We Discuss Matt Mullenweg’s Interview With Theo Browne, The Future of WordPress
With Special Guest Spencer Forman
In this show, we analyze the exchange between Matt Mullenweg and Theo Browne about current developments in WordPress and open-source initiatives. They discuss critical issues such as user experience enhancements and future opportunities for developers worldwide. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just curious about tech trends, this discussion offers essential takeaways.
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:00.300] – Jonathan Denwood
back, folks, to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 935. This is a bit of a special. There’s just me and a friend from the show, and we are part of the regular WP-Tonic Roundtable monthly show, Spencer Forum. We will discuss another interview in this show, but much broader subjects were included. We’re talking about that, as in some ways, it became notorious very quickly, as in the interview that Matt Mullenweg did with Theo Brown.
[00:01:52.020] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it was last week or the last three or four days. It was a very long interview, almost 2 hours long. It covered some specifics. But in this conversation, I wanted to focus on what is open source. Is it more than a license? What are the cultural norms? A broader discussion because underneath all the drama, I think some powerful issues are the consequence, the background to all the drama in front of us. So, Spencer, would you like to quickly introduce yourself and then take the opportunity to comment on what I’ve just laid out?
[00:02:50.580] – Spencer Forman
Sure. It’s Spencer Foreman from WP Launchify. I have 20 years of experience in WordPress. I am a licensed attorney in the State of Illinois and in the federal bar since the early ’90s. And I am 100 % certified drama-free for 2024. So I agree to this conversation because you and I have known each other a long time, on the premise that we’re not going to talk about mad or specific people, not because I’m afraid of getting sued, but rather because the recklessness of everyone’s behavior who’s involved in this is there. I am an attorney. I know how an attorney is. Every little Tom, Dick, and Harry who comments is subject to being deposed or otherwise. I don’t want any part of it. So this is purely for the purpose. This is my disclaimer. This is news, commentary, satire, and completely without any personal first-hand knowledge of anything that would cause me to be of any value to be called into the post. I mean that with sincerity because one thing I want to talk to you about today is the foundation of what drew me to WordPress. Ironically, it came from a world of private equity and otherwise.
[00:04:06.150] – Spencer Forman
As a businessman and a person who’s been involved in litigation with actual companies, I’m old as dust, not quite as old as your dust, but close, 57, 58.
[00:04:14.420] – Jonathan Denwood
That Say, Oh, I’m ’61.
[00:04:16.630] – Spencer Forman
Exactly, right? I’ve seen a lot. And what I think is fair to say, today, I would like to express the optimistic humanistic future view of what all of this means. It means that the actions of these participants have caused an acceleration of something that, while painful for many participants at the moment, will end up in a more favorable outcome for the human beings that use WordPress as software or for their business and so forth. Because these have been long-festering discrepancies and problems, the way WordPress came into being, factually speaking, leaves much to be desired. If somebody had a time machine, they would probably return and fix things. But now these problems in the structure and in the governance and in the way that the good for thee, not for me way it’s been run, have finally come to a head because of the actions of these big players, Molenweg and WP Engine and all of the people that are catching flak from them by being drawn into a lawsuit, like WordPress suing Festinger vault, and that whole conversation. So I think it’s going to make for an exciting discussion.
[00:05:33.820] – Spencer Forman
But I also want everybody to understand I am the king of managing trolls. I’m the king of working people who have not thought things through, whether they be a hundred millionaire or a company or whether they be… So I’m just letting everybody know to save yourself the trouble. I will not say anything that is taken aside because I don’t like WP Engine anymore, but I like how WordPress.org has been run. I feel that WordPress is a service, and that’s precisely how I think about things. However, WordPress, the software, is the tool I have staked my claim for for over two decades, from which I derive my current spending habits and a part of my revenue. But I have no vested interest because I’m not working for anybody, nobody employs me, I don’t have shares of anybody. I’m speaking purely objectively. So save your breath by telling me how excellent Matt is or how awesome the WP engine is because they are both at fault at many levels. And they’ve just simply, as we’ll talk about, drawn this wound to the surface.
[00:06:40.300] – Spencer Forman
It was a festering wound that has now come to the surface so we can all address it. We used to see it in public.
[00:06:45.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I agree with everything you’ve outlined. I just wanted to say that during that conversation and interview, it was evident that the affair between Matt Manweg and WP engine had been going on for quite a substantial period. Various people have sent me screenshots of this, that, and the other. I don’t know the truth of the scenario.
[00:07:20.890] – Spencer Forman
It’s not just them, though. Let me clarify. That’s a good point to… I’ll put a flag in the Santa. Okay. We’ll discuss other open-source projects, such as Drupal Founder or Wikipedia. But let’s start with the idea, number one, that there seems to be something that objectively bothers Matt when other companies use the same tools and rules and bylaws and everything that he outlined; they use it and make money and maybe more cash or comparable money. I don’t know the relative ratio between what automatic is doing. That seems to be something that triggers Matt’s behavior. And it was GoDaddy before, and it was another hosting company. He shows it in reverse because of the weird favoritism that we’ve complained about for decades now about why there are three hosting companies on the official host page of WordPress.org, and it’s like Bluehost and WordPress. Com, and the third one. And it’s like, there’s 600 choices. That’s not it. So, number one, There seems to be a problem when an organization has to be legally set up a certain way. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a 501(C)(3), or because it’s whatever the structure. Still, when it’s set up in the way it was set up, where the bylaws are not-for-profit, there needs to be a particular legal and public clarity to how the organization was formed, managed, governed, and so forth.
[00:09:01.910] – Spencer Forman
And problem one, I can’t blame him; he was just a kid. But when Matt set this thing up, there was all kinds of, I’m going to use a cautious word. I wanted to say cheating, but I don’t know if he had that intent. So, I’m going to tell all kinds of discrepancies between what should have been set up and what ultimately was set up in terms of the organization.
[00:09:25.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I wanted to discuss that with you. Now, let’s start with this: you have, which Matt has stated very often, and people like David from Ruby on Rails have also had discussions with Matt privately and in public. This is open source. This is under the open-source license.
[00:10:01.190] – Spencer Forman
Well, it is. It’s not like it. That’s the whole thing.
[00:10:05.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Let me finish. That’s factual. That can’t be argued. That is the fact. But then you have all the cultural baggage that goes with it, which I think, fairly or unfairily, I think Matt has encouraged over the years, a mystique that because it’s a bit of software under the open source license, that you’re going to get all these other elements as part of the package. And in some ways, I feel that Matt has encouraged these assumptions, but all these other elements that people think that should be part of a large open source project, and at the key of it is the license, should be there. But many of us have known that the reality is a lot of those assumptions around what I’ve just laid out aren’t part of the WordPress project.
[00:11:35.100] – Spencer Forman
There really is no WordPress part.
[00:11:38.160] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s your response to that?
[00:11:39.760] – Spencer Forman
Well, okay, let’s break it down so people can follow where we’re at in this conversation. Let’s talk about what really is WordPress, because if we just do a quick history for the purposes of bringing out what things were discussed by Theo and what’s in the lawsuit, one of the key elements is, question of fact, did Did anybody, starting today with WP engine, mistake, misuse, take advantage of what was clearly in writing about trademark and fair use of the term WP versus WordPress? Up until Matt changed the wording, or whoever changed it a week ago, it was right there in wordpress. Org, and it’s historically archived through the version and all the rest, that it said, you are free to use the term WP, something, something, something to describe WordPress-related things. And in fact, it was not only encouraged, it was ratified. There’s doctrines in place that say that if you tell people to do something and they do it for a long enough period of time, that becomes factually the way it is. And so number one, the question is to what is WordPress? Let’s just be fair. In my personal and to some degree, legal newsworthy opinion.
[00:13:03.820] – Spencer Forman
Wp is completely separate, distinct, and off limits to any conversation about anything anywhere about being used by a company. Wp this, WP that, WP the other has nothing to do with trademark and management and triggers nothing in the way of any licensing rights. The use of the word WordPress, had it been WordPress engine, or they were saying, We’re officially WordPress this, that obviously is a bigger question of fact, but that never happened. So number one- Can I just- Let me just finish one last thing. This confusion stems from when Matt set the whole thing up, okay? He doubled down on the confusion because he made it clear that WP is the only way to go. And if you say WordPress, you have to say, I’m a WordPress consultant. But now he’s even complaining about that. But where he really made this difficult with the wordpress. Org and the wordpress. Com, Because had he followed his own objective rules, if this was set up as a proper public company, like a 501(C)(3), or whatever, he would have, should have, could have, for his own financial company, followed the very same rules that everybody follows, which is to say he should not have ever had wordpress.
[00:14:18.390] – Spencer Forman
Com. He should have had Matt’s hosting company that does WordPress hosting, but he did not. So the confusion and the problems stem from that very original thing that he set up as a not following the rules of corporate structure and then doing the opposite of what he’s now claiming was a violation 20 years later by WPNJ.
[00:14:38.780] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, let’s have a look because you’re the right person to ask because of your background.
[00:14:46.410] – Spencer Forman
Well, I mean, think about it. If somebody came along now and said, I’m a hosting company called WordPress Connect Camel, the lawyers would have every right and be on top of them like crazy. But he’s not claiming that’s what happened. He’s claiming a trademark on WP, which is-Yeah.
[00:15:01.360] – Jonathan Denwood
In the interview, the trademark issue came up, and it’s Matt’s position that he’s utilizing the trademark as a weapon because he is the defender of open source in WordPress. Because of that moral position, that gives him the right to utilize whatever legal tools- But that’s a problem. Yeah, let me finish, that are available. That’s That’s not the legal, that’s the moral, seems to be his moral position that he seemed to lay out in that interview. And he brought up that this argument around percentage. If you use a certain term on a web page or on a website or more than 14%, and then you have a survey, you can get a survey of normal users and you get a result that They feel that a certain impression they get from a copy or website, that enables you to take legal action. Is he correct, to the best of your ability, in those statements that he made?
[00:16:55.060] – Spencer Forman
I don’t feel that the legal case that Matt is pushing has any merit whatsoever.
[00:17:00.770] – Jonathan Denwood
From reading the document- That’s a strong position, you’re saying?
[00:17:05.520] – Spencer Forman
My position is that if we break out the facts, break out the complaint, break out the actions of the parties, this is for journalistic and commentary only. My belief, as a pundit is that his case does not have even a single count that will stand or be successful. And more importantly, the consequences of all this is that I do not like WPN WP Engine at all. I’ve said to Jason, I don’t like what it’s become because the way it offers the services things are a whole other conversation. But there is nothing that I can see that they have done that in any way, shape, or form violates any of the complaint counts offered by Matt Mullenweg’s side of the case. On the other hand, Matt Mullenweg’s actions, subsequent to starting this whole thing for some reason, I think WP Engine has grounds successful verdict or judgment in their favor.
[00:18:06.000] – Jonathan Denwood
He’s gone outside the scope of what his issues were into doing things that are tortuous, potentially, in inflicting harm on another company. I have sympathy for Matt in some ways.
[00:18:26.600] – Spencer Forman
I don’t know why. Well-what is he? Let’s start with why does he need to do this now? Frame it in terms of that, because that’s where I think we can meet in the… Why now? Why this company? Why Automatic is still making lots of money accordingly, and everybody seems to be really getting along with doing what they got to… Why now? That’s the thing. What triggered him about WP Engine? Now, some other pundits have said that WP Engine was about to do something, and Matt caught wind of it.
[00:18:58.910] – Jonathan Denwood
You don’t know what it is. That’s what I heard.
[00:19:01.630] – Spencer Forman
Who knows? That’s all speculation. But why? Can I just frame this also? Because I want to give you the… not interrupt you. You have a billionaire, billionaire, trillionaire. You got two companies that are killing in the space. Why did they both have… Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, let’s have a karate match. What the hell is wrong with these people in the sense of, Don’t screw up your situation.
[00:19:30.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, that’s why I thought you would have this conversation, because it’s around open source.
[00:19:39.170] – Spencer Forman
I don’t think it is. I think it’s quite a personal thing now.
[00:19:42.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, yeah. But why I thought we would have this conversation is the moral element of it, which Matt has really publicly described as the drive that gives him the moral I’m looking for the other right word.
[00:20:04.240] – Spencer Forman
High ground?
[00:20:05.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, high ground.
[00:20:07.540] – Spencer Forman
But for what? What was the thing that he claims that they did that was a violation of open source? That’s the part I’m lost on.
[00:20:14.090] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, is that they take a lot out.
[00:20:20.490] – Spencer Forman
That’s not the same thing, is it?
[00:20:21.750] – Jonathan Denwood
But they don’t contribute much back. Now, I want to… Because there’s been other open source projects that when you have a commercial element, and to be factual, this is only my insight into it, I’m not saying it’s correct or wrong. Obviously, we live in a capitalist world. We have payments, we have mortgages, rent, car payments. We have to pay for our children. We have to pay through our life to exist. Our open source project has to have… It can’t live totally by… Depending on the size and the scope of the open source project, it needs… When it gets to a certain level and a certain size, it needs income. So it always has some relationship to 21st century capitalism, hasn’t it? It always has to negotiate its relationship with 21st century capitalism.
[00:21:52.810] – Spencer Forman
I don’t know what you’re talking about, because let’s talk about the facts as they are. In a theory, in a vacuum, what you’re saying makes sense. So I’m not being I’m suggesting you’re wrong. I’m saying, let’s look at the facts. WordPress as a thing, the foundation of what it is is really the software, the core. And then around the core is the ecosystem of independent companies. By the mandate of the founder, he was the one who created the flea market and kept encouraging it versus, let’s say, we’re going to incorporate it into a SaaS service like I offer now and just say this is WordPress to take it. If we think of it in a vacuum and we When we think about where it would be started if we had a time machine, it would be not dissimilar to Drupal or Wikipedia in the sense that there are certain things that should have, would have, could have been set up that allows the software to be contributed to and the ecosystem to be contributed to. There was a suggestion of a thing called the maker’s taker score, which has been brought up a billion times.
[00:22:51.300] – Spencer Forman
And that is to say you get credit, no matter what size or type company you are, for things you do that are not, not just on some weird Matt made it up thing, what he thinks Five for the Future is. Because one of the things that’s really wrong with Five For The Future, and always has been, A, automatic or some branch of whatever Matt controls are the gatekeepers over who gets to do what. So let’s say WP engine threw 5,000 people at Five For The Future instead of money or other things that are contributing, like public publicity and just saying WordPress is awesome. They put 5,000 people ready to go. Guess what would happen? Otto or somebody else would just make them all sit in the lobby waiting there, twiddling their thumbs. Wp engine would be wasting the energy because there’s not something for 5,000 people to do. It’s foundationally flawed. Second of all, ignoring the ecosystem value of doing word camps and contributing money and advertising and marketing and goodwill. That’s just nonsense. So the problem stems from the fact that the foundation or whatever it was was set up in a confusing way, didn’t follow standard practices, did not treat the founder and whatever his financial shell companies are set up as.
[00:24:06.500] – Spencer Forman
I don’t know what to call that structure where there’s one owns this and one owns that and gives to this and takes it. That whole shell game of whatever that is, and I’m commenting as a pundit here using that term, is different than if you go to the article, again, let’s use the founder of Drupal, Dries Boutier. And he talks about he set up Drupal with the governance and the credit for the things that you can do to keep the project alive so that the takers have a proportional throttle on them if they’re not also makers. Whereas WordPress, we’ve been talking for years about the ironic do as I say, not as I do problem, where wordpress. Com and all the things that get put in are all in favor of automatic and their investors at the expense of the rest of the community. And that it really puts a pickle on things when a WP engine who has the financial capability is being told in a lawsuit, no, it’s not good enough if you spend $5 million on promoting WordPress. It’s not good enough if you hosted a thousand word camps. Only thing that’s good is five for the future, and you got to go through a gatekeeper to even know what that means.
[00:25:16.940] – Spencer Forman
That’s number one, the biggest problem, because that sets up a king in the court gestures phenomena. If you don’t make the king laugh, off with your head. And now there’s this weird thing where he’s taking on somebody who has an army, WP engine, of money and lawyers waiting to come in and call him out on that behavior. And that’s, I think, where we’re in the problem as a community, because how are we going to get past this? How are we going to get past this by fixing this? It’s open.
[00:25:46.130] – Jonathan Denwood
I have compassion for Matt because he is the joint founder of WordPress, and the 20 years that he has contributed to WordPress.
[00:26:05.080] – Spencer Forman
What’s your sympathy for, though?
[00:26:06.840] – Jonathan Denwood
If you let me finish, please.
[00:26:08.630] – Spencer Forman
No, but tell me, what’s the sympathy for him, Stanley? What do you feel bad for him for? He hasn’t lost anything. If he had not done all this- I have sympathy because when I watched the interview and I watched another interview that he did with another influencer in the code front-end development stroke server area, he looked extremely ill and stressed out to me.
[00:26:37.400] – Jonathan Denwood
I would have a similar feeling to any individual who looked in distress and not stressed out.
[00:26:49.060] – Spencer Forman
Sure.
[00:26:50.710] – Jonathan Denwood
He didn’t look well, and he looked extremely stressed out.
[00:26:56.800] – Spencer Forman
How does that relate to WP Engine’s action?
[00:26:58.830] – Jonathan Denwood
I want to I’ll get to it. But I feel he has damaged his credibility to such an extent that unless he is prepared to do some fundamental changes to the way that wordpress. Org, the WordPress Foundation, and the basic governance of those two organizations are combined in a more example like Drupal or other open source projects that his credibility and the credibility of WordPress will not be saved.
[00:27:53.320] – Spencer Forman
I don’t think it’s ever going to be the same after this anyway. I mean, this is the genie coming out of the bottle moment. So what has been provoked, let’s take everything you say for face value. Something is causing him mental and emotional stress. And as a human being, I empathize. I don’t know what it is, but it has nothing to do with what he filed the lawsuit for. He didn’t come out and say, You assaulted my dog, or, You ran your car over my foot. He’s coming out with claims and attacking your company in good standing. You may not like their product, as I don’t, but WP Engine is a model citizen of WordPress community, with a few exceptions that I gripe about, like trying to turn the ACF plugin into something that breaks. But that’s a minor infraction, not a… They have been the model of success. Jason Cohen and Heather and the rest of the team there… Okay, now, I’m saying, you know those videos on YouTube or TikTok where the tiny guy gets drunk and he starts swinging and annoying everybody, the women and the children and the little men and everything.
[00:28:57.250] – Spencer Forman
And then along comes some big, lunky guy, and he tries to swing, and it bounces off the guy’s head, and he smashes this guy cold out flat. It’s over. Over. That’s what happens when you let your emotions get the best of you, when you didn’t have your house in order before. And what I mean by this is, in my history as a litigator, my history as an entrepreneur, my history in tech, I’m publicly on the record taking on big companies, Mark Andreessen’s companies, $100 million dollar at the time, investment companies. I made sure that if I was going to go public doing something really crazy, and at the time, the stuff I did was really crazy, got three or four TechCrunch articles, that I had the goods to go into court with because that’s what they train you in law school. I don’t feel that’s what happened here because when you go crazy, then crazy times two and three, and I’m not saying that’s mad. I’m saying if a person, if anyone, rhetorically, goes out in public attacking things, you’re going to run into that big lump, where you take a swing at and your fist bounces off and you go, Uh-oh.
[00:30:05.010] – Spencer Forman
I effed around and I found out. And that’s what’s going to happen here, is that my prediction is that for the WordPress community standpoint, and I wish Matt the best, and Matt is not going to suffer any financial repercussions from this either way because that’s part of the problem. The way he set this up prevented him from ever losing. That’s part of the reason we’re at the place we’re at, that he felt emboldened to go whatever this is called. When it gets to court, my prediction is going to be that the WordPress side of things is going to fail on all counts, that the WP engine is going to be successful on several of the counts, and that it’s going to force a divestiture of his standing for what he has set up, whether it be on the corporate structure, the governance, whether it be on the finances or the tax, that the scrutiny that he never could really wish upon himself is going to come as a result of this. That’s unfortunate. But here’s the benefit to the community. The community has long suffered from the fact that, and I have suggested publicly, and there’s pluses and minuses, that we need some governance structure, not dissimilar from the maker takers and the credit for it, that allows people to contribute to the community, get the benefit of that, but also that has elected and voted in people withstanding, people who can benefit and be participatory in what really happens in the ecosystem.
[00:31:30.120] – Spencer Forman
I think that’s where this is going to end up, is that when it gets divested from him or from the corporations or things that he set up, it’s going to go into some structure that the courts will manage or monitor with an administrator of some kind that will set this thing up. That’s the positive of all this, because at the end of the day, guess what? He doesn’t lose any of his financial standing. He can sit there and take the checks and be the guy that’s Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken, but he’s no longer going to be, after this is done, in my opinion, going to be able to continue on with this do as I say, not as I do phenomena, because that’s what I think the ultimate price is that’s going to be paid here.
[00:32:07.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, let’s look at some examples of other open source, because there is… Now, there’s the example of DDH of Ruby on Rels, which then you have the example of Drupal. I don’t particularly know in in detail how Ruby on Rels Foundation is-It’s a different structure than Drupal.
[00:32:36.530] – Spencer Forman
In fairness, the simple way to say it-The two founders of Drupal, or let’s takeLaVal.
[00:32:45.680] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s Tick LaVal.
[00:32:46.590] – Spencer Forman
Nobody knows what LaVal is. Yeah, but- It’s too esoteric. Drupal is fine.
[00:32:50.120] – Jonathan Denwood
Drupal. They’re with two foundations based on open source with a very different culture than Ruby on Rails. Now, I don’t disagree with everything David says, because he’s extremely smart and intelligent, and also the company, 39 Signals.
[00:33:15.180] – Spencer Forman
37 Signals.
[00:33:16.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. But he’s not my cup of tea. He just isn’t my cup of tea, but he’s done me no harm.
[00:33:26.380] – Spencer Forman
But what does that have to do with it? What is your judgment on the company?
[00:33:30.280] – Jonathan Denwood
It has a very, too, very… If you take the Drupal and you take the Ruby on Rels, they’re both open-source projects, but the way they are managed and the way The culture of those two open-source projects are extremely different, aren’t they?
[00:33:51.170] – Spencer Forman
Yeah, but I would argue… Okay, so I’m a big 37signals fan from day one. So what David and Jason that Fried had created is from my backyard. I love them. They’re complete individual personalities, and I don’t want to say they’re good, bad, or otherwise. They’re like me.
[00:34:10.460] – Jonathan Denwood
But couldn’t you say that about Matt?
[00:34:14.300] – Spencer Forman
Yes, but here’s what I’m going to make the connection on that. It’s like Machiaveli, right? Is it better to be loved or feared? It’s like, I hate to use historical figures, but pick your historical authoritarian dictator through time, including some of the presidents of the United States. They weren’t dictators, but they were really heavy-handed. Lyndon Johnson, he used to lean in and pull his schwang out and intimidate people. I’m saying Larry Ellison, that dude is 80 plus. He looks like he’s 50. He’s paid for genetic modifications to be a time machine. He’s hanging out with young people and nobody could tell. Compare him to Balmer or Bill Gates or whatever. When people have this unique position of being a a niche figure with a community, call it a club, a culture, a cult, below them. They can be loved, feared, hated, as long as they’re consistent and careful and they look out for everybody below them. Steve Jobs was a maniac, but he had such raving fan people because he continued to amaze and dazzle and surprise, and his bold things made people feel like, get on board with wherever this thing is going. The difficulty is when you look at Drupal and DHAH, they’re completely different.
[00:35:31.980] – Spencer Forman
David is, for all intents and purposes, a miniature Steve Jobs. He’s got a very smaller audience, but he is really smart, really on par, drives his race cars, keeps his nose out of everybody else’s business except he has very strong opinions about Ruby and Rails, Ruby, and he delivers the goods. So everybody can count on him that his products are like Apple. Drupal, on the other hand, is more like a farmer’s market, where Wikipedia and so forth. The That founder, I won’t put your his name, because I don’t know him personally. It’s Dries. He got out of the way properly from day one. Like a 501(C)(3) founder, a foundation founder is supposed to. He said, The rules are no different from me. For me than for everybody. So when he made his for-profit company, he didn’t call it Druple. Com, drupal. Org, like wordpress. Com. What did Matt do? Matt did an amazing thing. He took this thing that Mike had created, Mike Little, and he turned it into this like, Everybody wants to paint the fence for Tom Sawyer. But where he lost us, starting with the thesis arguments and the other stuff, he kept revealing the cracks in his armor, his public persona, along the way.
[00:36:45.620] – Spencer Forman
And as the ecosystem grew to being hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, something was bubbling in his head that he couldn’t keep in and he couldn’t funnel like David into a, We are the top company selling Ruby on rail stuff. I am the king. Larry Ellison, he’s the king of Oracle. Mark Benioff, the king of all things starting with Salesforce. When you own the market and you’re the founder, everybody looks to you like you’re a genius. I think the nature of this problem is that WordPress got no respect. It’s the Rodney danger field of open source projects. Then here comes WP engine, among other companies, GoDaddy before them, mind in their business, following the rules, making it killing. Maybe not so fair to their customers about what they’re saying and doing, but they can take flak from people like me and handle it just fine while they’re going to the bank. But something caused Matt to be triggered almost like a competitive thing.
[00:37:41.570] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I’ve been told the things, but I don’t know how true they are.
[00:37:48.250] – Spencer Forman
But now-You see what I mean? The difference in how they’re running is there.
[00:37:53.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Obviously, you’ve got a hard break, so I want to keep this moving. Some people object to the prospect of a more traditional structure for WordPress because they say it will end up as a project run by a committee. I don’t really follow that because I feel you could have a CEO, that CEO could have a term of 10 years, and then you can have a board called and they can supervise that CEO. If that CEO needs to be removed, you should have a membership, and you could have that CEO can only be removed if you get 70%, and that CEO, man or woman, could have the authority to run WordPress for a 10-year There’s all sorts of structures, so I don’t really follow this argument that you’re going to end up with something that’s just run by committee, which I feel would be a nightmare. What’s your response to that?
[00:39:15.390] – Spencer Forman
There’s a nice… I agree with your premise, but I would just suggest a different method of arriving there because there’s suggestions from the Driss Butiar and some of the other comments, even full reddit, subreddits on this, that it doesn’t have to be king for 10 years, and it doesn’t have to be Ninkampoops committee of 50 all arguing all day long about going in circles. What it needs to be is something that’s more logical, where, first of all, there is a participatory capability for anyone or any company based upon their desire to do so, and based upon being voted or elected, and based upon a contributory measurement scale, like the make or takeer thing, where there things you can contribute Hey, I’m a single guy, but I put in 500 hours this month or something training people on WordPress. That should be worth something, versus, auto says it’s no good unless I do five for the future, right? And I get no credit. And if you’re a $100 million company, you should be able to lay some coin into a fund that’s used for paying for stuff like people who are managing the court. If you do that system, I am quite sure that the court system will impose, after taking suggestions, a system very much like that for governance over what is really WordPress.
[00:40:37.410] – Spencer Forman
It is the software, and it’s the community. And the software part will take care of itself, because, by the way, let us not forget, any one of us, any one of us, Spencer included, take all the software and fork it and be completely 100% within our rights. We may not be able to call it WordPress. We may not for very much longer be able to call it WP something, although I think you still will. But you could definitely call it Spence Press, John Press, Awesome Press, and you’d be perfectly within your rights. So when push comes to shove, that’s the Achilles heel of this entire thing that from day one, 20 years I’ve been talking about this. This is what led me to the Holy land of WordPress from Ning and the other closed platforms where they got pissed off and their attorneys shut off 12,500 customers just because they could. And Elon Musk shut off all these people from Twitter today. With open source, that’s the number one thing the GPL says that no court, I think, will argue. My suggestion is this will come out as it comes out, but it’s not going to be vote a president for 10 years, and it’s even just I think she stepped down.
[00:41:46.710] – Spencer Forman
It’s not going to be like the king appointed a person in their place. That’s what’s broken right now. What’s broken is this vague who’s really running it and who’s the interest they have.
[00:42:00.090] – Jonathan Denwood
When it came out that you have this very, seemed to me, a very complicated structure that had been set up to manage WordPress, you got Automatic and its owner, which is a private company. Then you’ve got the founder actually has the control of wordpress. Org. Then you’ve got this foundation. Then you’ve got a commercial company entity that then he automatic or the founder gave the trademark to the foundation. It seems a very complicated set-up. And his argument about this setup was mostly around for some tax reasons. But it still seems extremely… I’m no expert. What happens-What was your response when you heard about how all this had been set up? It seems extremely-Well, because this is what happens in court.
[00:43:17.230] – Spencer Forman
People who have never done… By the way, nobody should try for this, but nobody’s ever been a participant or a litigator in trial, federal or state, understands how ridiculous things get. You You can see it on TV sometimes. But when I do deals, complex deals, I go, You have my word, or if you want to write it on an email. People go, I need an NDA. I need a 40-page contract. I need this. I need to perform. I go, Do whatever you want, because I’ve been to court as a litigator and as a participant. You know what happens? The more details you make your lawyers write into these convoluted things, the more likely you’re going to trip on your own shoelace and fall on your own knife. That’s what’s happening here because this should never have happened. Never, never, never, ever, ever. The 20 plus years should have gone by with this convoluted architecture of how this open source thing is mixed together with the same word as a for-profit company and that the trademarks are, do this, but no, don’t do that unless my mom is confused or whatever it is, none of this is going to do well in court under scrutiny.
[00:44:29.270] – Spencer Forman
Furthermore, this is what I do feel bad about. I’m not saying I know better. This is journalistic pundit talk. Somebody does something who is good for the community and everybody holds them a good standing. Then you find out something was going on in the background that wasn’t quite kosher. And even if it wasn’t malintent or maybe it wasn’t illegal or anything, it was just like, really? You had all this time and you could have figured it out. And why did you do this to yourself? This is what I concerned myself with about Matt and his standing, because I think he’s a fine human being. I love the fact that I’m here because of Matt. But he didn’t do himself any favors by bringing this scrutiny on himself because the structure itself does not objectively seem to be set up as it should have, would have, could have over the last 20 years. These behaviors that are referred to by this web of logic are not the problem, but they’re indicative of a perspective that has lost touch with the bet that is on the of remember, who is he taking swings at now? He’s not swinging at little people and kids and women and stuff.
[00:45:36.370] – Spencer Forman
He’s swinging at some big lungs now, and he’s doing really not helpful behavior to demonstrate that he’s objectively of sound mind and principle here because the thing he’s doing here.
[00:45:49.530] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think I would like him to still be actively involved in WordPress.
[00:45:58.700] – Spencer Forman
How would that change, by the Let’s talk about a hypothetical.
[00:46:01.740] – Jonathan Denwood
I was thinking about. I was just about to lay it out to you, actually. I think it would be great if he was chairman of WordPress for Life, but he would have to give up ownership of wordpress. Org to the foundation, and they would have to be plopper audience and open-source governance of that organization. You’re shaking your head.
[00:46:34.560] – Spencer Forman
So what’s- I’m shaking my head because… Here’s an example. Jonathan Denwood, it was found out, has been pouring toxic waste from his factory into the drinking water of the local school system, knowingly for 20 years. He gets found out. They say, Jonathan, we’re going to turn off your spiget, and you have to say you’re sorry, and everything else. Now, Jonathan is the President Emeritus for life of the school board. You can’t put somebody’s credibility in the public persona back in the bottle. The actions that he has taken this last week or so, and continuing with these things, will forever impede his ability to be seen as an objective, benevolent leader. It is pure Machiavelian. He has now placed himself in an adversarial position against well-good standing members of the community and demonstrated, Everybody, look out. You don’t know when you’re next. Neutering his capabilities and leaving him in place as a figurehead is pointless. He needs to be given a graceful way to benefit for all of his hard work and effort, and he will more likely than that, this has nothing to do with Spencer Foreman, I have no say in this, I promise you, he will likely be forced by a divestiture of something into some position like that, not as a figurehead, but rather as, We will retire to a graceful place and you get all the financial benefits, and I’m sure you’ll have great speaking opportunities, but that this has, I think, caused a bridge too far to be crossed.
[00:48:12.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I slightly disagree with you there, But you might be totally right.
[00:48:16.860] – Spencer Forman
I mean, I’m just making a prediction.
[00:48:18.860] – Jonathan Denwood
If I can finish.
[00:48:21.100] – Spencer Forman
By the way, Jonathan, I know that it’s two of us, and I know that I’m not trying to be interruptive, but you don’t have to keep reminding me because it’s not that we’re not having a discussion. We’re having a discussion like if I was having a beer with you, and we’ve known each other 20 years. So please, I’m not trying to interrupt you, but if I want to add a thing in there, just let me say the blip and it will be easier. We’ve talked about this before. You and I are discussing something we’re both very passionate about, so let’s have a real- I’m not sure I’m fine about it.
[00:48:48.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I was a little bit. I interrupted you quite a bit in the roundtable. Which is fine. You could. So that’s one of the reasons why I wanted this discussion to give you the to express your ideas. Because of your background- I will try to restrain myself.
[00:49:05.510] – Spencer Forman
I’m sorry for that.
[00:49:06.270] – Jonathan Denwood
Because of your background, your legal background and your business background, and to give you total credit, You were prepared to have this conversation. A lot of people were very nice to me, but because of the situation, they just didn’t want to be part of this conversation, and I could totally understand it. I think we’ve had a very insightful and fair conversation, and nobody could say that we have been unfair in this conversation.
[00:49:38.910] – Spencer Forman
It’s fine. Because we only have nine minutes. Go back to what you were going on, because I’m sorry for interrupting you, but we only have nine minutes, and I have a hard stop.
[00:49:45.130] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I feel that unless he acts decisively and gets this matter settled in the next week to two weeks and comes to a settlement with WP engine and does a lot more than that, the outcome will be what you have just outlined. I do agree with you. Where I disagree is if he can find, if he can If there’s anybody that has real influence with him, his legal counsel, whoever it might be, and he needs to act extremely quickly and act probably be further than what he wants to, in my opinion, it could be retrievable for him to some degree. But I do agree with you. If he doesn’t do any of the things, in my opinion, that I have laid out, I think the consequence will be what you have laid out.
[00:50:52.940] – Spencer Forman
I mean, there could very well be an intermediary ground. So what happens in litigation, more often than not, is you get up to the day of the trial, even get into a trial, and then the party settle. Let’s just say one side wins through a litigation judgment, or if they have a trial, a verdict. The other way is that the settlement happens because the two Titans clash and they work it out, like the longshoremen’s thing on the West Coast this week. I think, though, it would be very difficult for the community to heal from what has been revealed, from the unnecessary, in my journalistic judgment, actions that did not represent support for the legal arguments he was trying to win sympathy or legal justification for it. In other words, people who have their trademarks violated that are running a for-public company or even a for-profit private company, they do not go out and publicly They do things that are contrary to the claims they’re making the other party is doing wrong. Don’t double down on doing the same wrong thing that you’re claiming is the reason you’re suing somebody or arguing something.
[00:52:12.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Can I say something there? I totally agree with you because I just don’t understand why Matt can’t see the contradictions. See, the Five for the Future was always bound to fail, in my opinion.
[00:52:29.990] – Spencer Forman
But where’s the legal ground for that anyway? There’s nothing that requires Five for the Future.
[00:52:34.040] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m not going to remark about the legal side, but I mean why I felt it was doomed to fail. Because I said on somebody else’s YouTube podcast that I wouldn’t contribute 5% of my time.
[00:52:52.310] – Spencer Forman
They wouldn’t take your 5%, that’s the problem.
[00:52:55.100] – Jonathan Denwood
I got really some of the people we know in the community were part discussion, and straight away they said, Well, I’m going to contribute 5% of my companies.
[00:53:06.270] – Spencer Forman
How many shows do you have, by the way, Jonathan, in support of your effort? Like 500 plus shows, right?
[00:53:11.550] – Jonathan Denwood
900.
[00:53:12.910] – Spencer Forman
Now, okay, so let me support what you’re saying. You have 900 shows, WordPress promoted underneath every single show. It’s like this wouldn’t exist without WordPress. Sorry, that’s not a Five for the Future thing, man. Sorry. And now Jonathan goes to volunteer. We met San Diego. You couldn’t even get a journalistic badge without begging for it.
[00:53:34.960] – Jonathan Denwood
I couldn’t.
[00:53:35.660] – Spencer Forman
And Five For The Future, sorry, sucker, you were doing live interviews of WordPress personalities in the lobby for the whole weekend. Sorry, sucker, that’s not Five For The Future. This whole Five For The Future thing is a complete red herring because there’s no legal basis for Five For The Future to be relevant.
[00:53:50.270] – Jonathan Denwood
I totally agree what you said, but I actually think it’s worse because how is somebody, and I’m I’m not defending WP Engine, a private equity company. I’m not a close friend of Jason, but I would consider him a friend. But he sold a long time ago, most of his ownership of that business. But what I’m saying is Matt constructed something. You can’t ask hosting companies to really contribute when you’ve got wordpress. Com, and then you’ve also got a traditional hosting company that you own as a competitor.
[00:54:36.200] – Spencer Forman
That’s the point.
[00:54:37.080] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s truly-How could you even do Five For The Future as a hosting company?
[00:54:42.250] – Spencer Forman
As I suggested, if WPN says, Fine, We’ll pay for 5,000 developers on demand for as much time as you need. Guess what would happen? There’d be 5,000 people twiddling their thumbs because nobody in core is going to let them touch anything. And second of all, they’re going to be contramanded by probably a competitive problem because wordpress. Com is not going to want to share internal workings or VIP. There’s all these conflicts of interest. And when you say that the legal basis for attacking a company is they didn’t do enough contribution to a thing you run in your own little way, what are you talking about? That is not in the law. That’s not a mandate. That’s not part of the ethics. There’s nothing about Fire for the future that was part of, you can’t be in WordPress unless you do fire for the future. That’s nonsense. So the only thing that’s left is if you have a legal basis, if you have a financial reason that’s based on the tax code or somebody doing something unfair practices or anticompetitive, but you cannot simply bring up all these things that you’re guilty of doing worse for with your organization and point at one company and then start literally interfering with their business and their clients.
[00:55:51.250] – Spencer Forman
That trail, by the way, you mark my words on that. If there could be any demonstrable damages to all the agencies and the clients of WP engine as a result of these shutouts, like even as of this morning from the repository or for whatever, that’s a class action waiting to happen for somebody. I’m sure it’s already been figured out if there’s actual damages. It seems like when you look back on this whole thing, what is the net win-loss? Had nothing happened, WP engine still makes a fortune and automatic is still making a fortune, and Matt’s place as the benevolent dictator is secure. He goes and does this, and now it’s all in at the.
[00:56:36.520] – Jonathan Denwood
The thing I would say, I totally agree with everything you said, but we also got to remember, though, the private equity company that bought WP engine, they’ve got to make this a lot more profitable. Why? Well, obviously-No, but look at what they make. They have plans in the tradition of private equity, either they’re going to take to a public offering.
[00:57:01.890] – Spencer Forman
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying they’re not underwater. Listen, this is an important distinction, so I’m sorry for interrupting you. Sometimes companies like that, Japanese investment from SoftBank, gave $5 billion to WeWork and just flush the money down the toilet.
[00:57:18.630] – Jonathan Denwood
My favorite person, you bring him up.
[00:57:22.350] – Spencer Forman
This private equity company does not have that problem. Wp engine is printing money right now. Printing money. They They should have just shut up and kept doing what they’re doing, which is what I think they were going to be doing. They weren’t trying to make a fuss, but they were forced. They were forced into the open. That’s where you punch that big guy and you go, Whoa, that was a mistake. They’ve got the money, all the financial reasons. Now, some argue, maybe it’s true, we’ll find out. There was some secretive thing going on. I don’t know what the hell behind the door. But we’re going to find out now because it’s all in the public record. One of these giants is either going win or they’re going to settle. But no matter which, nobody’s going to think the same of WP Engine, but that’s their unfortunate battle.
[00:58:07.550] – Jonathan Denwood
I also just want to finish off with this. I think there was other people in the WordPress community that were highly critical of Matt, but they wanted a scenario which 39 Signals faced.
[00:58:26.490] – Spencer Forman
Which was-39 Signals faced?
[00:58:27.890] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, where they got a company culture where people really brought their political views to the business. And in the end, this is all out in the public, that 39 Signals really had to say, We can’t have this anymore. It’s causing this is a business. We can’t have all these political discussions. I think there was a certain group of people in WordPress that wanted a culture that seemed to be at 39 Signals. And I don’t think you can have that either because that ends up in madness. Do you think there’s any credibility in what I’ve just said?
[00:59:25.340] – Spencer Forman
Yeah, but we covered this before. The difference between the Drupal Foundation and 37 Signals DHA-slash for me and real- That’s 37, yeah. Is that… I use Larry Ellison. I use Bill Gates and Balmer. Dha and Jason Fried have never given up their crown. They had some political upheaval a couple of years ago; remember when people in their company were unhappy, or they were doing this? And you know what they did? They learned from their lesson and kept their powder dry by changing the corporate structure. Public mea-culpa, we were crazy. I don’t know what we were thinking. We fixed it. We donated money to these causes for what they did wrong. And then they plugged all the holes in the boat. And now they run it like Jason Fried famously says, and I love, as a Chicago guy, an endless lifestyle business for two dudes and a few employees that prints money. And you know what? That’s what Matt should have done if you want my opinion. He should have just ridden the wave all to the top, but something in his head said he needed to do something more.
[01:00:34.480] – Spencer Forman
I don’t know what’s happening, and I don’t want to talk about Matt because I do not know what’s happening in his head. From the objective problems that that’s caused, he’s opened himself up to the scrutiny that 37 Signals did endure about that internal… It had something to do with the practices, how they treated or talked to the employees, and there was misogyny.
[01:00:53.040] – Jonathan Denwood
It seemed to become a very highly politicized company.
[01:00:58.160] – Spencer Forman
Nobody wants a dirty company culture, didn’t they? Yeah, but nobody wants it. Listen, that’s why I will never run for political office. My life has been a mess, but I, as a human, accept that. If I were to go public for any reason, I would be the first person to publish Every bad thing I can ever think I ever did. I’d be like, take it or leave it. It’s when people have duplicity that bothered me about Matt’s public persona. We’ve seen him for 20 years when he had a crack in the wall. What happens is that he starts Chris Pearson in the thesis thing and keeps going. And this is just the latest version. And it is just that when people have that, the dam breaks hard. And that’s probably a healthy thing because if something is troublesome to this community, it’s its duplicitousness. It is the do as I say, not as I do. It is the kingdom run by the king and a couple of his henchmen, which is unsuitable for something of this size. So the benefit to the community, and we’ll all be acceptable, is that the software is untouchable.
[01:02:01.230] – Spencer Forman
Those who make their living from it will continue to do so. As long as you’re not throwing knives at people you shouldn’t get in a fight with; everybody can get along just fine. And maybe this will clear the air. But my prediction, and to wrap this up because I’m over my time, is that the WP engine if they do not settle, will prevail on their counts, and then I don’t think the WordPress will prevail. I don’t believe that WP engine is a winner here or that they’re good for their community because they will also suffer the slings and arrows of what’s happened about their business practices. But we need this to happen to clear the path to a brighter future for getting stuff done. Because of this drama, the never-ending drama of what side of the bed Matt wakes up on, what Syed A heads company is doing, or what the WP engine is doing, all these… This has been something we’ve talked about for a couple of years now. Some people have to be put into a position where there is objective governance and community oversight because that’s good for everybody, and that’s the nature of open source.
[01:03:00.620] – Spencer Forman
Ta-da, that’s really what it was supposed to be.
[01:03:02.550] – Jonathan Denwood
So, thank you for the discussion. How can people find out more about you and your ideas, Spencer?
[01:03:08.920] – Spencer Forman
I’m starting a Save WordPress charitable fund. I’m selling gold cougars. You can catch it. You could see me. By the way, this entire show was a journalistic commentary. You can find me on wplaunchfi.com on social media at Spencer Foreman. I, for one, have seen this movie many times in other areas. I have lots. Look me up on TechCrunch; you’ll see my whole drama story. I’ve seen this before in real courts and otherwise. I know this, too, shall pass. As a human being, I have only one rule. Do unto others as you want them to do unto yourself. That applies to personal relationships, business relationships, and corporate relationships. If we all did more of that as human beings, we would have a much better world. That is the one I am striving for on a personal level for Matt, WP Engine, and the rest of us. Please take it to heart that I have no ax to grind with anybody, but I do think we have a lot of growing up to do as human beings.
[01:04:03.700] – Jonathan Denwood
If you find this conversation interesting, please comment on the WPTonic YouTube channel or iTunes. We would love to get some feedback from the community. In my last roundtable show, I got some criticism for butting in a little bit, which I think was fair. I think I got a bit over-efficacious myself. I’ve given Spencer a fair crack at this, but it’s been a very respectful, exciting discussion. I don’t think anybody could have any criticism of the debate that we’ve had in this show.
[01:04:44.140] – Spencer Forman
Oh, it’s okay. People don’t know you, and I spent years doing shows together, so we’re like an old married couple, like the odd couple. But yes, today was okay. I am sure nothing has been discussed here today that is even remotely close to what’s been published a million times. I think this turned out to be an excellent way to recap the general story for whomever it is of interest.
[01:05:08.990] – Jonathan Denwood
We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
[01:05:11.730] – Spencer Forman
Peace.
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