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Automattic, Inc: The Time To Return WordPress To The Community Has Come

The sentiments in this entry have been brewing for some time now, and I feel it’s high time to tell the world how I feel. It’s about WordPress and Automattic, Inc., and it involves that big chunk of the blogging community that uses WordPress.

Just as many others, I love WordPress and will probably continue using WordPress until blogging runs out of fashion, but sometimes the Automattic attitude bothers me. Months ago I already ranted over at Jack off All Blogs about Matt Mullenweg, Automattic and attitude. From that day on my sympathy for Automattic, and indirectly WordPress, has diminished greatly. That’s because of the hypocrisy, more particularly hypocrisy towards the community.

When Matt expressed his opinion on sponsored WordPress themes, both in the WordPress Idea area and at Weblog Tools Collection my antipathy for Automattic reached a never seen level. I was done with Mullenweg, even with his awesome link entries on Sunday evenings. I believe Matt’s position on sponsored themes is purely hypocritical.

Automattic and Matt have always said that they value and want to continue the open-source spirit of WordPress. And while I see the effort to keep WordPress open, sadly this interest is not community-driven, but a purely business and economic focused strategy. All the good things the community puts into to the WordPress code DIRECTLY benefit Automattic. WordPress is a registered trademark, owned by Automattic.

This means that with every code improvement WordPress benefits, the value of Automattic, Inc grows. Above all, there is a bi-directional exchange between the open source WordPress.org code and the code of WordPress.com, a hosted blogging platform operated by Automattic.com.

I highly respect Matt Mullenweg for having created WordPress and made the community around WP possible, but I can’t value the hypocrite Mullenweg, who takes position against other people, particularly themes developers, trying to earn an honest living with sponsored themes.

Right now, after weeks of reflection on Matt’s stint in the WordPress.org Ideas area, I can only appeal to Automattic, Inc. to start thinking of the community again and to return to honesty. Return to honesty and give WP back to the community. Not only the source code, but also the name. It’s time to create a Foundation, a community-based Foundation and hand over the Trademark registration for WordPress to the Foundation. If you care about the community and want to keep the WordPress community free from any financial clutter, stand up and release the Trademark registration.

Be consequent.
Be consequent with yourself.

PS: Ryan Caldwell’s entry at Performancing stimulated me to finally publish my opinion.
In an effort to avoid the Grammar Police, my blogging friend J. Angelo Racoma edited a majority of my linguistic errors.

Published by Franky on July 13, 2007 in Business • Did you like it? Subscribe! Or Submit it to Blogosphere News!

8 people says things!

  1. How can you possibly think the type of ’sponsored WordPress themes’ out there are ok? Why should WordPress and the WordPress related blogs support the people who sell links in their themes just to make some extra money?

    Btw, you might want to change the part that reads “Wisdump is proudly powered by WordPress” in your footer. And another thing, for someone who disses WordPress a lot your logo (temporary or not) is a real ringer for the WordPress one :/

    By Keith on July 13, 2007 3:58 pm

  2. Keith, I love WP as a platform and I will continue to use the open source platform WP.
    Besides that, let me tell you that a redesign is coming for Wisdump. We only have the site since some weeks and our designer is rather occupied.

    But if you mean the spammy designs submitted tens of times to the themes directory, every time with only another color scheme… and sponsored links… I agree. ;-)

    By Franky on July 13, 2007 4:03 pm

  3. Well said. I don’t think Insense was spammy in the slightest, and I think it was very high quality, and so I think users should have a choice. Great post though :)

    By David on July 13, 2007 4:16 pm

  4. Ok,
    Im going to be the first to say fark Matt Mullenweg I’ve had both discussion where he said GPL trumps actual human reguests to change links and I’ve had legal discussions with him where he took the high ground and said users could go also go fark themselves as long as GPL reigned KING. And you know what I have no respect for him as he has basically shipped users down the drain in exchange for Automattic’s dictatorship of Wordpress. I say its time for a creative fork because I’m sick of Automattic’s authoritarian dictatorship of things. Companies should and need to be able to release sponsored themes without feeling of being spammy. I don’t see it as spammy so you know what I say take your high ground and fark yourself. Your the hypocrite who installs your link on how many millions of blogrolls?

    Yeah, that’s what I thought. Shut the fark up.

    By David Krug on July 14, 2007 5:05 am

  5. I was an early member of the awkward squad - and I paid a heavy price for it. Matt and the moral high ground parted company with the Hot Nachos Spam Scandal. Now he is just a money grubbing control freak. WP is Open Source for heavens sake.

    By Root on July 14, 2007 1:58 pm

  6. [...] a writer for the oh-so-in-the-hole Wisdump wrote this article. To me, this article just says that Matt is a hypocrite and WordPress should become a charity. This [...]

    By WordPress and its Various WordPressness on July 15, 2007 6:54 pm

  7. [...] On Wisdump there came this call/plead for releasing the WordPress mark to the world: Right now, after weeks of reflection on Matt’s stint in the WordPress.org Ideas area, I can only appeal to Automattic, Inc. to start thinking of the community again and to return to honesty. Return to honesty and give WP back to the community. Not only the source code, but also the name. It’s time to create a Foundation, a community-based Foundation and hand over the Trademark registration for WordPress to the Foundation. If you care about the community and want to keep the WordPress community free from any financial clutter, stand up and release the Trademark registration. Source: Automattic, Inc: The Time To Return WordPress To The Community Has Come [...]

    By » In defense of Matt Mullenweg and WordPress A View from the Isle: Social Media, Blogging, Tech, and Opinion from Tris Hussey on July 18, 2007 12:16 am

  8. [...] a blog post by Connor Wilson recently, in which Connors was opposed to the idea of a guy called Franky criticizing Matt Mullenweg regarding the issue of banning sponsored WordPress themes for the [...]

    By Thought: When is criticism real, and when is it only a linkbait? at The Reasoner on July 19, 2007 2:41 pm

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