I just wish Matt could find ASAP a solution to the crappy “Slack” app he demands us all to use in order to participate in the WordPress community collaboration efforts.

Slack is not OSS. and in most of local communities, we can’t afford the use of paid versions of that solution, so every six months or so, we loose loads of information that should stay free and open for everyone who might need to read and learn from it.

Beginners (like me) are the ones who loose the most.

It is just so ironic that Matt defends OSS principles with such braveness but then, in regards of the core task of “making WordPress”, I consider this to be a major flaw.

I just can’t participate in full WordPress collaboration until an open solution is given to the community instead of “Slack”.

“Layoff” probably is the wrong word. But it did trim away a portion of the company who weren’t aligned with the mission of leadership, like a layoff does.

I ask as I’ve a nascent WordPress hosting business and im sure I’m not alone in being concerned that conditions might be put on me promoting that I use WordPress and those conditions are somewhat arbitrary…

Pete

With due respect, please don’t call it a layoff! It is anything but that. Thank you.

Looks like a win-win to me. Six months pay to find a new job. I’m sure having Automattic on the resume will speed things up.

Of course WP Engine is self serving. *Everyone* is self serving to some degree. There aren’t any heroes or villains in this when you get right down to it. It’s just two groups of people or business entities acting as they think appropriate to support their ideas and users/customers.

Wise governance is not about eliminating dissent but resolving it. As the saying goes, “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” Growth comes through engaging with differences, not eradicating them.

This was never going to be easy. But in the time I’ve known you, you’ve never gone with what’s easy at the expense of what’s right. That’s what brought a lot of us to Automattic in the first place, what brought some of us back after time away, and what made the overwhelming majority of us choose to stay.

I shared my thoughts on X: https://x.com/WPFahim/status/1839260017532526936.

Using Twitter as an example is not a good look.

This is a story we’ve seen repeated often, where big corporations continue to exploit the open-source industry.

From what I understand, plugins/themes, and other hosting services for enterprises or hosting providers shouldn’t be free. I’m not sure why they were to begin with. They should contribute some sort of fee towards the resources they use. Only the core WP project should remain open-source and free—not the infrastructure around it.

Additionally, this situation could have been addressed simply by implementing a “pricing” model for WordPress infrastructure costs (plugins, updates, etc.). It would have been more politically feasible to explain this to the community, and the reaction might have been very different.

If twitter survived after losing 80%, you will definitely do better things in the future.

Good luck!

Lots of new roles have opened up. We’re going to need some more hands on deck to keep up with demand.