Matt: It's an emergency pod.
Mark Szymanski.
That's what we're doing today.
An emergency pod.
Never thought I would stoop so low, but here we are.
Emergency.
It's not an emergency.
Listen, we're going to happy to have everybody, joining
this emergency live pod today.
I don't even like the word pod.
I rally against that word, quite often in the podcasting space, but
we're going to just have a discussion because it's fresh in our mind.
Really.
At least it is for me.
watching some live streams this morning, I'll show those in a moment.
We're going to talk about the sort of frustrations that a
lot of folks have been sharing.
Not just this year, but for the last 20 years of WordPress, and how we've
sort of maybe got to this point.
And I think that, Hey, things are exactly the same, as they were a decade ago, 15
years ago, except now, Hey, there's more people, there's much more attention on it.
And we're really dissecting a lot of the same challenges, that
we've had, For many, many years.
So happy to have people join this conversation and happy to be here with
you, Mark Szymanski, as always, not just listening to your voicemails, but seeing
your wonderful face live on YouTube.
It's always a pleasure, Matt.
Thank you so much for having me, as always.
Do you want to tee up while I coordinate this?
Do you want to tee up today's live stream that we watch?
I'm going to pull it up so we can see it, but Paul Charlton
launched, went live today, but can you tee that up for the audience?
Let them know what it was, that was going down, what the topic was
and what we're going to react to.
Mark: Yeah.
You know what I can give maybe.
some speculative context to around it a little bit.
So obviously we have the Bridge Builder series, Matt Eastwood
is the, you know, the head of that with me, Brendan O'Connell.
And, we had a recent episode, it was on Friday with, Anne
Beauvelette and, Max Seibel.
And that was a pretty interesting thing.
But the reason I think that's related is cause we clipped out a piece of that
where Anne was specifically talking about, like kind of like influencers
and like, do we have a, As influencers and WordPress people like that, people
that have audiences, should we kind of talk more about, and create kind
of dialogue, like more, kind of like the idea of like contributing more
directly to WordPress rather than just like kind of like shouting out our
opinions into the void, and seeing like who follows that and stuff like that.
Which, obviously, big topic, we'd have to dissect all that.
But I feel like maybe this was, a little bit, kind of related to that.
Regardless if it was directly related, it definitely had, you
know, the same topic to talk about.
so it's just back and forth a little bit on that, and that is what, I was really
excited to see this live stream today.
So, I saw it came up in my subscriptions, and, Paul, WP Toots, for some of you guys
that may not know his name, Paul Charlton, put that up there, and it was him, Imran
from WebSquadron, Mark Crowell from, WikiDesign, and also Jeffrey at Lightbox.
all great content creators.
So, yeah, it was a really good live stream that, that they put on.
And, I know I was watching it, Matt was watching it, a lot of
other people were watching it, and we just had a lot of ideas.
So that's kind of where we are right now, just kind of giving our thoughts.
Because this is a very important topic, regardless of your opinion on it.
There's a lot of nuance here that needs
Matt: So I threw in the chat for right now, the clip from the Bridge
Builders series, with Amber Vallette.
And, right up on the screen as well, we have Paul Charlton, friend of the
show, and, Imran from WebSquadron, I've never synced up with him, although
I would love to, you know, but he, they switched the, the live stream
over to his channel because Paul was having some connection issues.
It's always going to come off probably in the wrong light that we're doing,
that we're doing this and reacting to this video because obviously I have
some strong opinions on, some of the answers or some of the commentary in
today's, I am, obviously a proponent of, of open source fan of WordPress.
I think everyone generally always throws out the general statement
that we're all fans of WordPress and we just want to see it do better.
I have a particular angle, as you know, Mark, and a lot
of people watching the show.
You know, I have this particular angle on WordPress.
What that means to, to, to love WordPress, wanted to see it
succeed and to also criticize it.
I've been a critic of WordPress for many years.
Primarily though at the, the leadership level.
Not so much the, the software side of things.
Like, yeah, of course there are things where I wish this could be better.
But I've never been One, to be hyper critical of how things are getting done.
because, while I, appreciate designing a good product, I also, as somebody
who has, I've developed products before from the product developer standpoint,
not the actual punching the code into the, into the computer perspective.
I appreciate a good product, I appreciate the process, and I
can understand why things end up maybe being the way they are.
but I'm not a front end designer, I'm not a JavaScript expert, so I can't debate
or, or give hypercritical feedback on how something is done, or at least I don't
feel like I can't, I should give that kind of feedback because I can't do it.
Right?
So like, I'm not the guy who's going to tell people, hey, it should be, you
know, we discussed this with Kevin, it should be whatever, 768 pixels by default.
I mean, I'm not the guy to tell you that.
I'm just the guy that says this works for me or it doesn't, you know, so
that's, that's like my perspective on it, but, I highlighted a couple
topics from today's discussion.
I think you maybe jotted some down.
Let me just tell you the topics, some of the topics that I pulled and then
we'll, we'll, we'll jump into them.
So I wrote things down from today's live stream.
If I can find it, I sent it to you.
Here it is.
So like open source versus ownership, I want to talk about
that today and highlight a post that I've, that I've written and,
and, and highlight one from DHH.
From Basecamp and Ruby on Rails fame.
the automatic apparatus, like it could be a five hour episode just
talking about the automatic apparatus.
but I do want to talk about that because some of the feedback that I heard in
today's live stream is like, I wonder if people understand, I mean, I don't,
I don't think I fully understand it, either, but I feel like I have a strong
understanding of how automatic works.
And I want to just highlight some of that today, contributing
and what that means like time versus payment versus not for me.
That's probably the biggest, thorn in my side from today's, from
observing today's live stream.
yeah.
Which we'll break apart in a little bit and, prioritizing features.
So open source versus ownership, automatic, the apparatus contributing
versus, being paid or versus not for me.
And then how, how did we end up here?
Like, how did these features get prioritized?
those are my big four.
Did you have some big takeaways today that you want to punch into?
Mark: I think that you, those ones there summarize the big
takeaways from specifically from the stream really, really well.
The one thing I'll say here before we get into all of it is the same
thing that I kind of said to you in really, in kind of a relation to that.
And it's the fact that, you know, I'm, I consider myself like relatively
newer to the actual understanding of how this all works rather than
just using WordPress as a tool.
And I think that the big thing that I've, Maybe just the way that I am is like I
like to try to break things down to like as Fundamental as possible and really
understand like the things everything works as I'm trying to learn it.
Like I'm asking a lot of questions, right?
You know, I've had so many conversations.
I'm trying to get to the bottom of it.
I feel like the one thing that we could all do a little bit better is
understanding that this is very nuanced and that we kind of all need to get.
No matter who we are, like, if we're always just getting more educated
on how everything works, then we can have a more honest discussion
across the, across the board.
And I'm not talking about anybody specifically, I'm just saying
that's my personal philosophy on it.
So that's why I love talking to guys like yourself, because you guys
have been at it for a while and you understand, the ins and outs of it.
And then, you know, we can kind of go from there with a conversation.
So, but I like these topics.
I'm excited to chat about them.
Matt: I'm also not, you know, you say that a lot to me and others have said
like, Hey, you've been here for, and I, you know, I'm also of the mindset
that have I been here too long?
Yes.
Like, do I only see it from a particular angle?
Yes.
I was just talking in the last episode with Corey Miller on the podcast
and, you know, when I talk to folks like you and others who just don't
understand, like, why maybe they say word camps are the way they are.
You know, we came from a time, I guess it's all like pre COVID,
where there were many types of WordPress events that were happening.
Pressnomics sort of being like a flagship business focused
WordPress event that happened, was a company I worked at, Pagely.
And, that happened for many years.
That was, like, the thing.
Like, so many people were hyped to go to that, because it was very
business focused, and a lot of deals got done, and you just saw
the business side of WordPress.
Loop comp for developers, like, there was a time where these,
like, other events were happening.
You know, so when folks come into the community like you, like in a post COVID
world where they're kind of like trying to figure out events again, you're
like, why, why doesn't this exist?
And I, maybe for like the old folks in the group where it's like, oh yeah,
we had that at one time and we're forgetting to like relay that to you or
to like understand we need that back.
Like we need these types of things back.
So it's sort of like, you know, the waves have crashed on the
shore and they're pulling away.
Yeah.
Like, Oh yeah, at one time we had all that and now it doesn't exist.
Let's get this stuff going for folks.
I want to talk about, let's talk about this WordPress,
open source ownership thing.
I think this is a great post, and I should probably pull up my own site as well.
That way we have that.
I wrote a post a couple weeks ago called, what would we do
with the keys to the kingdom?
And I referenced, this is the post, what would we do with the keys to the kingdom?
I'll throw that in chat as well.
I referenced this post by, David Hanson from, Hedmeyer Hanson from
Basecamp, again, started Ruby on Rails open source project.
And he writes, open source is neither a community nor a democracy.
I'm not going to, obviously, read the whole post here, but I, I implore
folks to go ahead and read this.
This is something that I think is very true and is what triggered me
to say what would we do with the keys to the kingdom if we had it.
Like a lot of us air our grievances online and on live streams like this and
podcasts and blogs and Twitter threads.
What would we really do if we were the ones in control?
I don't, I don't think it would be any better.
In fact, I would probably guess it would be worse.
because as David points out, like, there needs to be somebody who's getting it
done, getting the job done, setting the direction, and sort of, that's the
person, that's the leader of the project, and in our case, it's, it's Mullenweg.
And I don't think, and I'm, and I fully stand behind that as the decision.
There are things I don't like about it, but I still fully stand behind that
decision because I still have enough, Confidence in his ability to, to do
this with, you know, the criticisms that I would still give along the way.
this is a fantastic piece.
I think everyone should read this because what it's saying
is like, Yeah, you don't own it.
Like, we don't own this.
That's the thing.
Like, we, it's, it's open source and we can kind of fall into this, gray area
where, Oh my God, like this is ours.
We all have this say, but we don't.
in the, in the fundamental direction of where the project is going.
We can have say on little things that happen along the way.
I get, and I talked about this last week.
I think it was you live when, we got our little feature put into WordPress 6.
6.
Perfect example.
It was showed up.
We, we said something, we made a post on GitHub, an issue, people developed it.
It went in, we got credit.
Like, that's awesome.
That's the cool thing about open source and you can make these changes.
Massive fundamental direction.
We're probably going to have less of a chance to have that,
to have that opportunity for us because we're not in control.
Open source doesn't mean we own it.
We can just partake in it.
that's just my particular view.
I'd love to have your thoughts on that mark.
If you have something else.
Mark: Yeah, for sure.
So I hadn't ever seen that article and I know we were talking about it
last week and you sent that to me.
I would highly recommend if you guys haven't read that article,
from DHH, it's great stuff.
I think the thing that it, it, it pointed out to me, because again,
I'm trying to navigate this space and understand like where everybody's like
kind of mentally at with a lot of this.
I do think there's some absolutely just across the board again.
To differing degrees definitely some misunderstanding between like what open
source is and what that actually means From my understanding currently where
i'm at for my framework is open source doesn't mean anything really about the
community per se It's more so much more about like the licensing of the software.
So like gpl version 2 I was actually looking it up today because i'm trying
to Wrap my head around this too.
Like it, when something says it's open source, it's just meaning
like the software licensing.
Right.
And correct me if I'm wrong.
So it's like, you can see, anyone can see the code.
They can reuse the code.
They can fork the code, whatever.
But ultimately, there's more to it than that, but I'm saying it doesn't
inherently mean that you own it as like a community member probably
doesn't even really mean that you're entitled to an, like an opinion or your.
Or your feature set per se, like, like it, not inherently.
So then that's where all these other things come into play.
And it's like, everybody uses WordPress and they get, they hear the word open
source and they kind of get, sounds like a little bit misled to the fact
that like, Oh, you can, like, you can just basically just scream what you
want to happen and then it can happen.
I, I contradict that slightly though with the fact that I don't think
that would be like a bad thing, but it doesn't seem like that's
inherently the way that it operates.
so again, this is just kind of me trying to think of like, okay, how
is it, how does it actually work?
And then is there a way to make it better or something like that?
But, I think the bottom line is again, the open source side of things, I
think that word and that terminology and the way that it's thrown around
sometimes does, I don't, I think it's just a slight misunderstanding.
Perhaps from what I've seen here, because, I dunno, that's, I'm still
navigating myself, like I said, but that's kind of where I'm at with it.
Matt: Yeah.
It's, I totally understand because I get caught up in that, as well.
Sorry, I'm just playing with my, I turned my gain instead of my volume.
I get caught up in that as well because I, I feel like I love it too.
And I feel like I want this ownership and, I feel like I want this ownership
and WordPress is in an interesting spot because unlike, let's say, Ruby on Rails,
which is what, DHH is mostly referring to, like, he built, I don't even know
what the technical term is, he built that coding framework, that code base to
make his own products, and the byproduct was, oh, this is now open source, you
too can go build your own products like I'm doing over here with Basecamp, right?
So So, he built like this, what I'll call like the engine of, of Basecamp
back in the day to help him build that product and, oh, by the way, I'm open
sourcing this so you can do that too.
It, it, WordPress, on the other hand, was created open source and then Automatic was
built to help sell the dream of WordPress and they're the same exact products.
So it's, it's, it's very hard to, to understand.
Get yourself away, like pull yourself away from that.
and say, oh, this is, this is mine because I can do it on any website.
I can, I can build it, I can make it, it's all mine.
But really, it's not.
the GPL and Open Source affords you to go ahead and do other things,
but like the overall direction of where this is going is not ours.
And I think it's high time that we understand that, be okay with it, because
I've said this a million times, I don't want to get into it now, but I think
Automatic needs to survive in order to be the best steward of Open Source WordPress.
Mark: I think we need, I think we need, I think we need to dig
into that though for a second.
I don't know.
We're gonna.
Yeah.
Okay.
Matt: Yeah, we'll, yeah, we'll dig into that.
Okay.
So let's just talk about Automattic, the apparatus.
Because one of the, one of the things that came up in that conversation was,
Oh, Automattic has like 900 million.
What are they doing with all that money?
And, and this is where, this is where I have like, a fundamental
difference in like content creators.
And I don't want this to come off.
As like super disrespectful, but it's like if you're going to, to, to criticize us,
try to understand as much as possible of, of where all of the chips lie in this, in
this game, of automatic and open source.
let me pull up Automattic's website and then we can share this.
And this is great information for anybody who's never really, you
know, taken a look at this stuff.
Don't forget, been living and breathing this stuff for a while now.
So, I can understand how it can be helpful.
It can get overwhelming.
So let's just take a look at this page.
This is Automattic's homepage.
Here are all the products that they are, that they have listed here, which,
I don't even, yeah, so WordPress.
com, Beeper, Tumblr, Day One, WooCommerce, Jetpack.
WordPress VIP, which is enterprise level hosting if you've
never, run across that before.
Pocketcast, which is a podcast, app, podcast listening app.
Akismet, which is the spam protection, product that they
launched, many, many years ago.
Longreads, Newspack, Gravatar, and then they also contribute WordPress.
org.
And then all these other, open source initiatives, WordPress for
Android, WordCamp, WPJobManager, Five for the Future, right?
So that's just automatic, like the core products.
And then automatic is also investing and purchasing other companies.
they had invested in Castos, which is a company that I worked at before.
InstaWP, they've, done seed round investments in.
Other WordPress, hosting companies, they've done investments in.
This is like that traditional VC world, that maybe folks aren't just
acquainted to, but it's not just, hey, we're giving, they're giving money
to Automatic to just do WordPress.
It's all the things.
at, at Automatic where that money goes, right?
2, 000 ish people work at that company.
If we just take a look at CrunchBase, which is some of this data now is
locked behind a, payment, payment wall.
But recently in the WP Product Talk, interview with Mullenweg, they were
talking about the size of the company.
He's just over 2, 000 ish people now, at Automatic.
And they're Recent funding round came from, Where they hide it now?
Let's see.
So the last one, it says 2021.
Automatic was funded by 30 investors of Iron Global, BlackRock
being the most recent investors.
BlackRock should raise some eyebrows, of course, for some people.
Automatic has made 19 investments.
The most recent was last year, Liquid AI.
It's a, it, in their recent acquisition of Beeper, 125
million, that's a, messaging app.
and they're, looks like they're getting more into the, into the messaging game.
This is, the point I'm trying to make here is 2, 000 people, if you've ever
worked in an organization with 100 people, let alone 2, 000 people, it is extremely
difficult to move things forward.
I'm not saying that this is The right thing, I'm just saying like this is what
happens when you have an organization that grows this large, who's also
trying to build a profitable company.
If you look at somebody like GoDaddy publicly traded company, I think
automatic roughly valued at 7 billion from blog posts and stuff that you see.
but you look at somebody like a GoDaddy and you start to see
their profitability, their market cap, their amount of employees.
And you're like, well, Boy, they're also profiting, profiting
off the back of WordPress.
Why don't they do more?
And they do.
They do a lot, in the community.
But, this is where that frustration grows at the sort of enterprise and big level.
Whereas, Automatic isn't bad just because it's getting a lot of money.
There's a lot of other companies with a lot more money.
Also profiting off of WordPress, who should also fall under scrutiny and
contribute back to WordPress as well.
So, I just have a fundamental issue when it's like, they've got all this money,
why aren't they making WordPress better?
Because look at all the stuff that they're doing, and it's not 2, 000 people
just making WordPress better, right?
Of those 2, 000 people, I don't know how many people are in administrative, right?
200 people, 10 percent of the company are in HR, comms, like
all this other stuff, legal.
you know, then you have a executive team and then you have support
staff and then you have the product managers and marketers and SEO
people, like, it's a big company.
and it's, they're not all just pouring their resources into, into WordPress.
does that make sense to you, Mark?
Mark: You know, I mean, it definitely does make sense, and I hear where you're
coming from with the number thing.
Yeah, it definitely, you know, 900 million, I'm sure that doesn't
obviously all go to, like, the WordPress project, because Automatic raised that.
I mean, that makes sense, totally on paper.
I mean, but again, like, I feel like
I always just try to ask questions.
And then the next question I would have is, Okay, who, who is, I want to know
exactly as, as, as good of data as we have, which I know we do have some, I'm
sure we could like find some or whatever on the actual WordPress project stuff.
But like I've seen those graphs of like, Okay, automatic is like the biggest
chunk of supporters, like people writing code, and then like GoDaddy is in
there, or you know, 10Up is in there, people contributing to actual WordPress.
So one of my questions is, I know half the answer to it, but one
of my questions is okay, who is actually contributing to WordPress?
So for instance, when anybody goes on the internet and says, Hey, this sucks about
WordPress, like the, this feature, this UI, UX, whatever, like I don't like this.
Who is that specifically?
Specifically who made that decision?
to make that, to put that in there, or to change something or whatever.
So like, how does that actually work?
Because I feel like that's a big problem where, you know, in, in private companies
you don't, or, you know, public, but like, you know, actual corporations.
Like, you don't really have that full clarity, but maybe you'll have
like some sort of like a leadership type chart and things like that,
and you'll be able to kind of like decipher some things or whatever.
But like, ultimately you're just yelling at Apple, for instance,
Oh, they changed something.
Oh, we hate Apple.
So with WordPress, I feel like it ends up just being kind of the same way,
even though it doesn't operate the exact same way, I want to say, like, cause
there's just seemingly people getting paid from automatic, there's people
getting paid at 10 up, there's people getting paid at GoDaddy to sponsor a
certain amount of hours to this project.
Right.
And then.
I don't know the, I don't know the answer here, but there's also free labor, right?
That is, that is contributing to it.
So that screws with people as well, like just mentally, which totally makes sense.
It's like, who, who is like contributing for free?
Like, how does that work?
and then you have conversations like we'll probably get into like,
well, why would I contribute?
Regardless of code, why would I contribute in GitHub or Slack or wherever for free?
Because people are making money from me doing this.
And then the rebuttal to that is like, well, you contributing is how the open
source project continues to flow forward.
So it's kind of like you are helping yourself, even though
you're not getting paid.
There's a lot of, I just expressed a lot of different things there.
But I'm telling you, like, this is from like, we'll call it like more
boots on the ground type thing.
I'm in the comments.
I'm in, you know, making content.
I'm watching other people's streams.
I'm on Twitter.
These are the types of questions that people just don't know the answers to.
And it's not really their fault because it's so goddamn nuanced.
that it's, it's so difficult.
Like I've spent the last 12 months of my life trying to figure this out.
And I consider myself to be kind of of this mindset where I can dive in
and deal with this and try to figure it out and try to piece it out.
And one of my goals is to hopefully come out on the other side and be
like, Hey, this is really nuanced, but here's like a crash course because
I haven't seen anything like that.
I wish I wish something like that would exist.
so I don't
Matt: Once again, like understanding the value of open
source and, and what we have.
So in my post, what would you do the keys of the kingdom?
I say, look, it's, it's totally fine to be a critic, to be critical.
Obviously, if you're not bashing people, I think everybody says that.
and everyone says, yes, I love, I love WordPress, but what you have to just
understand is where the value of open source gives you the ability to build your
own business on the back of WordPress.
is quite powerful and also very understated.
I think it came up in Paul's live stream today where somebody said,
well, what would happen if it was five?
I don't think you wouldn't get this kind of amplification for WordPress
and it certainly would not have grown this large for obvious reasons if it
wasn't, open source and you won't be able to do that with another platform.
Like you simply can't do it with a commercial Wix Squarespace, platform.
Webflow, because those are all hosted things and there's no portability
there, it's just off the table.
So you have to be able to say, I value that ability for me to just take this,
start a business, replicate it with as many sites as I want without being taxed.
Right?
Mark: Is there a way, can I throw a monkey wrench in here for just a second Doug?
Cause you have said this many times to me, and while I don't disagree with it, I do
think that this is kind of where we talk about the, you know, the the current gen
versus the next gen and stuff like that.
Like from what I see, and I'm not saying this is, I don't have data per se, but
from what I see, people are becoming more and more and more casual and carefree
about like losing control of their data.
And I don't know if that is like something that can be stopped.
So, you know, we don't need to go down a rabbit hole here.
All I'm saying is like, when you make the claim of this is open source and
you can't, you're like, you're not going to have the same impact with
something that's not open source.
I'm not, I'm not saying that I want that to happen.
I'm just saying that like people are so, so quick to just give up their shit
nowadays that like they don't even think like these, like, and again, I'm not, I'm
not, I'm not trying to judge these people.
I'm making observations.
They watch a Wix ad and they're like, this is fantastic.
Super easy.
I'm going to, I'm just going to jump on there and use it.
Like they don't even think twice about.
Like, where is this data?
What's going to happen if this, if these people jack up my rights?
What's going to happen if like I say something and they kick me off here?
Like, they don't think about any of that until it happens.
So and, and if those things continue to happen, maybe people will care more.
But I'm saying like, I mean, you know, the phones that we have and the
different things like, I mean, the phones is a great example because we
have Apple and we have Google basically.
And then we have like, you know, these other types of phones where it's like,
Oh, you don't have, you know, not connected to the internet or whatever.
So I'm not trying to get off topic here, but I'm saying that I, I wouldn't
just like, you Make it seem like this is always going to be the case,
because there's It doesn't seem like it's even trending in that direction.
It seems like it's trending away from that.
Matt: Yeah, you gotta, open source isn't just about, Oh, this is, this is my data.
Like, that's not the, that's not the argument for open source and data.
and in fact, like, what data do I actually have on my website?
When you, people just think of data, right?
I immediately go to, well, Every single one of my credit cards have been
compromised by, you know, by, by them.
AT& T was, and they sent out an email and they're like,
here's how you can protect it.
moving forward.
How about you protect my data?
You're like, why are you yelling at me and telling me not to
answer phone calls from Spain?
You know, the market is spam.
You're the one that got breached.
So there's data like your customer data, your customer identifying, information.
And in WordPress, I think people kind of throw that around.
It's certainly about the content, in your WordPress site.
And for me, it's much more of that, like, technical reason,
is I can be portable with it.
I can, I can take that content from one web host to another web host, or I can
extract it, or archive it how and when I want, and I can manipulate that, right?
So, yes, WordPress allows you to do that.
And yes, WordPress is, is open source.
you know, so, I, I think that the argument is, for open source for
the, for the reason that we're going to jump into, you know, right now.
And one of the things, let me just share the screen again.
One of the things that come up, and I'm going to try to zoom in and do this so
that it's as easily Readable as possible.
I'm trying to do it with two hands here.
Hold on one second.
So zoom in.
So this is the, the Gutenberg GitHub, repo WordPress doesn't operate, and, either
Zach or or Brian, if you're in there.
none of the, the comments, for WordPress core are in GitHub.
This is, that is all in, track and WordPress legacy, like SVN.
It's That's a whole other stream that we can go into, but if we look at
just Gutenberg, because they are using GitHub for all of the communication
here, this is the value of, this is the other value of open source, right,
is that we can actually see it and see this stuff being developed, right?
Sure, are things happening behind the scenes?
That are not being, you know, documented and they're in slack.
The conversations are happening in slack.
Absolutely.
Do I think it's nefarious?
No, it's just the way of life, right?
It's like you have conversations with, if you're, if you're at a job
and you have a meeting with somebody, you're talking to them in zoom or in
person, that stuff isn't documented.
Things happen, right?
So.
So, what this open source project allows us is to see the stuff happen
and we can analyze it and also comment on it and, and see it in real time.
So when people say, why did they do that?
We can see it right here, in something like, like GitHub,
especially for the Gutenberg project.
So that's what this open source project affords us.
It affords us that, that visibility.
This is also a, a hat tip to version control.
Mark, you and I talk about this a lot.
This is all done in GitHub, a version control type of, tool so that we can
go back and see everything that's happened, over the course of all
of their releases, tie it back.
To a particular thing.
So add example for query block and post lists.
This is the issue where it all sort of stem from.
You can now click that and say, why did they do that?
And you can see it was started, by a particular person.
I don't know exactly what this is.
Add example for query block and post lists.
But as an example, you can see what the, the thing was, why.
Exists should exist, how it's going to get done examples, so on and so forth.
And you can track the whole thing and see it all come together.
on GitHub, if we go, can I jump in here?
Yeah, go for it.
Mark: Okay.
So, so I just had kind of like a moment here where I like pieced
a bunch of things together.
There's a general sentiment that
not backed by data, but there's a general sentiment that like GitHub and
the Slack, this, that whole situation, which again, Difficult to manage
something of this size, but GitHub and Slack and like in track, I don't know
what track is, but like, I haven't gotten there yet, but like all these
different things to like manage this open source project, people have said,
and we've actually seen, we have seen.
examples of this on, on Twitter and stuff like that or X or whatever,
like to say like, Oh, you know, the code base is getting kind
of like, it's hard to jump in.
It's hard to like, understand different things like that.
It's hard to get involved in all that sort of stuff.
Because I mean, there's probably a reasonable amount of people that have
never used GitHub or don't use it like frequently enough to understand
kind of what's going on there.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be hard or whatever.
But like, there's a general sentiment there.
I feel like it is hard to get involved, or people don't know where to start.
I have personally educated people after I learned from guys like you,
how to go where to go things like that.
So I think we're moving in the right direction there, but it
is kind of difficult there.
I don't have an answer for that.
But I want to reference that article that you made and you had me read
with from DHH where he mentions in there It's not a democracy.
It's not like a community It's more of like there's a level of elitism and it's
not in a bad way the elitism But it's like a level of elitism I I relate that in this
case to like you have to understand how to use these tools You have to understand
the language that's going on You have to understand the the way to get involved and
actually It's a way for you to actually impact and do something if you want.
Which is interesting to me because you juxtapose that with the idea
of democratizing publishing.
Which the tool itself actually does.
Correct.
But utilize, or moving it forward is not, those things
are disjointed from one another.
Which again, I'm not saying is a bad thing, but it is
the reality of the situation.
So, It's just kind of a weird spot where, like, if, if you and I weren't
having this conversation for the last 12 months, like, there's no way
anybody would understand that whole, that whole juxtaposition of all that.
Matt: Yeah.
Because it's
Mark: way too nuanced.
Matt: Well, yeah, but it's also, it's, I don't know, unfortunate is the right
word, but it's, it's the unfortunate sort of messiness to this where the tool
itself, is democratizing publishing, and then the open source initiative, you
know, WordPress thriving, getting people to contribute, Five for the Future.
And then some of those, I guess, some of the times that those two statements
can get conflated, or mixed together.
So folks feel like, well, I thought we were democratizing building this thing.
No, no, no.
The tool itself will help us democratize publishing.
but what we're doing is building this in an open source fashion.
Gutenberg as an example.
this is, the graph, and listen, I'm not a developer, but, I can
try to understand the highway of how we're all connected here.
This is the stats from the repo from 2016 to 2024, when
Gutenberg project first started.
Again, it's a standalone project, and plugin, that exists, outside of WordPress.
And, for, for many reasons.
But, one of the reasons is Matt thinks, Matt Mullenweg thinks that this project
will be bigger and, and more adopted potentially than, than WordPress itself.
Like Wix.
Could some, one day be like, oh yeah, that Gutenberg thing is good,
let's bring it and adopt it into Wix.
and then therefore they would be giving back to the Gutenberg
project, et cetera, et cetera.
and it's just, just for those that might not know, Gutenberg stands
separate, in its own separate plug in.
So if you ever want The more advanced features that are being developed like
this is being developed and enhanced outside of WordPress core, right?
So there's all the features that are happening in Gutenberg and then
there's all the features happening in WordPress and when a WordPress
point release comes together They take whatever the last five or six releases
from Gutenberg itself and bring it into the into the core release, right?
That's a 50, 000 foot view of this and But back to the main point here is when
you say who is making these decisions.
you can go in and look at all the top contributors.
in this, in this screen here on, on GitHub.
And you can see everybody.
And I'm not gonna punch into everyone here.
but if we don't, if we discount, this chap here who hasn't contributed
since roughly 2020, middle of 2020.
the top ten contributors, not counting this person, out of
the top ten contributors, eight of them are from Automatic.
two of them, one is, from GoDaddy.
let's see if I can see him.
If you just hover over folks names, depends if they filled out their
profile, but you can see, if they're getting paid from Automatic, or if
they work for Automatic, it's not like it says, we get paid by Automatic.
I think this is the person right here, yeah.
So this, this is actually the, the, the chap that helped Brian put our, our,
our little feature together, at the end.
He gets sponsored by Loose Inc., L O O S Inc.
so he's not Automatic, and there's one other person here
on the list from, from GoDaddy.
The rest here are, are Automatic, but they're not Automatic.
That's just the top 10, and then you can go back and see, like, okay, who, who
are all these other folks getting, you know, contributing to, Gutenberg, right?
So if we go and we look at this person, it may or may not say it.
Yep, so at Automatic, he works at Automatic.
And that's the other thing that this open source world affords us, is we can kind
of see who's putting this all together.
and who's making the decisions here, and at least easily here
with, with the Gutenberg thing.
So when folks are like, Oh yeah, I wish it had this feature.
I wish it had that feature.
And you, and then you look at automatic, this is the going back to the bigger
issue is you look at our magnet, why are they making these decisions?
They have all this money.
Because this is just one sliver of a project that Automatic is paying people
to contribute to which basically helps us.
Whether you like Gutenberg or not, and you don't think it's moving fast enough,
all that work is contributing back to us and our customers and our friends
and our clients who use this stuff.
Hopefully getting better and iterating better year after year.
they're the one footing the most amount of payroll out of those
2, 000 people and millions and millions of dollars that they have.
They're the ones contributing the most to WordPress.
What does that lead to?
That leads to that sort of elitism and, control, and direction.
you know, that, You can or cannot agree with, totally up to you on whether
or not, you know, you, you want to.
but this is where, when you're saying who's doing it, you can
kind of come and see it right here.
Back to the issue I had on the stream, is, You know, when, I'm frustrated too,
and actually I thought about doing it.
I'm not going to do it today, on today's live stream, but this is a
frustration that Paul brought up, that I've brought up, and many other
people have brought up before, is like, why is, why are all these other
settings behind the three dots, right?
The three dots, the infamous three dots.
Why can't I just expose that forever?
How would you do it?
You would come here to, let's say, Gutenberg, because I would
believe that would be, that would fall under a Gutenberg issue.
So I would believe that would fall under a Gutenberg issue.
And you would open a ticket just like I open a ticket about putting
the command in the command palette for getting to template parts.
You, too, could come in here and say, I want that three dots to be exposed
every time I go into a WordPress site.
I don't want to have to do it every single time.
I agree.
How do you make that presentation?
How do you propose that?
You come here, you make the issue, and you start writing the proposal.
But you can't just be like, Ah, I just want this thing.
You know, yell it into the void, and then hope it gets done.
Just not gonna happen.
So, if you really want it, come here, open an issue, And then, then you'll see
how software is really made because it, there's just one set of vocal people like
you, me, and others who get this stuff, but WordPress is being used by so many
other people that it's not just for us.
And that, I think that's what that folks who are so vocal
about this need to realize.
Mark: Got it.
That totally makes sense.
Yeah.
I mean,
I think, you know, as a content creator, obviously we get wrapped up
sometimes in like making the content for our audience who is, you know,
supporting us, but, you know, we don't really have any power if we're not
like going in and doing this stuff.
It's amazing.
I think it was Brendan.
I was talking to him today and it's, it's pretty incredible that we do
have the opportunity to do this.
You know, we can't go into the get hubs of, you know, other big stuff, you
know, big, players or wixes or whatever, you know, and do that sort of thing.
So it is definitely something I should do a lot more, and I think
that I just may, if I actually see something that I disagree with.
Like, I think that three dot thing is a great example.
I mean, just the question that I would have in response to that, though, is
How are these decisions getting made initially though?
Like, like I think, okay, here's the perspective that I get from some people.
How did it get to this point where like so many people, even like
supporters, Think that there's so many weird things about the platform.
And again, I'm not going to say that I sit here and use Gutenberg every day.
I don't.
Okay.
But I'm saying that like you, you get that from people that are actually in
there often and they're like, and then, and then people that are exploring it
often from a deeper base, not just the UI, but like the code and like the way
it interacts with other third party tools and things like that, and it's
like, how did it get to that level?
Is it, is it, is it literally just.
If you go in there and just have a suggestion, like what's the actual
process for making that happen?
You know, like, how, who, who's the end decider of like, if, if the, if
the command palette should have the template part thing show up in it, that
seems like a pretty straightforward one.
But like, that would be my next, my next line of thinking is, because I
think that is definitely something that some, that people have said as well.
It's like, well, they're doing that cost benefit analysis in their head.
They're like, okay, well, I can make content.
I could talk about some stuff.
I could talk about all these different things.
Okay.
That I know that that is working to some extent.
I know that that's resonating with people.
I know that people are, you know, appreciating that content.
It's thought provoking.
Okay.
So then somebody comes to me and they say, Hey, you know, you should really
go into the GitHub and, and write all this stuff up and do all these
different things to, to make sure that these actually get pushed in.
Fair, fair thing.
Fair point.
But then they're like, okay, well, I'm not getting paid by, you know,
I'm not getting paid to, sponsored to, to produce any of this content
or contribute or anything like that.
We already had that discussion.
It's a, it's a fair point, but there's definitely counters to that.
But then the question becomes, if they like, are there people like
putting stuff in, like putting a bunch of, is there somebody is
super straightforward question.
Is there somebody in like deep in the contribute, contributor aspect of
Gutenberg that has put in like 100 issues and none of them have ever gotten taken?
Yeah.
So like, there, see what I'm saying?
Like, that's, that's like, why am I even going to do that?
I'm not, I'm playing devil's advocate here.
Why would I even like put anything in there if it's not
going to even get like seen?
Cause then you have I could absolutely see a case where like you have people
put stuff in there and their, their reputation has already preceded them.
And then they're not going to get the stuff.
This stuff isn't going to get taken up anyway.
That's not a reason to not do it because I think three steps ahead, if you
actually did that and put that in there and then again, didn't get taken up.
Now you make a video and you say, guys, I told them to do
this, and they didn't do it.
Matt: Yeah,
Mark: yeah.
So that's actually a
Matt: brilliant plan.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that's a hundred percent.
And that's why punching into that one specific issue that I have.
with the live stream today, like the only hard criticism I have against,
the guys that, that hosted that panel today was the fact that it was
like, it's not my job to do this.
I'm not gonna, you know, go and, and do that.
I don't have time for that.
Well, man, if you're in this living and breathing it and making a living
off of creating content for WordPress and you don't have the time, I don't
think many people in the audience are gonna have the time or the care,
or the understanding to really, You know, follow this through, right?
They said something, Oh, 500 people watching this, maybe
50 people go and do something.
I doubt it.
If you're not going to do it and you're representing a fact that you
won't do it, then I don't think anyone in your audience is going to do it.
But 100 percent this is when I had the same thing with
the conversation with Kevin.
You have to be able to meet in the middle.
And be like, okay, I'll spend time on your side, and you spend time on my side.
Because the same thing's happening, on the automatic side, and the contributor side.
They're not, they're saying, I'm not gonna watch, there's so many
videos, how am I gonna watch an hour long video of these people?
Like, they're just gonna say the same thing.
sorry, I left that comment on.
so there needs to be some participation and you and I, are seeing that and
other folks who are on this, on the live stream right now are seeing
this from Automattic with like Anne McCarthy trying to reach out to, to
YouTube creators and sort of extending that olive branch from Automattic.
I'm seeing it too from like the media core side, trying to get
more sort of, organized content.
Content and information out to content creators.
So it's slowly happening I think people are just really upset about the velocity
and just simply can't understand why it takes so long Because of the because
of the size of this apparatus that we have in front of us It just it's just
going to take time and and I don't know any other way the other way around it.
How do these things get decided on?
Hey, even I'm not 100 percent sure, and I love anybody in the audience,
like Courtney, I saw you, jump in.
I don't even know how all the decisions are made, and I think that that's
largely what everyone has, an issue with.
But you have the core vision of the phases that Mullenweg, spelled out.
Many years ago, we're on the third phase, right?
I think fourth phase, third phase, of the, of the Gutenberg project.
And, He sets the general tone and direction.
It's him, right?
That's why he is still a lead contributor here in WordPress, even though I
don't even know if he's writing lines of code being contributed to it.
He's just, the guy who's, who's, who's leading that direction.
And again, I don't have any problem with it as long as
somebody's leading it, right?
Somebody needs to lead it and have a vision.
then there are, oh, I forgot, my screen's not up.
One second.
And then there are, Things like this that happen.
I don't know 100 percent how people, I just randomly search on make WordPress
for the word proposal because these are, these are how things can happen.
starting at the, say, wordpress.
org and make level.
People will do proposals to have things happen on either the wordpress.
org site and for, you know, the team around it.
So that's just, One other column of all the, how this happens.
people write out a proposal, they put the idea out and people.
Talk about it, and then eventually something happens.
And whether that whole conversation happens here in these comments, in this
little comment section, and eventually it leads into something changing, or
there's a Slack group that's happening, and people are chatting there, and
then it makes its way into the project.
Yes, this is where, like, that disjointedness happens, where there's so
many different pockets of communication.
But at least there's pockets of communication happening, and
it's all out mostly in the open.
So there's just many areas that impact WordPress and these conversations
are happening all over the place.
Do you wanna put that link in the chat?
Cause like, Like, this is an example.
This is just an example.
I just searched for the word proposal.
I got
Mark: you.
But apparently, I've seen that before.
Proposals with other things and stuff like that.
Can we use this as a quick example though?
I don't want to put Javier on blast here.
Because I'm sure he's a fantastic individual.
Let
Matt: me read Courtney's comment.
In the other open source project proposals have a formal process
with that community's designated people like core committers.
have a period of RFCs, requests for comments, WordPress doesn't have this.
Mark: Mm.
There you go.
Okay.
That kind of answers my question.
So like this, like a proposal like this for whatever from anybody happens and
then it's like I, a random person would jump in here and read it and I would
say, okay, I kind of agree with it.
Kind of don't agree with it.
This is a great idea.
This is a stupid idea.
Whatever it is.
Maybe voice my opinion there.
But then what happens next?
Because it's not like.
This isn't supposed to be democratic, right?
Like, let me, let me pose some, some scenarios here, because this is how I,
this is how I learn to understand things.
So, we have whoever puts a proposal in here, and then underneath this, we
could have 55 people that say, this is the worst idea I've ever heard.
And then, then though, because this isn't like, democratic driven by the
people, could we have whoever the, whoever the, Like what happens next?
Like, what if the, is there somebody that like kind of monitors
these and says, nope, actually, I disagree with you 55 people.
This is a fantastic idea.
We're doing it.
Is, can it work like that?
Or am I, I'm just guessing, I don't know.
Because I'm really confused on how this part works.
Do we, we don't have a process for that?
Matt: for this particular, you know, I, I would imagine for this particular
thing, I guess it also depends on is it something that's impacting, WordPress.
org, like the site, which is this particular post WordPress hosting
directory, but the software is, is Can and could happen without,
you know, this official, proposal.
Yeah.
Daniel says, this is the same discussion we keep having going all the way
back to WordPress and the foundation, how decisions are being made.
A hundred percent.
Courtney said, I'm correct.
I trust Courtney.
Mark says, yeah, Mark, you're correct.
tonic loads of, loads of discussion.
zero real leadership.
You know, the only thing I have an issue is when you say like, are, Are
the, the leadership, is it, is it about you don't like the leadership or is it
things aren't happening fast enough?
Because once again, I just, I've been in the software world for a long time
and either, you know, I work at Gravity Forms, that's my, that's my day job.
There are things that just have to get done, and then there
are nice to have features.
And then when the things that have to get done are either complex, or we're
trying to support WordPress, or, certain WordPress features, and it has to be,
backwards compatibility, and you're wrestling with that, like, man, sometimes
the software thing takes a while.
And I said this in your livestream last week.
Week mark like imagine when we're talking about version control like imagine
trying to Do WordPress with 2, 000 ish people and then imagine trying to
develop a website with six people And just like how drastic of a difference
it is with 2, 000 But also like how it can be the same kind of technical
challenge with just six people looks like we lost Mark's video mark is back
Mark: Yeah, just fixing it.
Sorry about that.
But yeah, that's Yeah, I don't know.
It's a very interesting thing, but this is this is the type of stuff here where
like The way the way I work and I think about these types of issues is like I'm,
not even at the point where I can like Render a full opinion on if this is right
if this is wrong because what we just discovered there as an example It's I
guarantee you most people don't even know that Okay I guarantee you most people
don't even know that that's how it works where like you could put up a proposal for
an instance and then we're still not even sure if You Like how that gets vetted if
there is a process sounds like there kind of isn't one you can render your you can
render your Opinion on it, but then it it we don't know how that ends up circling
through compare and contrast that with maybe something like at another Type of
company another corporation where like you could just put in feature requests
and maybe it gets cared about maybe it doesn't but ultimately though the thing
there is like If I went to Apple, and somehow Apple is a bad example, but if
I went to a company like that, put in a feature request, and 10, 000 people
upvoted it, I think they're going to be like, well, a reasonable percentage
of our user base thinks this is a good idea, let's look at it a little bit,
and then they might implement it just because most of the user base agrees,
and they want to make more money, they want to make their clients more happy.
So, that's the way that I would kind of think about it.
But again, here's my thing.
I'm not even rendering an opinion on whether I think this is right or wrong.
I, we just need to understand, hopefully the majority of people need to understand
how it's working before we even say if it's, okay, this is good, bad,
or like, is there, is there a way to make things, kind of more efficient?
Like, do we have a way to optimize things or opinions on how to optimize things?
Can't even really do that.
Cause it seems like there's a lot of minutiae here that needs to be,
still understood by the masses.
Matt: One of the.
Comments.
I saw from tonic and, and, and we've all, we all say it.
I think there's different levels of, just trying to pull up something else.
Mark: Yeah, guys, Apple was a bad example.
Let's pick somebody else.
Sorry.
And
Matt: one second, let me just pull this up.
So
like it's been so long.
I really have an issue with how long, like, being super critical
on how long it, it takes.
because we all know, like, for instance, in that live stream today, somebody
mentioned like, Oh, as soon as I have an idea for Crocco blocks, I send
them a message and they build it.
Well, okay, great.
But that's like Crocco blocks building it for their, however many customers
they have 10, 000, a hundred thousand.
I don't know what the number is, but it's certainly not millions.
And it's certainly not a complex product as, or a piece
of software as WordPress is.
So it's, it's one thing to be like, Oh yeah, I need that thing, throw it in.
Just like with the expand three dots on the entire admin panel,
how would you get that done?
How would you do that?
And let's say you can propose it to Gutenberg.
All right.
What, what is enough?
So if we use your example before Mark about like, Oh, we tell
people to go and create an issue.
And then if it doesn't get done for five years, like there was an issue
recently, somebody brought up again has been in there for like 13 years.
Right.
but if somebody puts an issue in and it doesn't get touched, like,
well, how much effort did you put in to creating that issue?
Right.
Did you clearly articulate it?
Is it a big enough issue for somebody to pick up on it?
is it.
easily solvable, right?
So when I put my issue in for putting in a command into the command palette,
I was lucky enough to have Brian Cordes be like, I think I can do that and write
that code, and I will go and do it.
So immediately, it was like a one two combo of like, here's my idea,
here's why I think I need it.
So I articulated it halfway decent.
It's a very simple thing, so it's not that hard.
And then Brian wrote it.
And then got feedback from other developers who, who contribute
to, to Gutenberg and moved it up the, moved it up the chain.
So it's one thing to be like, go and create an issue and just
be like, this thing needs help.
And then you just leave.
But it's another thing to come in and say, okay, we need those three dots expanded.
I think the best place for that is in the site editor preferences.
Because this is what I was thinking when I was listening to it.
And it would be a toggle inside the site preferences.
preferences window, and I would even make a little screenshot
of like, here's where it can go.
Here's a little toggle UI, and you could turn this on and off.
But, but that just starts the discussion, right?
For a thing like that, because it's one thing to just say it.
It's another thing to implement it.
And that's the difference between like, I don't know, a user base
of Crocoblox versus WordPress.
Crocoblox may like, yeah, throw it in.
Easy, right?
We're only supporting 10, 000, you know, I don't mean this in a bad way, but
we're only supporting 10, 000 paying customers or whatever the number is.
Versus millions of people have to use this and then it has to be supported.
Right?
So there's a big difference.
I, I, I, I, I hope people realize like, you can show up and create
that issue, but then what's a good issue versus a bad issue.
Does that make sense?
Mark: I think it does.
How do you feel about, how do you feel about filming a video on the three
dots, posting that on YouTube, then posting that video on GitHub as well?
Sure.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And then, and then seeing how that goes, and then posting a follow up
video on what the, what the outcome was.
Matt: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, the more, the more you can give to a, a,
a developer or a product person to see that, I mean, the better, right?
I, I think when you look at it from, Political's not the right word, but
when you look at, like, trying to convince somebody, it's certainly not
gonna help if you just yell at them and say, this feature is terrible, we need,
we need it to be something different.
Please explain, elaborate, and if you can, demonstrate it with a, with
a video and a, and an illustration.
where was I going?
I was going with, do do do do, we're looking at Gutenberg, oh,
WordPress core contributors, right?
So there's core contributors to WordPress, right?
So this is
across the, the, the lifespan of WordPress.
And these are folks who actually had core contributor access to
WordPress, like those that can actually push the code to WordPress core.
And you can come in and you can see all of them, throughout
the, history of WordPress.
let me go back so I can see that number.
The number is 72 total contributors.
Core contributors, right?
Folks who can actually push code to WordPress Core, which
impacts the entire world.
That's why that number isn't as big as something like, Gutenberg,
which has, 1, 300 ish people over time, 1, 100 contributors over time,
because, This is a project on Git, on Gutenberg, on GitHub that anybody can
come and, and contribute to, right?
So Is that, wait, so there's 72 active core contributors?
No, you'd have to go, no, that's overall time.
Mark: Really?
Yeah.
People who are Can you leave?
What do you mean?
Like, can you leave?
Has there always been 72 total, like No,
Matt: no, no, these are, so it's, it's people that can actually deploy the code.
Right?
These are core contributors that can actually deploy the code.
And yes, Daniel, isn't that also only contributors with GitHub accounts?
Correct.
Yeah.
But core contributors, core contributors, people contribute code to WordPress.
That doesn't necessarily make them a core contributor, which can
actually affect WordPress core.
Mark: Is there like, this is a stupid question.
Is there like one person or a, like the small team, the leadership,
like that vets this code?
Like, I mean, you can't just, like, push it, right?
I mean, obviously, you can't just, like, How do we trust those people enough?
Matt: At the end of the day, the buck stops at the, as far as I understand it,
the buck stops at the core contributors.
Right?
So, testing, all that stuff happens.
That's why I always say, one of the best things to do is to see, You know,
when they're, when they're releasing a, a new version of, of WordPress, to
actually watch that happen in Slack, because you get to see sort of like, I,
I, I sort of, I sort of attribute it to like watching a spaceship launch, right?
All the, the checks and, you know, we're checking this and we're
doing that and, okay, we're gonna, everybody, everybody's checking and
everybody's making sure there's no last, errors when they're committing
the, the code, you know, to WordPress.
they get to see all that stuff, right?
Or you get to see all that stuff as like a, as like a, you know, somebody
in the audience seeing this thing launch and everybody's checking in and
you really get to see, wow, there's a, there's a lot of people that,
that, that, that partake in this.
but you know, you can even see it like, again, back to the value of, of,
of open source and version control.
I know I'm bouncing around here a lot.
but when you go and look at something like,
this is, this is where, like, I'm not a developer, so this is why it's probably
painful for developers in the audience, but if you look at something like,
add padding around selected values, author filter, you know, you can come
and see from a developer standpoint, performance tests, you can, you can
see how all of this stuff affects the code, you know, for lack of a better
word, like, was there an issue when the code was, merged into a particular,
you know, version of WordPress.
So like all of that stuff is being tracked in, in GitHub.
So you can kind of see where things are failing and.
And what, where the code is going, if that makes sense.
And again, I'm not a, I'm not a developer.
I just, I just trust the process here.
And I trust something like, like GitHub and version control, because
you, that is all documented.
So you can kind of see if there, if there is a problem, you can go back and go, Oh
God, this is where this code got merged.
We need to, we need to roll that back.
or we need to pull that out kind of thing.
Yeah.
Okay.
Mark: Makes sense.
Yeah.
So what is track?
It's track something different.
we don't have to, we don't have to get into it.
I was just, it's high level, high level.
Just something else.
Matt: Yeah.
Track is just legacy.
It's like legacy version control.
before like GitHub existed.
No, we use it.
We still use it, in, in WordPress.
So track is, where like all these issues happen in, in, in GitHub.
and then there's like SVN, wordpress, let me show, let me pull it up.
Mark: Daniel has some, strong opinions on SVN, apparently.
Matt: Let me tell you about SVN.
Yeah, I mean, SVN, Mark, you're probably too young for this, but do you remember
ever hearing about, like, MS DOS?
Like, it's Yes.
It's, it's, it's like that.
Oh, wow.
You know.
Interesting.
so,
So if we pull up this,
Mark: But it was the same concept then, But not, Yeah,
it's just, it's been there since,
Matt: yeah, since WordPress, WordPress started, right?
So, I don't know, if we go into, You know, something like this, it's just a very
old, You can, you can tell, it's just a very old school, setup, it just runs on.
on wordpress.
org.
So this particular one is, a track ticket, which is classified as a
bug, says filters on pattern archives page not working, opened 13 hours
ago, last modified 7 hours ago.
somebody says, here's the description, when you're on the patterns archive
page and you want your filters sync or not sync pattern, the back
office crashed with this JS error.
So this is obviously the code stuff happening.
And then this person.
I'm not even going to pretend to dissect this code, but this person
replied with, with the issue.
So
Mark: it's legacy and it's being used by people that don't use Git?
Matt: Yeah, but this is where all the core WordPress stuff happens.
And WordPress themes.
Mark: And plugins.
Because it's, because it's not on Git?
Or just because it's legacy and it hasn't moved or mined or anything like
Matt: that.
It hasn't moved, and I believe it hasn't moved because, what Courtney said, I
think she said, security by obscurity because if there is some kind of huge
security issue with WordPress, seemingly they don't want that to be, you know,
On GitHub or accessible for anyone to either contribute or get access to it.
so it stays with just the core contributors and they mirror it.
As Courtney also mentioned, it's, it's, it says it right here to
link a pull request to the ticket.
So all that code is getting mirrored to GitHub so you can see it.
But all the other discussions and access to contribute,
that code happens in in track.
Mark: Hmm.
You, you have to be logged in to see that, I guess.
Matt: No, this stuff is, no, this is, I'm not logged in.
This is all, you can go to core.
track.
wordpress to see it.
Mullenweg: Okay.
Matt: And you get an RSS feed for it too, and you can see
absolutely everything happening.
So this covers everything under wordpress.
org, which is a whole other discussion, which is wordpress.
org itself, wordpress core, wordpress themes, like all the themes that
are, are hosted at wordpress.
org, all the plugins that are hosted at wordpress.
org, like this is where.
Theme developers are, are still putting their, their themes and having the
discussions of approval and what has to be changed, what needs to be updated.
Like this is, that whole community is in here.
but it all, all the WordPress core stuff also gets mirrored to, to GitHub.
So you can see the code, you're just not gonna, you're just not
gonna see all those discussions.
Mark: Hmm.
Okay.
Do you think it's, like, important?
Do you think it would be, like, beneficial to try to I mean, I
I I'm I'm a little I'm a little
I don't know if I'm just too young, you know, not not not jaded
by life just yet or something.
But, like, the the sentiment that, like, this is just keep this just keeps
happening, like, you know, like you like, it's just the way that it is.
It's always it's it's always been like this.
It's always going to be like this.
That type of thing.
It doesn't ever really resonate with me.
I find it to be like, quite, like maybe it will end up being true, but I find it
to be like, quite like, I don't know, just maybe a sad way to think about things.
Like, do we think like, things could improve?
Like, it almost seems like it's a sentiment that like,
you can't improve anything.
Like, it's just, ah, this is just how it is.
Matt: I, again, like, I, I, I don't, It depends on what you mean by improving,
like what that and how much are, are you looking to improve all at once?
I mean, obviously I'm not the one, you know, with the, with the answers
or the, on the leadership side, but it's just like, what does it,
what does improvement look like?
Does it look like we're getting more features, you know, not to,
like Bricks versus WordPress Core.
Like, are, like, do we feel like that's an improvement?
Like, oh, we're starting to satisfy those requirements that we get in Bricks, and
now we have that stuff in, in WordPress.
Is that in, is that improvement?
Is it improvement in the publishing side of it?
you know, somebody on that call today brought up, like, oh, the first thing I
do is I disable all the screen options.
Like, all the stuff that shows up on, I'm assuming he's talking
about, like, WordPress dashboard and all the other stuff that pops up.
Like, okay, is that, is that How bad is that?
Is like, is that all you want to get better?
Is like that improve, like that onboarding experience?
Like, is it the onboarding experience?
Is it more themes?
Like, what is it that people want?
And I don't think that anyone can clearly answer that.
because there's just a, such a vast amount of, of stuff that
people want from WordPress.
You know, I don't know what improvement looks like.
Is it, is it clear, clear, clearer objectives?
Is it more transparency with leadership?
Is it those features we talked about?
Like, what is it?
Like, what is it gonna make it better?
Because I think, my answer is, I'm not unhappy.
Right?
Like, I know I'm gonna come off as, as an automatic apologist.
But I also say, like, Step up other companies who are also making
millions, if not billions of dollars off of, off of this industry.
And, and contribute.
I'm not worried about, I, I, I'm, you know, I'm of the, of the mindset of like,
I don't feel like it's that bad because, because we still have the products
to be able to, to do things better.
If you don't like Gutenberg, you know, that's fine, but you
can, you have other options.
Elementor, Bricks, go ahead, pick something else.
Mark: I mean, I think, the transparency aspect of it, which I'm
not even blaming, I wouldn't even pass blame for the transparency.
It's very hard to be transparent about so many different,
like, the whole process of it.
But, my question would be, like, is that a core tenant of
the whole project as a whole?
And obviously, like, Matt Mullenweg's kind of the epicenter
of progress, like Daniel said.
Question, because I'm new.
Because I'm new here.
I don't know how long I can say that for, but question because I'm new here.
Matt: Yeah, you're gonna run out of that pretty
Mark: soon.
Did he, did he ever describe himself as a benevolent dictator,
or was that something that was just Because I hear that all the time.
Like, did he say it was like that, or did somebody just like
say that that was how it was?
Matt: I, I think that was, and if anybody's in the audience that
remembers this, I think that was tongue in cheek from, because he's
really good friends with, Tim Ferriss.
And I, I want to say it was on Tim Ferriss podcast where he, Tim,
labeled him the benevolent dictator.
It might've been passed around before, or maybe he said it, but the first
time I had heard it really was on, was, on the Tim Ferriss podcast.
Yeah.
Courtney says it's used beyond WordPress.
My mouse keeps dying for some reason.
Interesting.
Okay.
Mark: All right.
So it's not like a foreign concept or whatever.
And like, he would probably, if you asked him, like, are you a benevolent dictator?
He would say yes.
Matt: I would assume he would say yes.
He'd probably like look at you sideways, but
Mark: Well, I'm just saying, I'm just saying because I feel like it, it, I'm
not, again, I'm not the point where I'm like casting judgment or opinion
necessarily, but I just feel like that, even something as silly as that,
it's like everybody understanding that it's not a democracy and rather it's,
it's rather him, moving it forward.
If that is the case and everybody knew that, then at that point you could say,
okay, well I do or don't agree with that.
But until we understand that that is how it is, because still I think people
are confused apparently that it's not a democracy and it's not like, oh, I want
something, I can just say it and it just happens, which is important to know.
Like, we have to understand that.
The parameters of what we're dealing with and like what the situation is
before we can actually have an honest conversation Or and make any progress
whatsoever regardless of what your definition of progress is so, Yeah, and
I would say the only thing I would say though is like if that's the case you
line those down those up it's like I mean I I as an aside Maybe off topic.
I find it like crazy that like 43 percent of the internet seems to
be Completely completely like at the, the mercy of one individual.
Like that's kind of like that, that seems a little concerning to me.
Not, not like again, nothing against Matt Mullen.
We never spoke to the guy seen his interview seems great, but I'm just saying
like all of that one person epicenter of that, like, and we've talked about this
before, hopefully there's like kind of more of like, we're understanding now
that like time is a reality and like we have built, we're building kind of like,
you know, some, you know, contingency to that, like with, you know, troops
and different things like that, and like kind of the, you know, the seconds in
command and stuff like that, which I don't know how much or how little that
has happened in the past and everything.
Cause obviously when you're trying to run something big, you can't just do it alone.
So I dunno, that's just, we don't have any answers there.
I don't feel like from what I've heard, it's just, we'll see what happens, but
that's still something that's kind of like Just, I would just be curious about, like,
how, how do we, how do we go about that?
You know, not the next generation of users, the next
generation of operators, or,
Matt: you
Mark: know, leadership, even.
Yeah.
Matt: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's, It's something that people
bring up a lot, and, and, You know, I, I, I think it almost sounds worse, too.
It sounds a lot more urgent when you frame it that way.
Like, oh, it's a whole, you know, 43%, this big number is reliant on him.
It is, and it isn't because it's like ideas, like he does set the
motion forward and he, and he does allow for all of these automaticians
to contribute to, to WordPress.
But I think just like if you're a, I don't know, if you have an idea for a movie,
and a movie starts getting made, like as a writer, or as like the creator, like,
okay, it's one thing to be like, here's the thing I want done, but then it's,
again, it's this massive apparatus, and it changes and evolves over time, and
it's out of your control, unless you're just an absolute, like, maniac narcissist
and you're just like in everybody's face, which, you know, Hey, it kind of sounds
like he's in, he's still talking to all these people about all these products.
Like he does need to maybe take a step back and hyper focus
on, on the core of WordPress.
but I think like his direction, there's one thing that like he sets
the tone and the direction, but how it evolves, he's not like it's him
writing the lines of code and the features are being built or whatever.
Maybe like, even like Steve jobs to a degree, I guess.
you know, he has the ideas.
This is the vision, but eventually, like, reality sets in and it has to
be built a certain way and it, and it, and it evolves just because there's so
many people, you know, contributing to this thing that maybe his idea doesn't
take shape exactly like he's wanted.
and he's, you know, he's talked about it.
Look at the, Data Liberation Initiative.
That's just his idea.
And until maybe he makes, automaticians actually, you know, write these export
import migration tools, he's just like, here's this idea for data liberation.
Here's what we should do.
And he just throws it out there.
And now it's up to the community and anyone else who wants to contribute
to that, to actually make it reality.
So what did he do?
He sort of like, put the carrot on the end of the stick a little bit closer.
And he was just like, Oh, if you want to make this plugin.
I'll make sure, make a plugin to do something like this.
I'll make sure it gets approved in 24 to 48 hours or whatever, which
is, you know, contrary to like, if you just have a plugin that you
want to contribute to wordpress.
org, it might take a month, two months, three months.
I don't even know what the wait time is anymore for plugins.
So his thing was like, I can help you get this done faster if
you're contributing to this data liberation project as an example.
Mark: Yeah, I, I, I feel like, I mean, that totally makes sense, the
ex, example with, Data Liberation.
I would just be kind of literally interested, maybe just like, literally
ask him the question of like, how do you, to me, it's a little concerning,
not concerning, but it's like, it's interesting that he, as that, with that
example, came up with Data Liberation.
Seems like a great idea.
Then nobody did anything with it, and then he had to dangle the carrot,
and it's like, Does he, as, using that one as the, the one in question.
Does, is he gonna have like a, a direction for that, that people
are gonna have to follow as well?
and he's just getting it started and then he's gonna be like, okay,
actually this is kind of where I want you to go, something like that, or
is he much more hands off than that?
Because I've literally heard like, again, without actually talking
to him and hearing that specific stuff, I've heard kind of both ways.
I've heard he's very on, you know, like you said, on all the different companies,
kind of like in there, like CEOs of different companies and stuff like that.
Very like hands on with a lot of that stuff.
And, but also at the same time, like, how could you possibly be
hands on with all this stuff?
I mean, it's just too vast.
So I don't know.
I would love, I would, I'm just curious genuinely about that as an example, but
Matt: I'm trying to just find something really quick.
What else?
You see any, any chats coming in while I look for this,
anything that anyone's saying?
Mark: Yeah, I got one from Elliot Richmond.
The plan is there is no plan.
That's a fun one.
Matt: Damn it.
Mark: That's a fun one.
and then Peter says, there's always forking classic press exists.
I'm not personally, interested in it, but, but there is that, I mean,
again, that's the beautiful part.
I mean, again, I don't know.
I, maybe I'm just like kind of too meta for a lot of these conversations.
I just literally think like what happens if Matt Mullenweg literally just
decided tomorrow that he wasn't going to do, wasn't going to do anything.
I'm getting an echo right
Matt: now.
Yeah, I was hearing myself.
All right.
Tell me if you hear this, tell me if you hear this without you.
Mullenweg: I have a little bit of a, sad trombone one though.
Matt: Do you hear that?
All right.
Yeah.
So I just need to turn that on for a second.
Do you hear me?
Do you hear me twice?
Hmm.
Okay.
So you just be quiet for a second.
And I'm going to play this, I'm going to play this clip, from the Data Liberation.
This is from, Matt Mullenweg's summer update at WordCamp Europe
talking specifically about, the Data Liberation Project.
Mullenweg: Which is the Data Liberation Project.
So, as I spoke about at State of the Word, I'll reintroduce data liberation.
This is the idea that one of the best things we could do as an open
source community is unlock all the proprietary platforms, all the
places where people have their data locked in to systems which might not
allow export or easy composability or transferability of their data.
so we, we term this data liberation.
And, if you scan that QR code or go to wordpress.
org slash data dash liberation, you will see we have the start of what,
hopefully will be something that creates a ton more freedom on the web and a
ton more portability between platforms, including in and out of WordPress.
WordPress could be a, maybe a middle ground between something else.
however, this has had very, very little progress.
So if you go to that page, click on some of the links, you'll see mostly empty
GitHub So I just wanted to point this out, as an amazing place if you're interested
in contributing to WordPress, to adopt something and have total ownership of it.
So if you wanted to, sort of, each of these projects is fairly self contained.
So if, you wanted a chance to actually lead something within the
WordPress project, you could be in charge of the, say, Wix to WordPress
converter or something like that.
this, I think, is also going to be really important for us as, The more
and more marketing dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in
marketing for proprietary platforms.
Proprietary platforms have gotten tons of investment in the past few years.
Things like Shopify, Squarespace, etc.
And they are coming as sort of the macroeconomic conditions have changed.
They've started to really target WordPress agencies, WordPress
users, WordPress sites quite a bit.
And so they're coming and trying to snipe away our community.
so.
So, we have to keep an eye out for that.
And the problem as well is when people go that way, it's almost
impossible to go back the other way.
It's like, I don't know if you had this advertisement here,
but the Roach Motel, the Roaches check in, they don't check out.
That's a lot of these proprietary CMSs.
They'll let you check in your data, but you can never check it out.
So as part of our mission to democratize the web and increase freedom, I think it's
really, really important that we create portability, even when the platforms
themselves don't support The other big part of this that I think is also super
relevant for this audience is we need to make wordpress to wordpress easier.
Who's ever tried to transfer a wordpress site to something else?
Matt: Alright, so I'm just going to stop it there.
You should be good.
I shut off loopback.
you know, where this project, he came up with this idea.
Data liberation.
And maybe other people talked about it.
I mean, we've all always talked about making it easier to move from
WordPress to WordPress for sure.
from one web host to another web host, you know, moving your media
from I just want my media to go to this WordPress website or whatever.
So, okay, so whether or not this is just a pet project, like understanding
that Matt comes up with maybe a lot of pet projects as, you know, somebody in
a more innovative leadership position should be doing, like taking bets and
making these different things happen.
That is how it started, at least the way that I understand it with data liberation.
Here's an idea, here's why we need it to get done, and let's go build it.
And by let's go build it, it's just here it is, you know, WordPress
community, go and build this.
Now, I think what's important to understand is that if you're a developer,
like you have to get your, your, this is, this is the, this is the challenge
that a lot of us have with the community is we, we only see ourselves like
website builders mostly, like we're the most vocal, we're doing content
marketing, we're on Twitter, LinkedIn, Livestreams, doing all this stuff.
Right.
But there are, there's a whole group of people, much greater than the business
side of WordPress, who are, who are developers, and somebody who wants to
make a name for themselves, rightfully so.
And you, and you love the idea of open source, and you're a fantastic developer,
and how do you, how do you, Shoulder your way up in, in a community, where
you want to give back to WordPress, but maybe you just don't have the podium or
the stage that's, that is there for you.
What he said is, hey, you could be the person who makes the Wix to WordPress
converter or whatever, like you could be the person that leads that.
And there's a certain allure there for somebody who wants to build that.
Right?
Just like if, if WordPress was like, Hey, we're doing an open
call for podcasters for wordpress.
org, I'd be like, yeah, I'll probably try to throw my hat into that ring.
Like I, I'll try to create a story or an audio series about WordPress
that I'll, that I'll contribute to.
And I would feel super passionate about that.
There is, there are people out there much again, much greater and
much more mass than us who would be like, yes, I want to write code.
In open source and give it give back to wordpress and be that person who
made that wix to wordpress converter because one you either just love it You
love the idea of solving this issue, which I think a lot of developers are
attracted to development in general.
or you're trying to make it, you're trying to build up your
resume and you want to get noticed.
You want to get a job.
You want to, you want to be hired by Automatic.
You want to be hired by some, you know, web agency or some software company.
And if you're the person who made that decision, you know, made their mark on
the data liberation project and you are making Wix to WordPress so much better.
yeah, you've just increased your chances to be maybe hired by automatic or Wix
because Wix does have an open source division, air quotes, where they give back
to their own open source projects as well.
So it's also a calling card to the developers who are out there who
want to contribute to this stuff.
And I think we only see it from one lens.
We're like, Oh, that'll never happen.
Who's going to do that?
Well, somebody will eventually maybe step up, or if not, it
doesn't, and it just dies out.
and it really depends on, on Mullenweg on whether or not he says, okay, no one wants
to, to jump into this open source thing.
I'll take 12 people from automatic and make sure that they're contributing
their time to data liberation.
Mark: Yeah.
I mean, uh, again, as far as the data liberation example
goes, yeah, I don't know.
I, it.
What you laid out there makes sense.
If you're, if you're a developer trying to make a name for themselves or whatever,
then like those are the types of project.
And Matt Mullenweg seems to be absolutely like a visionary and
innovative guy as far as those things go.
again, I'd be interested to see like how much of his, he is super hands on with
versus just having the ideas and letting them kind of like naturally kind of flow.
I'm sure there's examples of that in the past and I'll be interested to see
how it moves into the, into the future.
Just because I feel like everything's getting pretty big.
There's a lot going on.
So obviously just can't be reasonable amount of delegation.
I feel like has to be, has to be continually made.
And I'm sure he's doing a good bit of that.
So,
Matt: so I'll just, I'll, I'll sort of wrap up my side of it from call to
action, you know, check out, the, the, the live stream that, Paul was supposed
to host on his, on his, on his channel today, I'll paste that, in the chat.
If anybody else has any other questions, go ahead and drop them in now.
you know, obviously a long conversation.
The, the only thing, you know, that I really, you know, have a critical
take on is if you're a content creator, And you're somebody with an
audience that you, you should want to be meeting in the middle, right?
Like, it's not just good enough to, it's still impactful.
I just think from my own point of view, like you have to try to
meet in the middle and understand.
Get the other person to cross aisle.
And this goes on both sides, right?
Like if you're an automatician, and again, we're seeing those efforts, with Nick
Diego and McCarthy, you know, rich Tabor's going on shows and stuff like that.
So there is a little bit of listening coming from that side.
but from the content creator side, I feel like it's, It's, it's detrimental
that you, that you understand, this apparatus and that you also, are,
you know, meeting in the middle and contributing more than just the content.
I think if you're, a thought leader, an influencer, a YouTuber, and you
have the audience, that you have to do, you have to go a step further,
right, as, as a leader, in my opinion.
Just in my opinion.
check out the live stream today.
It is still a good discussion.
It's making more people talk.
So, yes, there's a compound effect.
There's a domino effect here.
check out, the, the live stream discussion that I linked up.
Again, it went on, the Web Squadron channel.
It was supposed to be Paul's channel.
yeah, check it out.
It's a good, good conversation.
And folks like Mark, who's on the stream today, does a
series called, Bridge Builders.
Bridging the Gap.
I'm not going to fill in the, what's the, what's the sub headline?
Mark: I don't want to, we do, we do.
We can.
Yeah.
It's Matt Eastwood's over on Matt Eastwood's channel.
Me and, Brendan O'Connell, co hosted with him and yeah, we just look at
different builders and different workflows and things like that, because
I do think that that is a tough thing.
None of us have an infinite hours in the day, so we can't all get like to see the
behind the scenes of how everything works.
And then we just hear it via rumors from, you know, different
content and things like that.
Oh, this is great.
This is terrible.
It's nice to see it, you know, and, hope and we try to package it in a
short stream, but it's normally ends up being like two to three hours, but, You
know, just trying to, just trying to get people different perspectives on stuff.
I don't know, like I said, I don't have all the time in the world to look at
all these different things, so it's cool to see it, from professionals and,
that are using these different workflows and just give us a little bit of a
peek behind the curtain on the other things that we're not using every day.
So, yeah.
Matt: Awesome stuff.
everybody else, thanks for joining the stream today.
thanks for hanging out, asking questions, throwing in your two cents, the WP minute.
The wpminute.
com.
Hey, you know what's happening tomorrow?
Another live stream, talking about another widely debated company, Elementor.
we're going to talk about is Elementor locking you in to, my mouse keeps dying,
is Elementor locking you in to AI?
You can join that conversation with me, tomorrow.
at 12 p.
m.
Eastern, right here on this channel.
Let me throw up the screen one more time.
youtube.
com at WPMinute, joined by Ryan Logan, talking about his
recent findings of Elementor.
Can we shut off that pesky AI?
Who's in control?
We'll find out tomorrow, on the livestream, everybody.
Thanks for watching.
We'll see you in the next one.