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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

#81

Post by nikcub »

ChoosesBarbecue wrote: post #20

I am so curious why now, what changed? The WPEngine saga was started two years ago.

from my own observations:

a) you don't want the WPEngine case going to trial and that is coming to a decision point soon. chances are the new CEO and board settle.

b) wordpress is being absolutely obliterated by ai. work for commercial plugin authors and agencies has dried up while the platform and ecosystem see major security issues and worms exploit a large number of sites every week.

wordpress and automattic haven't responded to this well, at all. at times it is often straight denial.

founder CEO distracted by expensive lawsuit while facing existential threat to project that will require complete attention and a lot of skill to steer out of

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#82

Post by baublet »

BeetleB wrote: post #50
gkoberger wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious what this meant, so I looked into it. They asked Automatic.css to change their name: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1omrtrk/automatt... Automatic.css is a paid CSS framework specifically for WordPress. Legally speaking I have no opinion here, but I don't think it's as out-of-pocket as it sounds.

[flagged]

FUD. Don’t spread nonsense. They’re as rigorous as any other tech journo, you just have an axe to grind.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#83

Post by BeetleB »

baublet wrote: post #82
BeetleB wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

FUD. Don’t spread nonsense. They’re as rigorous as any other tech journo, you just have an axe to grind.

I don't see how this is FUD. Both a sibling comment and my parent pointed out that there's more to the story than simply "claiming the word automatic." They provided extra context (which the article didn't).

I am merely relating my experience that stuff like this is common with 404 Media. They'll omit nuances - whether intentionally or just being shoddy.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#84

Post by nosioptar »

michael0church wrote: post #44
gkoberger wrote: post #8

Unfortunately, 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…

Wordpress enshittified in the mid-2010s. It wasn’t recent. So, I only agree off we resolve “past few years” to at least a decade.

Classicpress may be worth checking out.

https://www.classicpress.net/

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#85

Post by technion »

solarkraft wrote: post #23
gkoberger wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unfortunately", because Matt did a lot of good for the internet over the past two decades. WordCamp is (or was) really amazing, the community he built is really great, the Automattic Lounge was cool, he's donated millions of dollars to good causes, and WordPress powers a large portion of the Internet.

Automattic also bought Tumblr and Pocket Casts, publishing the code of the latter. I used to have a subscription just to support them.

The purchase of Tumblr was basically Elon purchasing Twitter without the political gain. I'm amazed the purchase decision was ever made, and more amazed that it still exists after the hit to the user base.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#87

Post by Onavo »

angry_octet wrote: post #72
ojame wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 typica…

Regardless of who he puts on the board, directors have legal obligations to the SEC and all shareholders. If he wants that level of control he would need to take the company private, and various investor agreements probably prevent this.

> If he wants that level of control he would need to take the company private, and various investor agreements probably prevent this.

Since when was Automatic a public listed company?

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#88

Post by bewuethr »

BeetleB wrote: post #83
baublet wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FUD. Don’t spread nonsense. They’re as rigorous as any other tech journo, you just have an axe to grind.

I don't see how this is FUD. Both a sibling comment and my parent pointed out that there's more to the story than simply "claiming the word automatic." They provided extra context (which the article didn't ). I am merely relating my experience that stuff like this is common with 404 Media. They'll omit nuances - whether intentionally or just being shoddy.

The article links to an entire separate article about automatic.css.

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#89

Post by notahacker »

hermitcrab wrote: post #38
gkoberger wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious what this meant, so I looked into it. They asked Automatic.css to change their name: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1omrtrk/automatt... Automatic.css is a paid CSS framework specifically for WordPress. Legally speaking I have no opinion here, but I don't think it's as out-of-pocket as it sounds.

The article linked ( https://www.404media.co/automattic-automatic-trademark-matt-... ) is behind a paywall. But reading https://www.searchenginejournal.com/automattic-disputes-use-... it sounds like the claim 'Automattic attempted to claim it owns the word “automatic"' might not be accurate.

Yeah, regardless of other aspects of Automattic's behaviour, flagging that an identically-pronounced single letter variation of their registered company name might be a confusingly similar brand for a third party commercial service specifically designed to customise Automattic's product to adopt seems to be at the reasonable end of trademark disputes...

Re: Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

#90

Post by mission_dolores »

0xDEADBEEFCAFE wrote: post #33

Anyone 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.

it's personal only in the sense that Matt had been doing an absolutely awful job leading the company for several years, and the board had fiduciary obligations to intervene

this is not a bad day for founders; it's Matt having gotten to the end point of his value as a leader

Don't get me wrong: getting to a point where you have 2,000 employees and a 7 billion dollar valuation is a massive accomplishment. He was clearly very effective at various parts of the company's history. But it scaled beyond the point where his skillset and personality could continue to credibly steer the ship

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