This is likely how they pull out of the disasterous legal actions Mullenweg has taken.
Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
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Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#52Unfortunately, this is for the best. WordPress powers a large percentage of the internet, and I'm not sure what's going on with Matt (who I've always liked) but something turned the past few years. He's been behind unforced error after unforced error as CEO, and I hope a break helps him gain some perspective (although I don't see him being brought back). WordPress has been his life for 23 years. Doing the same thing…
No reason given?
Any reason needed?!? We can all see what he’s done!
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#53It's impressive this took so long.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#54[deleted]
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#55Unfortunately, this is for the best. WordPress powers a large percentage of the internet, and I'm not sure what's going on with Matt (who I've always liked) but something turned the past few years. He's been behind unforced error after unforced error as CEO, and I hope a break helps him gain some perspective (although I don't see him being brought back). WordPress has been his life for 23 years. Doing the same thing…
> Doing the same thing for 23 years likely makes it difficult to have a proper perspective.
Preach.
Seems to twist perception that reality is a fractal when it's recursive and eventually exits (everything dies).
Explains religion, politics, and similar longtermism memes.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#56I think it is easy to underestimate how big of a deal this is. Matt has a stranglehold on Automattic and Wordpress, it is not possible to remove his control over the ecosystem and he is volatile. Ousting him as CEO is almost certain to cause a major reaction from Matt, so, for Automattic to make this decision is a very big deal. The right decision for the long term but the hard decision. I expect we will see Matt try…
If he has 84% voting share, can't he just fire the board?
If Mullenweg attempts to fire the board that just suspended him, he would be weaponizing proxy votes against the very investors who originally granted them. While founder proxies are often structured to be irrevocable, using them to purge the board would almost certainly trigger a massive legal battle, attempts by investors to breach or revoke the proxy agreements, and severe financial instability for the company.
While he technically holds the votes required to disband the board, executing that move would ignite a corporate civil war rather than a clean transition of power.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#57Anyone could have forked WordPress at any time or spun up their own multi tenant instances if they were truly concerned, this just seems personal. It’s a bad day for founders IMO.
The entire saga started due to WP Engine "forking" WordPress.
So problem solved? My only criticism is that 1) Mr. Mullenweg should have held tighter controls over the IP and 2) the direction to the community that they are encouraged to use "WP" as a prefix for their business names and products was ultimately a bad one leading to this mess..
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#58> Most recently, Automattic attempted to claim it owns the word “automatic.” Real austin powers vibes > He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark.
It's a little less dramatic than that. They did send a demand letter to automatic.css saying that since 'automatic' and 'automattic' differ by only one letter, are pronounced the same, and are marketed to similar groups the name is likely to cause confusion, hence automatic.css should change its name.
Which is not the same thing as claiming the word automatic generally.
Personally it sounds like a loser if they took it to court since (a) automatic is a common word and (b) they already asked automatic.css to add a "not affiliated with word press" disclaimer (which automatic.css did add). IANAL.
Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#59Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence
#60I'm shocked. I always thought that Matt held the majority of the voting shares, and that the board of directors was mostly there as a rubber stamp.
Voting shares and board of directors are two different mechanisms. Just because he holds 80%+ of voting shares, doesn't mean he can control who runs the company. Shareholders can make up (elect/remove) directors on the board, the board decides who can run the company (or other officials). His vote against was likely true, but if the board is 4 seats and he only has one vote, that's 25%.
A lot of this is pretty typical, but what's interesting is what happens next. He could just remove members of the board with his 80%+ control, and build a board that backs him. I assume they have investor agreements that prevent that.