You call yourself a Christian engineer, but you haven’t given your life to Open Source? Huh.
What license would Jesus choose? I don’t know if it’s GPL or MIT, but sure as heck it isn’t proprietary.
Letting proprietary code dictate your life is like following a Bible you’re not allowed to read. Beware those who would seek to mediate your relationship to the divine.
Happy Easter, y’all. 🙏🐰🌈
(and the new colors are on the site.)
One of my favorite YouTubers is Charles Cornell (WordPress-powered!), who creates great videos that break down the music theory of various things you’ve heard, such as this adorable one featuring SNES soundtracks or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I first came across him reacting to Jacob Collier in 2020. Once I got super-into Severance, his breakdown of the spooky music is great. It’s also interesting to see that the YouTube community is going through its own version of fair use and copyright, trademark, etc., enforcement, which he discusses here.
Sam Altman is always interesting to follow, and it’s interesting to contrast this great interview he did with David Perell on writing with this very direct and awkward one with Tucker Carlson. I have immense respect for anyone who enters the arena and engages directly with journalists or critics, rather than hiding behind PR agents or lawyers. Given the current blood feud, it’s fun to go back eight years and see Sam Altman interview Elon Musk, long before any of the AI stuff blew up they were both terribly prescient.
Ray Dalio is always a gem and he went on Diary of a CEO. Theo Browne has a good take on what it means to vibe code. Kishan Bagaria discusses how Beeper is going to reach 100 million users. The story of how Atlassian took a non-traditional enterprise path with Jay Simons is great. Not a YouTube, but don’t miss Bret Taylor on The Verge. Check out Adam D’Angelo at South Park Commons.
And finally, I’ll say that YouTube Premium, which turns off all the ads, is probably one of the highest value subscriptions you can have. Many of these are essentially like podcasts, and from a product perspective, I think we need to figure out how to sync and allow seamless movement between watching, listening, or reading transcripts in Pocket Casts (Automattic’s open-source podcasting app). We support video podcasts, but there’s no good way yet to have a Whispersync-like experience between video, audio, and a transcript.
In honor of Automattic’s 20th anniversary, and also since it’s been a few years, I joined Nilay Patel the editor-in-chief of The Verge on their Decoder Podcast. We talked about Tumblr and the Fediverse, how Automattic thinks about Ecosystem and Cosmos sides of the business, Automattic’s re-organization into cross-business functional teams and leadership, the vision of Clay as a personal CRM and Beeper as the super-human messaging app that puts control in the hands of users, Newspack, the future of websites, the obligatory coverage of the alleged WP Engine trademark violations and their subsequent preemptive suit, and much more. Please give it a listen! They chose the title “Why Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg went to war over WordPress.”
Speaking of Beeper, we’re going to do a fun event for the next-gen version that’s launching on July 16 in New York City in NoHo. I’ll be there along with Beeper CEO Kishan Bagaria and some of the best and brightest in New York’s tech and creative class. If you’re a Beeper early adopter (or would like to be) and want to attend, leave a comment! We’ve held back some invites for cool folks like readers of ma.tt. 🙂 It’s like getting on board with WordPress in 2004.
My father attended University of Houston, and it’s where I went to college to study political science, I started WordPress when there, and then dropped out after two years to move to San Francisco. It was fun seeing UH Magazine feature an article about my journey from a University of Houston student to co-founding WordPress and leading Automattic. I was surprised they put me on the cover of the physical edition! I wish my Dad were still around to see it.
The piece explores my commitment to open-source, my vision for democratizing online publishing, and the values of creativity and adaptability that have shaped my path. It’s an honor to reflect on these experiences with my alma mater.
A quick followup on my prior conversation with Theo.
During that chat, I talked briefly about a trademark infringer that was also distributing nulled plugins. I said “Not illegal. Legal under the GPL. But they weren’t changing the names. They were selling their customers Pro Plugins with the licensing stuff nulled out.”
I want to be clear that my reference to legality and GPL was solely focused on the copying and modifying of the code. That is one of the key freedoms of open source and GPL: the right to copy and modify GPL code.
I was not speaking about their right to charge money for nulled plugins. GPLv2 prohibits that because they aren’t providing physical copies or support. This is very different from reputable web hosts, who provide hosting and support for websites and e-commerce stores.
I’ve taken this post down. I’ve been attacked so much the past few days; the most vicious, personal, hateful words poisoned my brain, and the original version of this post was mean. I am so sorry. I shouldn’t let this stuff get to me, but it clearly did, and I took it out on DHH, who, while I disagree with him on several points, isn’t the actual villain in this story: it’s WP Engine and Silver Lake.
A few bullets to his core points:
Lee controls the board of WP Engine. The board is why WP Engine hasn’t done a trademark deal for their use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.
You hide behind lawyers and corporate PR when you’re wrong, not when you’re right.
I’m replying on Twitter, I’m commenting on Reddit and Hacker News, I’m dropping into livestreams with ThePrimeagen and WPMinute. I’m talking to journalists whenever they reach out, and I’m happy to go on any large credible podcast or show to discuss these issues.
Lee could do the same. Why isn’t he?
Lee is a managing director of a $102B private equity firm, he is probably richer than me. (Though I doubt he gives back as much.)
“Because their lawyers are telling him not to.” Why do you think their lawyers are telling them not to?
Open invite: Lee, let’s debate this publicly. Propose a neutral venue and moderator.
I’ve been writing and talking about WP Engine a lot in the last week, but I want to be crystal clear about the core issue at play.
In short, WP Engine is violating WordPress’ trademarks. Moreover, they have been doing so for years. We at Automattic have been attempting to make a licensing deal with them for a very long time, and all they have done is string us along. Finally, I drew a line in the sand, which they have now leapt over.
We offered WP Engine the option of how to pay their fair share: either pay a direct licensing fee, or make in-kind contributions to the open source project. This isn’t a money grab: it’s an expectation that any business making hundreds of millions of dollars off of an open source project ought to give back, and if they don’t, then they can’t use its trademarks. WP Engine has refused to do either, and has instead taken to casting aspersions on my attempt to make a fair deal with them.
WordPress is licensed under the GPL; respect for copyright and IP like trademarks is core to the GPL and our conception of what open source means. If WP Engine wants to find another open source project with a more permissive license and no trademarks, they are free to do so; if they want to benefit from the WordPress community, then they need to respect WordPress trademark and IP.
Further reading:
We no longer need companies, institutions, or government to organize us. We now have the tools to organize ourselves. We can find each other and coalesce around political causes or bad companies or talent or business or ideas. We can share and sort our knowledge and behavior. We can communicate and come together in an instant. We also have new ethics and attitudes that spring from this new organization and change society in ways we cannot yet see, with openness, generosity, collaboration, efficiency. We are using the internet’s connective tissue to leap over borders—whether they surround countries or companies or demographics. We are reorganizing society. This is Google’s—and Facebook’s and craigslist’s—new world order.
— Jeff Jarvis in the book What Would Google Do? Published 2009.
Interesting to revisit as they float trial balloons on breaking Google up (terrible idea) or other antitrust enforcement.
The Audrey Scholars program is still getting started, but I wanted to introduce another opportunity: Freedom grants. As the page says “If you are an open source contributor, and you feel your current political environment is incompatible with open source values, we would like to offer the opportunity for a grant to help you get set up in a new environment. Please state your case below.”
I’m not sure exactly how this will work, but we’ll figure it out together. The offer is out there. This is very much inspired by the work of the Oslo Freedom Forum.
One of my favorite talks from TED last week was by Laura Galante. The most hackable device on the planet is your own mind:
From Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Price acceptance speech in 1986:
And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remain silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.
Wired has a fun and informative look at How to Rig a Presidential Election in 1000 Easy Steps. Basically it’s impossible — I hadn’t really thought of this before, but every precinct has its own officials from both parties that certify everything, there are just a ton of people involved at every step of the process. All that said, I would love if voting platforms were completely open source software and had paper receipts that could be verified manually.
Also speaking of politics getting dirty, the San Francisco State Senate race has had a ton of falsehoods and attacks from Scott Weiner, someone I’ve met before and previously thought was a nice guy, but the latest mailers I’ve seen have just been deceitful (especially considering the Guardian actually endorsed his opponent, Jane Kim).
Sometimes truth is worse than what you would imagine: Smoking Gun: MPAA Emails Reveal Plan To Run Anti-Google Smear Campaign Via Today Show And WSJ.
To rid the internet of piracy, entertainment companies are willing to greatly reduce privacy, at least where website registration is concerned.
Where the entertainment industry views proxy registration as a pirate’s tool for obfuscation, privacy advocates see identity concealment as a feature that can enable free speech and freedom from harassment.
So there’s a new proposal to force any “commercial” website, which could cover pretty much anything, to have real WHOIS/contact info. This is a terrible idea, and of course there are already ample and simple means to bypass proxy services being actually abused with a court order. But they want to go a step further, so potentially a parenting blogger with ads or affiliate links on their site would be forced to put their actual home address and phone number in a public directory anyone on the internet can access, or break the law. What could go wrong? EFF has more about why this impacts user privacy.
I think the better question here, is when has the entertainment industry ever proposed something good for consumers or the internet? I’m not kidding, 100% serious: have they ever been right?
It seems like a good approach for governing bodies like FCC, ICANN, or Congress to just blanket oppose or do the opposite of what MPAA or COA propose, and they’ll be on the right side of history and magically appear to be a very tech-savvy candidate or regulator.
The Parisian taxi drivers are partly protesting against economic regulations in cities where taxi drivers have to pay for expensive medallions while Uber drivers do not. But, in a larger sense, they’re actually protesting against our increased impatience.
Om Malik: The Long History of the Fight Against Uber.
Here’s the post I wrote on a dinner I attended while at Davos for their forum blog: Online we can act as a fifth estate.
The common thread that kept coming up at a dinner, and discussions centred around the idea of “online power”, was equality of access. Before the widespread rise of the Internet and easy publishing tools, influence was largely in the hands of those who could reach the widest audience, the people with printing presses or access to a wide audience on television or radio, all one-way mediums that concentrated power in the hands of the few.
Now an audience of more than 1 billion people is only a click away from every voice online, and remarkable stories and content can gain flash audiences as people share via social networks, blogs and e-mail. This radically equalizes the power relationship between, say, a blogger, and a multibillion dollar corporation.
I heard stories of companies such as Dell shifting the direction of their products in response to online outcry started by a single blog post, authors who have millions of followers on Twitter and Facebook and able to speak to their audiences directly for the first time, a Twitter hashtag (#f***washington) becoming a rallying cry for hundreds of thousands of frustrated citizens, and how a blackout of Wikipedia to protest proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation overloaded phone systems in Congress. I shared how a community of volunteers around the world collaborated on Open Source software (WordPress) that eventually overtook all its proprietary competitors.
All of these stories shared a David and Goliath character – a seemingly unmovable force swayed by a single voice that quickly multiplies online, but they also gave me pause. We spoke about this multiplying of online voices being used for things we’d all generally agree were “good”, but that was probably largely a function of the people sharing the stories and our similar world views. You could easily imagine a viral story spreading online with malicious intent, and just as many if not more examples of untrue rumours spreading at the speed of Twitter. One table shared a fictional account of a world where online voting was ubiquitous in a country, but it had the unintended side-effect of making voter coercion easier because you could see how someone voted.
There is no moderator or ombudsman online, and while the transparency of the web usually means that information is self-correcting, we still have to keep in mind the responsibility each of us carries when the power of the press is at our fingertips and in our pockets.
I am an optimist, and I believe that people are inherently good and that if you give everyone a voice and freedom of expression, the truth and the good will outweigh the bad. So, on the whole, I think the power that online distribution confers is a positive thing for society. Online we can act as a fifth estate.
I had a really wonderful time at the Forum, it was a really unique experience.
Wired writes on The 8 Missions That Should Dominate Obama’s Technology Agenda. I’m quoted there, but here are my full responses to the questions they asked:
1. First off, how did you monitor the election results – phone, TV, twitter laptop, twitter, bar stool?
I was at a friend’s house with about a dozen people watching mostly CNN, and reading Tweetbot on an iPad Mini.
2. As someone leading a tech company (or as an investor), what are you looking for the president to do over the next four years? Are there priorities you have that the White House could help you achieve? Either from a business perspective, or a technological/hiring/infrastructure point of view?
At a macro level I hope the President keeps the economy on a path to recovery, and stays on the right side of anti-internet efforts like SOPA. What we’re building with the web is too early to be marginalized by special interests so early in its growth.
On a personal level, I hope he keeps fighting for protections and privileges under the law for my non-straight colleagues.
But the most important things we need to do will likely not have a big effect before 2016. As a country America needs to invest in its infrastructure, particularly broadband, education, particularly STEM, and in streamlining immigration, so the best and brightest who come to our shores aren’t shown the door when they graduate from one of the leading universities in the world. Four years is too short of a timeframe for these investments to pay off but that’s okay because I’m in business for the long run and I want to see our country strengthen and prosper over generations, not just the next economic cycle.
3. Were there any other races, measures etc. that you were particularly interested in, and why? What was the outcome, and why did you care so much?
I followed a few of the senate and house races, mostly as they related to SOPA and PIPA, and the state marriage equality measures.
4. Or, does all this politics stuff have zero bearing on what you are doing?
Even though the political process often frustrates me, I’ve seen its ability to influence the lives of my friends, family, and colleagues too many times to ignore it any more.