WordPress at 23 is simultaneously both the strongest and most precarious it’s ever been.
Last week, we shipped WordPress 7 to the world. In seven days, 46% of all WordPresses, tens of millions across countless different hosting environments, are already on 7.0, auto-updated with no breakage. From a Raspberry Pi to the most secure sites in the world, like WhiteHouse.gov. Sit with that for a minute when you think of all the resources and all the projects that have had security problems in the past few weeks. No supply chain attacks, no security problems, just a stable, secure infrastructure doing its job invisibly to power a huge portion of the open internet.
I’m really proud of the capability and security of WordPress, and we should celebrate that. That accomplishment represents the work of thousands and thousands of people coming together to make the web a better place. Also, an iceberg of what is going on behind the scenes.
However, the release was not what I hoped it would be because so much time from key people was taken away by WP Engine’s attacks.
Silver Lake, in its immense 100B+ power, summoned a shoggoth in Quinn Emanuel that has been paperclip-maximizing legal torture that is not just going after Automattic and WordPress.org and me personally, but this Golem Jagannath is now trying to dissolve the WordPress Foundation itself, a non-profit with no employees or payroll that supports WordCamps and Open Source education around the world.
If you know anyone at Silver Lake, Quinn Emanuel, or WP Engine in that order, please beg, plead with them to stop the violence. End this internecine warfare that is threatening to destroy one of the last stalwarts of the Open Web.
It’s not fun and games anymore, not just business. This is having a real impact on people’s lives.
It took every ounce of will in my body, and I am grateful to thousands of hours of meditation, to not explode in rage when asked about pineapple on pizza and debating the meaning of Jean Baudrillard and “bastardized simalcra” when miles away, my closest friend is in a hospital bed waiting for a heart transplant.
I have colleagues LITERALLY DYING I can’t be with because Silver Lake / Quinn Emanuel / WP Engine shoggoth is trying to make it seem like I am hiding or destroying evidence because we rotate logs on wordpress.org or I have disappearing chats on Signal with romantic partners. I don’t curse, but this is so f-ed up I don’t know what to say.
If you don’t know anyone at these entities, please pray, meditate, and call on whatever forces or divine interventions you can to bring this to an end.
I reached out multiple times to resolve this with open arms; I’ve extended every olive branch; and I’ve even said positive things about Silver Lake and WP Engine in the press, trying to bring this to a close. Heather Brunner would not even come into the same room with me.
All of this from a stupid presentation I gave at WordCamp US 2024 about how private equity can hollow out high-trust-based Open Source communities that in the past 19 months has only gotten 16k views on YouTube.
Silver Lake, you have already extracted all your pounds of flesh. I missed my Mom’s knee surgery. If you wanted me to suffer for my sins, I have, and probably deeper than you will ever know. WordPress and WordPress.org, and yes, even my flawed leadership, are at the heart of what has made WP Engine successful so far. You have so much money and power, you just got TikTok, the Trump administration loves you, you don’t need to control and take over WordPress, too. If you win, you destroy it, and then what? Please have mercy and stop trying to ruin people’s lives. Let’s move on.