress community a favor by turning over control of WordPress.org to a completely independent organization. The foundation idea is fantastic.

    WordPress is bigger than Matt. It’s time to set it free.

    - George Burley
14. 

    Generally, I stay away from the GPL debates, what automattic should do etc. but this one is really a wise, thoughtful read I’ve ever read. Kudos.

    - R.Bhavesh
15. 

    [...] are still many, many folks that don’t understand the implications of GPL licensing, some of whom have [...]

    - Lessons Learned At WordCamp NYC 2009 » Literal Barrage
16. 

    ” It means, frankly, that these are dangerous times for Automattic’s stranglehold on WP development. “

    As Matt said, he has largely stepped back from the day-to-day development of WP. He is effectively the face of WordPress — an ambassador, if you will. He’s smart, charismatic and a seasoned world-traveler — perfect qualities for a “lead advocate” or “project visionary” type of role. His involvement in hands-on development of WordPress has, ahead of your suggestion, diminished. Of the four remaining lead developers two are Automattic employees (Ryan and Andrew) and two are not (Peter and me). I wouldn’t call that a stranglehold. There are other Automattic employees who open tickets, submit patches and participate in our open development chats — but they don’t get any sort of special pass. It’s very meritocratic. Show us the code, explain why your solution is the best solution. It doesn’t matter who you work for.

    I probably have one of the largest vested interests in keeping WordPress development diverse and not a “one-company project.” I do not work for Automattic, and I’m the only WordPress Lead Developer who does WordPress consulting full time. WordPress puts food on my table, and a threat to WordPress’ diversity and openness is a threat to my livelihood. Many years ago, I did have an issue with the openness of WordPress’ development. I spoke up (politely, and privately when my beef was with a specific individual). I made it clear that I took WordPress seriously, that I wasn’t going away, and that I had a commitment to WP’s openness. The situation improved. Today half of the day-to-day committers aren’t Automattic employees, and most of our patches come from non-Automattic contributors. The WordPress trademark, which has been under Automattic’s protectorship, is going to be transitioned to a foundation. We’ve re-instituted weekly IRC chats where WordPress developers and contributors determine the topics for discussion. They’ve been successful, moving development forward, and allowing better access to core committers. I’m probably as excited as I’ve ever been about the state of the WordPress community right now.

    [Matt] continues to make project-threatening mistakes which could easily be managed through a small council of source code submitters looking over decisions that could effect the project, the brand, and its future.

    Stop by our weekly IRC chats, where a small meritocratic group of code contributors does exactly this!

    - Mark Jaquith
17. 

    Small nit to pick (just noticed it as Mark quoted it):

    It’s “affect” not “effect”, unless you mean “implement the project”.

    *grin*

    - Doug Stewart
18. 

    Also, since Mark neglected to mention it:

    #wordpress on irc.freenode.net is the IRC chat room for most stuff. The #wordpress-dev channel is used for the meetups that Mark mentioned, UTC 2100 (that’s 4pm Eastern) on Thursdays.

    - Doug Stewart
19. 

    When I think of what’s wrong with WordPress I think of … WordPress. The code is atrocious and should dumped and rewritten from the ground up. I have absolutely no idea how anyone could work on that code base.

    - Woody Gilk
20. 

    In response to Mark Jaquith.

    I think at the moment everything is OK, but you get a sense of ill-ease, and that’s what makes things dangerous. I should probably have phrased it differently, but perhaps I was revealing how it /feels/ rather than actually is. And the feeling is important – it seems like a lot of decisions on direction at WordPress.org and others are led by Matt.

    I would drop by the IRC chats, but sadly I have other weekly commitments at exactly the same time (I’m chairman of a sports club). If I was lucky I’d drop by no more than 2-3 times a year. But I’ll try. Maybe when I get home an hour later

    Here’s one good thing to take from all of this – there’s clearly a lot of people in the WP community who care passionately about its approach and its future. That’s gotta be a good thing!

    - David Coveney
21. 

    [...] A few days ago, they had a bat­tle royale on Twit­ter over the GPL, and later some brief dis­cus­sion over this article’s claim that the GPL is bad for Wordpress. [...]

    - Drama Around the GPL
22. 

    I think one of the issues neither Matt or Mark addressed is the stranglehold Matt has on WordPress.org and how it is controlled. His recent spat with WPMU.ORG is a perfect example of Matt using his power for personal interests because he didn’t like them selling plugins.

    - George Burley
23. 

    Okay, I want to address a few things:

    #1 – I didn’t want to go over everything and anything related to the negative energies in the WordPress community. I don’t know enough about the WPMU story to give an informed opinion and probably would have just created more logic holes and been wrong.

    #2 – Like others have said, I have no issues with Matt’s day to day interaction with WordPress at a code level. If he contributes code or not, I don’t care. My main gripe or grief is that he makes unilateral decisions over WordPress.org the site, with companies that follow GPL without sticking to his personal ideal on the spirit of GPL (especially the difference now between the plugin and theme developers and how they are treated), and as such, he effects the community in a way I think is no longer needed. His passion to stick by an ideal that, in my opinion, no longer suits the openness that open source project should hold.

    #3 – I have no issues with WordPress as a technology, and as such, like another commenter suggested, I see no reason to fork the code on a basically community driven issue.

    I appreciate everyone that has jumped in and responded exactly as I have now regarding the issues with the responses to my post.

    - David Peralty
24. 

    David hit the nail on the head…

    Matt completely controls WordPress.org and makes unilateral decisions based purely on his opinion alone.

    Cross Matt, and you might find yourself wiped off the face of WordPress.org… so bow to his all mighty power so that you too can be part of the community.

    Some people like to throw out the “It’s his site, he can do what he wants…” argument… but frankly this doesn’t hold water anymore. WordPress.org is bigger than Matt. Or at least it should be.

    WordPress.org is the official site of WordPress, and as such it should be community driven and community run.

    Matt shouldn’t be making unilateral decisions based on his own personal beliefs. Not everyone agrees with his beliefs, but apparently Matt’s word is the law.

    - George Burley
25. 

    When 200 themes were removed, it was 180 that had spam, and then 20 that were borderline. The removals were around a public and agreed on principle for WordPress.org, that we won’t promote places that actively violate the license WordPress is built on (the GPL) or promote places that do. I haven’t heard any apologies from everyone who said that it meant the death of WordPress.org, themes, the theme directory, and of course WP the software. We’ve been fine and we’ve kept the directory free of the flood of low-quality promotional themes that killed the previous iterations. This is also the same policy the plugin directory has operated under for years.

    To speak to the James issue, it’s not as personal as they’ve implied. The main reason we no longer promote their sites on the homepage of MU is that it was confusing to people. I’ve had countless folks tell me they came across (wpmu, wpmudev, wp.mu, edublogs, wpplugins, et al) and thought it was an official resource because they all link together and their confusing naming and gratuitous use of our logo. Besides, it is nobody’s God-given right to be linked from the homepage of our plugin directory and mu.wordpress.org.

    - Matt
26. 

    Hi David, Dunno what there’s left to contribute besides saying that I really enjoyed the post and I think you’ve given a good, balanced view on the state of play as it currently stands.

    I feel almost exactly the same way you do about Matt’s role too – although I suppose that at the end of the day having holes in the product and community that we can meet is a business opportunity.

    And I’m not bigging myself up here, but I hope this post expands further on this one in terms of why some changes are necessary and why we launched wpplugins.com:

    http://wpmu.org/the-future-of-wordpress-is-premium-plugins/

    Cheers, James

    - James Farmer
27. 

    Matt, not sure if you are still watching this, but do you think that you’ve never used your status within the project to promote a personal ideal?

    I mean, I am a big fan of someone being a decision maker, so that the project continues to move forward. Someone has to say, “that’s enough talking, let’s do item X.” but I worry that your personal opinions might not reflect what’s best for everyone.

    Not that you are necessarily wrong, as you’ve been able to grow the community in ways that (I’d assume) every blogging platform wishes they could. But as a leader you need to own up to not only making mistakes, but also being transparent about those mistakes and how you are going to make sure they don’t occur again?

    Also, do you really think that different community members should be filtered (take filtered to mean what you want) by you? And if they aren’t being filtered by you, then who is the deciding council on how WordPress.org is run, edited, and managed? Who decides what themes are listed on Premium GPL themes? Who decides if there should or shouldn’t be a Premium GPL Plugins page on the site? Who decides which sites should be allowed to use the WP branding heavily, and which ones shouldn’t? Who decides which pages on WordPress.org and other project related pages have “which” content?

    We know your personal opinion on Premium GPL anything, but do you speak for the entire community? You are the king of WordPress. There is no denying that. No matter how much you pull back from committing code and whatnot, you’ll always be the King of WordPress. You made WordPress as a project and community exist, but isn’t open source all about everyone having a voice, no matter how “wrong” they are?

    I just feel that, over the last few years, certain people within the community have been given a really raw deal, and deserved better from the WordPress community, and back room rumblings have made it seemed like you, Matt, was the key decider (or at least public voice of the decision).

    - David Peralty
28. 

    I have to start out by saying that I have not contributed any code to Wp. I work for a college and I’ve been trying bring more open-source karma to my institution, which isn’t always easy. I’ve had equal parts experience with Drupal and Wp community and I have to say that Drupal is starting to look a lot more organized. I was at My first WordCamp NYC this past weekend and I thought that the idea of canonical plugins was great. I think this is a step in the right direction. I also think that the WP community should become a little more centralized (I.e. Acquia for Drupal). I’m not totally against premium plugins/themes, because it seems like there is a lot of crap out there, but I’d rather see financial resources being shared, developers collaborating to create ‘premium’ plugins that can be contributed back to WP community. I think there would be a good market too for colleges to purchase vendors services to create custom plugins themes and then contribute back to community. We recently did this with Acquia/Drupal.

    Hope I’m making some sense, because I’m tired and typing this rapidly on iPhone

    - Damon Cook
29. 

    I don’t have any problems with how the WordPress project is currently run as I trust Matt and don’t generally disagree with much of his opinions. I occasionally don’t understand them, but that’s quite different from disagreeing with them (some of the GPL stuff fits in that category). However I can see why others would be quite wary of the current situation as it does feel a little too theocratic.

    Perhaps if discussions over the setup of WordPress.org were held in public as well would be a good idea? At the moment, news about the site itself and what’s up to and it’s policies are largely announced out of the blue rather than us seeing what’s going on behind the scenes. If the decisions were made in public, perhaps via a forum, or via IRC (like the software itself) then the community may be happier with how things are run perhaps? … just an idea (may or may not be a good one :p)

    @Mark Jaquith – Thanks for chiming in! You are in an ideal position to give your unbiased opinion on this issue since you aren’t directly connected with Automattic.

    @Matt – I always figure the best sign of success is when the fans of your product are excited enough to write blog posts outlining what you suck at! The most I’ve gotten are angry forum posts from morons who can’t read documentation, so I guess I haven’t succeeded yet :p

    - Ryan
30. 

    @Matt:

    “Besides, it is nobody’s God-given right to be linked from the homepage of our plugin directory and mu.wordpress.org.”

    Of course, this statement is true.

    The problem, though, is perception – primarily, the perception that, for wordpress.org, you are, and act like, God. Making a somewhat snarky statement like the one quoted above does nothing to improve that perception.

    On the other hand, what *would* help that perception would be:

    1) Establish a truly independent community council to control wordpress.org

    2) Establish, define, and publish, specific, unambiguous requirements and criteria for inclusion in the free/commercial theme/plugin repositories and for being linked from wordpress.org

    3) Establish a mechanism for appealing decisions regarding those requirements and criteria.

    Further, you could help improve the Matt-is-WordPress-God perception by properly separating adherence to GPL and adherence to WordPress community ethos (incorrectly referred to as the “spirit” of the GPL).

    You use the GPL as a hammer to enforce your own open-source ideals, and in so doing you abuse the GPL. Commercial developers have *every right* under the GPL to sell their code and *every right* NOT to “contribute” back to the community.

    If the ethos of the WordPress community includes not profiting from selling GPL code and contributing back to the community, that is all well and good. Just stop calling it the “spirit” of the GPL. Call it what it is: your personal ideal, and a community standard.

    But then maybe that’s the problem? If it is properly separated from the GPL, perhaps it won’t quite be the community “standard” that you would like it to be? I don’t know.

    - Chip Bennett
31. 

    [...] Jaquith provides a better explanation than I could on why the confliction is not really apparent. http://brandingdavid.com/blogging/my…press-project/ As for the banning of folks, no one that I know of has been banned. The reason the WPMU stuff was [...]

    - wp + microsoft = wp hypocrisy – Page 4 – WordPress Tavern Forum
32. 

    Commercial developers have *every right* under the GPL to sell their code and *every right* NOT to “contribute” back to the community.

    True. But if people want to isolate themselves from the project, they shouldn’t complain when we preferentially promote those who maintain ties with the community and freely share their code.

    Your point about the GPL as opposed to WordPress ideals is well-taken. We’ve made the plugin/theme directory on WordPress.org zero-cost in addition to GPL, not because the GPL (or even the “spirit of the GPL”) demands it, but because we think it is best for the community. Matt doesn’t stand alone on that, nor is he the only one with input on those policies.

    We had instances of there being “placeholder” plugins in our repository that basically just did compatibility checks and then pointed you to a paywall on a third party site. We had (and have) plugins that embed SEO-spammy links in a user’s blog without their permission, and we’re in the process of curbing that sort of “less-than-forthcoming” behavior. Matt was involved with some parts of those conversations, but a lot of it happened without him in our weekly (open) IRC chat (and it included some of the developers of the plugins in question).

    I agree that the wordpress.org site (as opposed to WordPress the project) is historically the least diversely controlled aspect of WP, but that’s definitely changing. If you have a specific issue about the site, put it on the agenda for one of our weekly chats.

    - Mark Jaquith
33. 

    I keep forgetting the blockquotes don’t have distinct formatting in this theme! My first paragraph is quoting Chip Bennet from the comment above mine.

    - Mark Jaquith
34. 

    I do have some ideas that might merit at least bringing up at a dev chat. It’s a bad time for me, but maybe I’ll see if Jeffro wants to bring some of them up, since he participates.

    - Chip Bennett
35. 

    [...] post on my personal/business blog, BrandingDavid.com, where I talked about my thoughts on the current state of the WordPress project. The post got a bit of attention on both sides of the fence regarding what I wrote, and was linked [...]

    - Reactions to Your Writing | LifeSnips
36. 

    [...] My Thoughts on the Current State of the WordPress Project – An interesting read about WordPress, Automattic, and how this person feels about the way things are going. [...]

    - (Anti) Social Lists 11/29/09 | (Anti) Social Development
37. 

    i have been using drupal on and off for a few years and came to wordpress 9 months ago because it suited the majority of (simple cms) sites that i need to build. it’s been great to have a small involvement in the drupal community and i look forward to also participating in the wordpress community.

    I just want to share my experience that wordpress feels much better organized and offers far fewer headaches in terms of themes and plugins that drupal. drupal is a much wider-reaching tool so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison yet some developers are considering both to solve similar problems. and it’s natural that drupal would be more complex to use since it offers a wider range of options.

    I don’t have enough experience to address the comparison of automattic vs aquia but this post was very useful in getting a critical perspective. i will have more to say on the topic of ocmmunity after drupalcon in san francisco in april.

    thanks for sharing your perspective.

    - ari salomon

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