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WordPress Is Eating Itself Alive

Coding with Lewis

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WordPress powers about 41% of the internet. It took Matt Mullenweg twenty years to build that. It took him about ninety days in 2024 to lose the trust of the community he built it with — the agencies, plugin developers, hosts, and translators who bet their businesses on the update button still working next Friday. This is the full timeline: how a blog fork in 2003 became a movement, how Automattic became a company, how WP Engine became the target, and how one keynote at WordCamp US turned into cease and desists, lawsuits, forked plugins, mass resignations, and a preliminary injunction. And it's the story of a pattern that keeps repeating in open source — from Redis to Terraform to Elasticsearch — where the same loop plays out with a different logo every time.

#WordPress #OpenSource #TechHistory #WPEngine #Automattic #TechInvestigation

⏱️ Chapters:
00:00 A 90-Day Fall From Trust
00:53 How WordPress Won the Web (2003)
05:44 The Automattic Movement
09:03 One Man, Three Power Centers
11:44 WP Engine and Private Equity
14:44 The GoDaddy Precedent
17:36 WordCamp US 2024: The Break
22:26 Cease and Desist Wars
25:35 Fighting Their Own Community
28:04 The Court Steps In
30:00 The Open Source Loop

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20 Comments

@CodingWithLewis Creator 1 month ago Pinned

Our longest video yet... and... no ad or sponsor! Thank you everyone for watching. These videos are incredibly fun to make yet time consuming to write/animate/edit. If you like these types of videos, subscribe or consider becoming a member if you want to support further.

Sit tight :) we are ramping up our schedule and will have lots more of these types of videos soon.

@butlerian-j3c 1 month ago

1. People build something valuable.
2. Private equity shows up.
3. Everything turns to shit.

You can put this on America's tombstone.

@killervacuum 1 month ago

its interesting that in 2003 building static files for a blog was considered clunky, it's all the rage now

@garretmh 1 month ago

Matt was a good man who had devoted himself to making the world a better place. Over time he was taken advantage of for his generosity until it drove him to madness. In his grief he attacked the very people he had once helped in order to get revenge on those who had wronged him. Truly a classic villain arc if there ever was one.

@gapo_dodo_birb 1 month ago

You've got to be in some serious trouble where the private equity firm doesn't seem like the bad guy in the story.

@qualdatatechnologysolution4076 1 month ago

I'm a vet in the industry. I started with wordpress in 2008. This guy is literally once of the best presenters of his case I've seen in awhile. Very academic and articulate

@alreaud 1 month ago (edited)

Never do an update without a full database and site root backup. I've also disabled automatic updates and changed file permissions and ownership at the system level to prevent updates. Because what this video describes is why certain things should never be automated, IMHO. Drupal taught me that! 🤷‍♂🤣

@elbramtsol 1 month ago

Seems like a tale as old as time.
Well intentioned innovator carelessly does what he thinks is right, only to become rightly paranoid that his rash decision draws the ire of the vultures that are asset management firms like Blackrock, vanguard, & the people that run them.
Although his paranoia destroyed his image, he wasn't wrong, their encroachment ended up destroying what he wanted. He wouldn't have done the things he did, if he didn't feel his generosity was being abused.
He knew he was already on borrowed time.
Asset managers like blackrock only get involved if atleast one of them will win. It's about power, not money, & all of their managers/executives run in the same circles, regardless of company ties.
Free flowing information is the only real threat, hence why they always find themselves in publishing or information distribution of some kind.

@allancorp_official 1 month ago

I like these Software History long videos, nice work

@joe-skeen 1 month ago

This is something I've struggled with. I have always wanted to give away my software for free to help those who need it. But after a few years of hard financial struggle, I have to choose paths that will lead to my family being able to eat, rather than giving freely to the world. It's so frustrating that money is so important that it eclipses everything else. 😢

@elguapo42000 1 month ago

I have little experience with WordPress development, but found this fascinating nonetheless. Well done on this video! Such interesting commentary

@yewo.m 1 month ago

24:03 - to have hundreds of your own employees resign just goes to show how unhinged he had gotten

@cocoasulphur 1 month ago

Whilst I initially thought Matt was a bit of a villain, I did come round to his way of thinking a little more.

However, I do think his methods were wrong and probably he should have tried to act through legal routes instead of nuking his relationships and reputation to make a point.

At the end of the day, it’s not like his company wasn’t making money too. I get the principles behind his point of view but the execution was just such a mess.

@omeysalvi 1 month ago

Great documentary. Top Notch

@KariposTheOne 1 month ago

Matt isn’t really doing anything for WordPress. He talks about contribution, but it doesn’t feel like he actually cares. Third-party developers building plugins, themes, and page builders are a huge reason why WordPress became so popular.

@thegrantkennedy 1 month ago (edited)

It’s worth mentioning that in the WP community, agencies and freelancers are treated as 3rd class citizens - despite being the ones responsible for bringing people to the platform.

Freelancers and agencies create the demand for the plugins and themes.

One quick correction. It’s pronounced “now-koh tah-kah-noh”.

@davidaustin6962 1 month ago (edited)

Thing is, Matt held in his frustration for a decade, and then let it all out at once until he was extremely inflexible. Understandable but flexibility would have saved him, but he had none left. CEO rule#1: listen to your team, and create an environment where your team will talk before they walk. I think with AI people will be moving away from WP anyway, and use a headless CMS (like ghost or strapi) and let AI integrate the CMS fields into an AI-first built website.

@TheLordblackader 1 month ago

You covered the early history really well.

@tobisalami 1 month ago

I followed the whole story when it happened in realtime, and you accurately depicted everything! Thank you for such refreshing recount of events!

@DanieleColangelo 1 month ago

If you release a software under GPL license, you can't complain about competitors using it for free. If the WordPress foundation had open governance, WP Engine and godaddy would have been able to pay their way in the board like it happens with Linux and any other project with open governance, but than WordPress wouldn't be anymore Matt's private property.