Joost de Valk, co-founder of the Yoast SEO plugin, called for a change in WordPress governance that removes Mullenweg as the sole decision maker, offering to lead the transition to a more democratic and diverse board that is representative of WordPress stakeholders. Matt Mullenweg disagreed.
Critique Of Mullenweg’s Leadership
Joost says that he was prompted to speak out after Matt Mullenweg’s decision to pause WordPress services over the holidays which inadvertently caused an issue with WordCamp registrations, forcing Joost to open a GitHub ticket to fix the problem. The holiday pause made it clear to Joost one-person control of the WordPress project had become problematic.
Mullenweg’s leadership style was called into question, with Joost characterizing him as a Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL) whose rule was no longer benevolent. He cited Mullenweg from an interview where he states he doesn’t identify as a dictator and suggested the phrase “enlightened leader.” Joost scoffed at the idea, stating that many in the WordPress community would disagree with the self-description of “enlightened leader.”
WordPress Community Lacks Democracy
The blog post notes the irony the WordPress Project’s mission is to democratize publishing but the WordPress project itself far from democratic, essentially controlled by one person. He expressed the belief that the current governance structure doesn’t allow for diversity of opinions and that his restrictive control over the WordPress trademark is stifling growth.
Screenshot Of WordPress’s Mission Statement
On the lack of diversity of opinions he writes:
“You need many voices, many ideas, many backgrounds. You need to embrace diversity. Unfortunately, those with ideas that don’t follow the same direction as our current leader, are being shut down, quite a few even banned…”
One of the changes Joost proposes is a loosening of Mullenweg’s grip on the WordPress trademark to allow for more growth:
“The WordPress trademark is given to the public domain or otherwise dealt with in such a way that every company can freely say that they do ‘WordPress hosting’, ‘WordPress support’ etc. Not just because that’s the right thing to do in my mind, but because doing so means we allow growth of the terms and the concepts.”
Joost’s Role and Vision For Change
Lastly, Joost volunteers to lead the change at WordPress so that it becomes a truly democratic foundation with a governing board representing all the stakeholders.
He writes:
“Taking back the commons means that we try to hear every voice, be considerate of all the different use cases of that commons and bring us all forward.
…I’m here, and willing to lead through this transition.”