7 ms·

Unfortunately, this is for the best. WordPress powers a large percentage of the internet, and I'm not sure what's going on with Matt (who I've always liked) but

Unfortunately, this is for the best. WordPress powers a large percentage of the internet, and I'm not sure what's going on with Matt (who I've always liked) but something turned the past few years. He's been behind unforced error after unforced error as CEO, and I hope a break helps him gain some perspective (although I don't see him being brought back). WordPress has been his life for 23 years. Doing the same thing for 23 years likely makes it difficult to have a proper perspective.

michael0church 7d ago
[dead]
- nosioptar 7d ago
  Classicpress may be worth checking out. https://www.classicpress.net/ https://www.classicpress.net/
biglyburrito 7d ago
"Unfortunately"??
- gpm 7d ago
  Yeah, it's unfortunate when anyone goes off the deep end.
  - deleted 7d ago
    [deleted]
- gkoberger 7d ago
  "Unfortunately", because Matt did a lot of good for the internet over the past two decades. WordCamp is (or was) really amazing, the community he built is really great, the Automattic Lounge was cool, he's donated millions of dollars to good causes, and WordPress powers a large portion of the Internet.
  - solarkraft 7d ago
    Automattic also bought Tumblr and Pocket Casts, publishing the code of the latter. I used to have a subscription just to support them.
    - dofm 7d ago
      And Simplenote.
      - joelanman 7d ago
        Which is no longer in active development https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195093
        dofm 7d ago
        That is sad but not surprising. I think they always had a bit more trouble with its sync system than they would have wanted. I loved Simplenote for the longest time but ultimately simple pragmatism switched me to Apple Notes after dalliances with several task management apps.
        kjksf 6d ago
        They clearly changed their mind. That "no longer developed" note is from September 2025. They made a bunch of non-trivial improvements in 2026: https://simplenote.com/blog/ https://simplenote.com/blog/
        dofm 6d ago
        These appear to be a sort of AI-driven re-evaluation. I am a sort of engaged cynic about AI but I am happy to chalk this one up as a straightforward win for the machines. (I'm also quite intrigued about the other blog post regarding an MCP for Simplenote — I love the idea of an LLM's knowledge-base being accessible in such an instantaneous way)
    - technion 7d ago
- solarkraft 7d ago
  He still contributed a lot to the world during the good times.
- Arnt 7d ago
  He read the commit logs and understood much of what he read. That's deep understanding of the product. That alone puts him in the top few percent of CEOs. IMO.
- zrn900 5d ago
  Unfortunately, Mullenweg, for all his faults, is a very good open source project leader. He carried WordPress to success, and he kept it at the top and as relevant for two decades, successfully navigating a lot of trials while also creating a community and spreading open source culture. During all of this, he protected the community and the interests of the project's users to the maximum extent. Again, for all his faults, he is a very good project leader. Not unlike Linus, who has the habit of going postal when any discussion about any change to the Linux kernel reaches the 'Linus in CAPS' stage of discussion. I dont see such stuff as bad things. But as side effects. I can live with those if the project is healthy enough. In any case, if he does anything new, there would be a lot of people who would support him for those reasons. Yeah, he needs to mature personally somewhat. And that's not really easy when you are entering midlife and your parents are getting old and whatnot. But everyone passes through those hurdles. And he will also pass through them.
pbreit 7d ago
No reason given?
- chris_wot 7d ago
  Any reason needed?!? We can all see what he’s done!
  - bigiain 7d ago
    I agree, but there's still a big "Why now?" question in my head. I suspect the board knows of something even more spectacularly stupid he's about to do.
    - ChallengeEup237 7d ago
      There is a hearing on Sep 30 as part of the WPE vs Automattic/WP trial where they will decide of Matt allegedly destroyed evidence. Matt apparently had automatic deleting messages enabled on his platforms, even throughout the period where they were supposed to be preserving it. His side said it was due to his "romantic partners", but his lawyers argued during the whole time everything had been preserved when it appears it wasn't. So the result of that hearing may came with a pretty big bill attached to it for all the legal time that was wasted for the other side, as well as instructions for the jury etc to assume the evidence was all harmful. So the timing might be related to that.
- downrightmike 7d ago
  He got tired of WPEngine not contributing back to wordpress, so he made it his mission to try and get them to pitch in.
  - nijave 7d ago
    He tried to extort them. Hosting providers have been selling Wordpress hosting for years without "giving back" Does Wordpress "give back" to PHP and Linux?
deleted 7d ago
[deleted]
stephenlf 7d ago
The entire internet is breathing a sigh of relief
00ze 7d ago
> Doing the same thing for 23 years likely makes it difficult to have a proper perspective. Preach. Seems to twist perception that reality is a fractal when it's recursive and eventually exits (everything dies). Explains religion, politics, and similar longtermism memes.
dzonga 7d ago
em-dash by Cloudflare looks interesting in terms of replacing Wordpress. by garnering enough of an ecosystem to cause a migration will be the bigger challenge. of course some people will say in the age of agents will people need to visit websites ;)
- Volundr 7d ago
  Am I looking at the right thing? https://github.com/emdash-cms/emdash https://github.com/emdash-cms/emdash > EmDash depends on Dynamic Workers to run secure sandboxed plugins. Dynamic Workers are currently only available on paid accounts. Upgrade your account (starting at $5/mo) or comment out the worker_loaders block of your wrangler.jsonc configuration file to disable plugins. Seems like a pretty poor replacement for WordPress, which will run on pretty much whatever random system happens to be within eyesight.
  - keybits 7d ago
    It can be deployed to a node.js server with sqlite https://docs.emdashcms.com/deployment/nodejs/ https://docs.emdashcms.com/deployment/nodejs/ Not as simple as wp, but not tied to one hosting provider.
    - chuckadams 6d ago
      The sandboxing requires CF workers though, as it depends on V8 isolates. Seems fair enough, but it'd be nice to see easily deployable cross-platform support someday for isolates or something similar, and not just for emdash.
- subpixel 7d ago
  A CMS that can only run on one hosting provider?
  - keybits 7d ago
    It can be deployed to a node.js server with sqlite https://docs.emdashcms.com/deployment/nodejs/ https://docs.emdashcms.com/deployment/nodejs/ Not as simple as wp, but not tied to one hosting provider.
rpgbr 7d ago
"Unfortunately" for whom? I'm pretty ok, even happy, with him out.
- gkoberger 7d ago
  Unfortunate this was the result of 23 years, not unfortunate it's happening.
- Centigonal 7d ago
  it just sucks to see someone who helped popularize something so many people care about change (at least publicly) for the worse.
  - rolandog 6d ago
    Exactly. I am very thankful for the experiences and community that WordPress has given me that I seriously consider that maybe Matt has been victim of a social engineering attack to make him be perceived as a little bit unstable... kind of like what happened with the xz backdoor attempt. But, to be honest, I am not too well versed in the drama. IIRC it started because someone was building something on top of WP but was basically reselling something that was already free without contributing back? Maybe I'm mixing things up and I should really hit the sack. Nevertheless, my concern lies mostly with the overall security of the platform, as I can imagine serious financial interests (and geological ones, too) might take the time to push out someone that knows the platform inside out.
    - Centigonal 5d ago
      Matt has made like hundreds of bizarre decisions over the last few years. The WPEngine drama is a big part of it, but he's also been odd with Automattic's purchase and handling of Tumblr and other topics.
- plorkyeran 7d ago
  The unfortunate part is that he became someone you’re happy to see out. I think he’s absolutely become a net negative for Wordpress, but that wasn’t always the case.
simonebrunozzi 7d ago
Can you provide some examples of these errors? Asking genuinely.
- Deukhoofd 7d ago
  The biggest one was probably 2 years back, the dispute with WP Engine, a hosting provider for WordPress. He used WordPress infrastructure to force all instances hosted there to break, then removed the extensions they built from the plugin store, and then replaced them under the exact same name and identifier with his own. He then went on this site, and placed incriminating comments under posts discussing that, without discussing it with his lawyers. These comments were then of course used in subsequent lawsuits, which so far he's been losing. He then also told his employees that if they didn't agree with his actions, they could leave with a severance package, which then had 10% of his employees quit.
  - irl_zebra 6d ago
    This was not an error: > He then also told his employees that if they didn't agree with his actions, they could leave with a severance package, which then had 10% of his employees quit. It was actually a pretty nice offer. iirc it was a pretty decent severance, no questions asked.
  - toast0 6d ago
    > He then went on this site, and placed incriminating comments under posts discussing that, without discussing it with his lawyers. As I recall, some of his posts indicated he was knowingly posting against the advice of his lawyers. Although he probably didn't discuss individual posts.
    - 12_throw_away 6d ago
      ... and that's how screenshots of hn comments ended up in this federal court order [1, pg. 24] [1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.64.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...
Bogan_Justice 6d ago
I have some sympathy for the guy. I've met him and he's genuinely kind and engaging. He has put his life into the project and company. I could be wrong, but I just don't think he matured quickly enough as the project and company changed. Not to say he's not smart - he is, but some of the antics make folks question the emotional maturity and sense of judgement, when compromise, conciliation and level-headedness are needed. I personally hope he seeks out the help he needs and leaves all the sniping on social media to others. A good outcome would be that he seeks healing, then concentrates on the stewardship of wordpress.org and steers the product in a collaborative and kind way.
- cindyllm 6d ago
  [dead]
zrn900 5d ago
> Unfortunately, this is for the best. Is it? The chief FINANCIAL officer took control of the company after Blackstone's investment in Automattic lost 50% of its value in the last two years. Has there been ANY case in which a private equity firm trying to recover lost investments did good for open source & the community?

michael0church 7d ago

[dead]

nosioptar 7d ago
Classicpress may be worth checking out. https://www.classicpress.net/ https://www.classicpress.net/

biglyburrito 7d ago

"Unfortunately"??

gpm 7d ago
Yeah, it's unfortunate when anyone goes off the deep end.
- deleted 7d ago
  [deleted]
gkoberger 7d ago
"Unfortunately", because Matt did a lot of good for the internet over the past two decades. WordCamp is (or was) really amazing, the community he built is really great, the Automattic Lounge was cool, he's donated millions of dollars to good causes, and WordPress powers a large portion of the Internet.
- solarkraft 7d ago
  Automattic also bought Tumblr and Pocket Casts, publishing the code of the latter. I used to have a subscription just to support them.
  - dofm 7d ago
    And Simplenote.
    - joelanman 7d ago
      Which is no longer in active development https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195093
      - dofm 7d ago
        That is sad but not surprising. I think they always had a bit more trouble with its sync system than they would have wanted. I loved Simplenote for the longest time but ultimately simple pragmatism switched me to Apple Notes after dalliances with several task management apps.
      - kjksf 6d ago
        They clearly changed their mind. That "no longer developed" note is from September 2025. They made a bunch of non-trivial improvements in 2026: https://simplenote.com/blog/ https://simplenote.com/blog/
        dofm 6d ago
        These appear to be a sort of AI-driven re-evaluation. I am a sort of engaged cynic about AI but I am happy to chalk this one up as a straightforward win for the machines. (I'm also quite intrigued about the other blog post regarding an MCP for Simplenote — I love the idea of an LLM's knowledge-base being accessible in such an instantaneous way)
  - technion 7d ago
solarkraft 7d ago
He still contributed a lot to the world during the good times.
Arnt 7d ago
He read the commit logs and understood much of what he read. That's deep understanding of the product. That alone puts him in the top few percent of CEOs. IMO.
zrn900 5d ago
Unfortunately, Mullenweg, for all his faults, is a very good open source project leader. He carried WordPress to success, and he kept it at the top and as relevant for two decades, successfully navigating a lot of trials while also creating a community and spreading open source culture. During all of this, he protected the community and the interests of the project's users to the maximum extent. Again, for all his faults, he is a very good project leader. Not unlike Linus, who has the habit of going postal when any discussion about any change to the Linux kernel reaches the 'Linus in CAPS' stage of discussion. I dont see such stuff as bad things. But as side effects. I can live with those if the project is healthy enough. In any case, if he does anything new, there would be a lot of people who would support him for those reasons. Yeah, he needs to mature personally somewhat. And that's not really easy when you are entering midlife and your parents are getting old and whatnot. But everyone passes through those hurdles. And he will also pass through them.

pbreit 7d ago

No reason given?

chris_wot 7d ago
Any reason needed?!? We can all see what he’s done!
- bigiain 7d ago
  I agree, but there's still a big "Why now?" question in my head. I suspect the board knows of something even more spectacularly stupid he's about to do.
  - ChallengeEup237 7d ago
    There is a hearing on Sep 30 as part of the WPE vs Automattic/WP trial where they will decide of Matt allegedly destroyed evidence. Matt apparently had automatic deleting messages enabled on his platforms, even throughout the period where they were supposed to be preserving it. His side said it was due to his "romantic partners", but his lawyers argued during the whole time everything had been preserved when it appears it wasn't. So the result of that hearing may came with a pretty big bill attached to it for all the legal time that was wasted for the other side, as well as instructions for the jury etc to assume the evidence was all harmful. So the timing might be related to that.
downrightmike 7d ago
He got tired of WPEngine not contributing back to wordpress, so he made it his mission to try and get them to pitch in.
- nijave 7d ago
  He tried to extort them. Hosting providers have been selling Wordpress hosting for years without "giving back" Does Wordpress "give back" to PHP and Linux?

deleted 7d ago

[deleted]

stephenlf 7d ago

The entire internet is breathing a sigh of relief

00ze 7d ago

> Doing the same thing for 23 years likely makes it difficult to have a proper perspective. Preach. Seems to twist perception that reality is a fractal when it's recursive and eventually exits (everything dies). Explains religion, politics, and similar longtermism memes.

dzonga 7d ago

em-dash by Cloudflare looks interesting in terms of replacing Wordpress. by garnering enough of an ecosystem to cause a migration will be the bigger challenge. of course some people will say in the age of agents will people need to visit websites ;)

Volundr 7d ago
Am I looking at the right thing? https://github.com/emdash-cms/emdash https://github.com/emdash-cms/emdash > EmDash depends on Dynamic Workers to run secure sandboxed plugins. Dynamic Workers are currently only available on paid accounts. Upgrade your account (starting at $5/mo) or comment out the worker_loaders block of your wrangler.jsonc configuration file to disable plugins. Seems like a pretty poor replacement for WordPress, which will run on pretty much whatever random system happens to be within eyesight.
- keybits 7d ago
  It can be deployed to a node.js server with sqlite https://docs.emdashcms.com/deployment/nodejs/ https://docs.emdashcms.com/deployment/nodejs/ Not as simple as wp, but not tied to one hosting provider.
  - chuckadams 6d ago
    The sandboxing requires CF workers though, as it depends on V8 isolates. Seems fair enough, but it'd be nice to see easily deployable cross-platform support someday for isolates or something similar, and not just for emdash.
subpixel 7d ago
A CMS that can only run on one hosting provider?
- keybits 7d ago
  It can be deployed to a node.js server with sqlite https://docs.emdashcms.com/deployment/nodejs/ https://docs.emdashcms.com/deployment/nodejs/ Not as simple as wp, but not tied to one hosting provider.

rpgbr 7d ago

"Unfortunately" for whom? I'm pretty ok, even happy, with him out.

gkoberger 7d ago
Unfortunate this was the result of 23 years, not unfortunate it's happening.
Centigonal 7d ago
it just sucks to see someone who helped popularize something so many people care about change (at least publicly) for the worse.
- rolandog 6d ago
  Exactly. I am very thankful for the experiences and community that WordPress has given me that I seriously consider that maybe Matt has been victim of a social engineering attack to make him be perceived as a little bit unstable... kind of like what happened with the xz backdoor attempt. But, to be honest, I am not too well versed in the drama. IIRC it started because someone was building something on top of WP but was basically reselling something that was already free without contributing back? Maybe I'm mixing things up and I should really hit the sack. Nevertheless, my concern lies mostly with the overall security of the platform, as I can imagine serious financial interests (and geological ones, too) might take the time to push out someone that knows the platform inside out.
  - Centigonal 5d ago
    Matt has made like hundreds of bizarre decisions over the last few years. The WPEngine drama is a big part of it, but he's also been odd with Automattic's purchase and handling of Tumblr and other topics.
plorkyeran 7d ago
The unfortunate part is that he became someone you’re happy to see out. I think he’s absolutely become a net negative for Wordpress, but that wasn’t always the case.

simonebrunozzi 7d ago

Can you provide some examples of these errors? Asking genuinely.

Deukhoofd 7d ago
The biggest one was probably 2 years back, the dispute with WP Engine, a hosting provider for WordPress. He used WordPress infrastructure to force all instances hosted there to break, then removed the extensions they built from the plugin store, and then replaced them under the exact same name and identifier with his own. He then went on this site, and placed incriminating comments under posts discussing that, without discussing it with his lawyers. These comments were then of course used in subsequent lawsuits, which so far he's been losing. He then also told his employees that if they didn't agree with his actions, they could leave with a severance package, which then had 10% of his employees quit.
- irl_zebra 6d ago
  This was not an error: > He then also told his employees that if they didn't agree with his actions, they could leave with a severance package, which then had 10% of his employees quit. It was actually a pretty nice offer. iirc it was a pretty decent severance, no questions asked.
- toast0 6d ago
  > He then went on this site, and placed incriminating comments under posts discussing that, without discussing it with his lawyers. As I recall, some of his posts indicated he was knowingly posting against the advice of his lawyers. Although he probably didn't discuss individual posts.
  - 12_throw_away 6d ago
    ... and that's how screenshots of hn comments ended up in this federal court order [1, pg. 24] [1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.437474/gov.uscourts.cand.437474.64.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...

Bogan_Justice 6d ago

I have some sympathy for the guy. I've met him and he's genuinely kind and engaging. He has put his life into the project and company. I could be wrong, but I just don't think he matured quickly enough as the project and company changed. Not to say he's not smart - he is, but some of the antics make folks question the emotional maturity and sense of judgement, when compromise, conciliation and level-headedness are needed. I personally hope he seeks out the help he needs and leaves all the sniping on social media to others. A good outcome would be that he seeks healing, then concentrates on the stewardship of wordpress.org and steers the product in a collaborative and kind way.

cindyllm 6d ago
[dead]

zrn900 5d ago

> Unfortunately, this is for the best. Is it? The chief FINANCIAL officer took control of the company after Blackstone's investment in Automattic lost 50% of its value in the last two years. Has there been ANY case in which a private equity firm trying to recover lost investments did good for open source & the community?