All the Worlds a Stage
The WordPress/Wp Engine legal drama feels a lot like when in high school a food fight broke out in the cafeteria, and then everybody had to pay the price. It has been nothing but a bummer. Now that the issue has been taken into the court system, there are tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. Simply put, this situation doesn’t bode well for bloggers and small businesses that rely on these open source tools daily. How can it?
You see the community of WordPress is not just the coders and companies that spin plugins for profit. It’s also the small mom-and-pop storefronts; the artists, poets, and psychoanalysts; the motels, cafes and funeral homes that all engage niche audiences in vital and surprising ways. So the disruption, the ripple effect of the legal drama is finding its way across seven continents and into the mostly unknown corners of main street commerce.
Ma.tt ‘s tagline, unlucky at cards, doesn’t foreshadow a great outcome for his legal battle underway. He’s already complained about the expensive lawyers secured by the opposition. In fact, Ma.tt has been doing a bit too much complaining since September in my opinion. It’s surprising they haven’t brought on a crisis management team. They need some damage control. Maybe they have, I wouldn’t know. If they have, it seems to have failed miserably. And the whole world has been watching.
Consistently Quirky
I had the pleasure of meeting Ma.tt back in 2009 in Las Vegas at my first WordCamp. He was about to celebrate an under-thirtieth birthday (which just happens to be today, January 11th). After the days WordCamp lineup of presentations (I only recall Chris Brogan), about a dozen of us met up at a bar in the casino and raised a toast to Ma.tt and WordPress. At the time my thoughts were how strange it seemed he was there alone with just an odd assortment of attendees who had nothing better to do. After about an hour we all dispersed our separate ways.
My thoughts of the man: sincere, perhaps to a fault. And quirky. But heck, his most notorious plugin is Hello Dolly, the stunning claim goes “This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong: Hello, Dolly.” And the quirkiness remains: note the recent pineapple-on-pizza controversy.
A Bulwark Against Dark Forces?
Clearly Automattic has been torn by the conflict with a surprising percentage of employees not staying with the ship. Clearly Ma.tt himself hints he might lose a significant amount in the legal battle. And perhaps the maneuvers taken to block WP Engine did cross a line. I wouldn’t really know.
What I do believe in is the value of open-source projects. And as the news builds daily that Silicon Valley’s power is shifting to embrace exclusion, power and self-serving interests, I really cannot name another significant voice that has consistently defended the values that matter to me in this space more than Ma.tt.
Fork You
Each day logging into my dashboard I hold my breath hoping Ma.tt will not stick his foot in his mouth yet another time during this ordeal. But this morning I got quite a surprise. I found myself bursting out laughing with the newest post relating to Mr. Joost and a proposed fork. Simply put, Ma.tt gave a big fork you to Joost and his pals they called for his ouster before the holidays. Suddenly I saw through the quirkiness and complaining, and recognized that Ma.tt is doing what WordPress was meant for: be the best damn platform for free speech the world has ever seen.
I have little hope this legal battle will benefit the WordPress community in any way, and am pretty sure the road ahead will be somewhat diminished, if not outright weakened by all the pettiness. But it is not corporate battles that interest me in this space. What matters: the ability for anyone to say what needs to be said with candor, and perhaps just a dash of quirkiness now and then.
Signed,
Poor Uncle Rich