Coding with Lewis - 2026-09-01
WordPress powers about 41% of the internet. It took Matt Mullenweg twenty years to build that. It took him about ninety days in 2024 to lose the trust of the community he built it with — the agencies, plugin developers, hosts, and translators who bet their businesses on the update button still working next Friday. This is the full timeline: how a blog fork in 2003 became a movement, how Automattic became a company, how WP Engine became the target, and how one keynote at WordCamp US turned into cease and desists, lawsuits, forked plugins, mass resignations, and a preliminary injunction. And it's the story of a pattern that keeps repeating in open source — from Redis to Terraform to Elasticsearch — where the same loop plays out with a different logo every time. #WordPress #OpenSource #TechHistory #WPEngine #Automattic #TechInvestigation ⏱️ Chapters: 00:00 A 90-Day Fall From Trust 00:53 How WordPress Won the Web (2003) 05:44 The Automattic Movement 09:03 One Man, Three Power Centers 11:44 WP Engine and Private Equity 14:44 The GoDaddy Precedent 17:36 WordCamp US 2024: The Break 22:26 Cease and Desist Wars 25:35 Fighting Their Own Community 28:04 The Court Steps In 30:00 The Open Source Loop CONNECT WITH ME ON SOCIAL MY 12K+ DISCORD 💬 https://discord.gg/GkrFX4zT2C 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/lewismenelaws 🎚TikTok:https://tiktok.com/@lewismenelaws 🐣 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LewisMenelaws My gear 💻 https://liinks.co/lewismenelaws
1. People build something valuable.
2. Private equity shows up.
3. Everything turns to shit.
You can put this on America's tombstone.
pretty much. Matt's mistake was not realizing just how hard PE was going to screw him if he went up against it.
People need to just say no. Greed isn’t some new thing.
@JohnSmith-op7ls just say no haha, this is your brain 🧠,this is your brain on crack🧠 / THIS is your brain on unregulated capitalistic greed🪱💩
@_c_y_p_3
Save your demoralization, we dont care and we dont want to hear it.
@_c_y_p_3Only a zero IQ socialist would believe greed somehow didn’t exist before capitalism. Or that what we have now is at all capitalism and not a corporatist/managerialist/socialist hybrid
its interesting that in 2003 building static files for a blog was considered clunky, it's all the rage now
I think git and CICD helps a lot, I remember most of the hassle being tied to deploying/FTPing files and tracking changes (at least for me)
It's so easy now to have a build pipeline that genetics static files from something dynamic. It fixes so much
I can see why a blog might need a backend for comments but the workload of the mysql content blobs meant that any site with a moderate amount of traffic needed a medium scale server. So it wasn't free unless you had no traffic.
It was a manual process back then. These days you have tools doing basically all the hard work for you.
Return to php
Matt was a good man who had devoted himself to making the world a better place. Over time he was taken advantage of for his generosity until it drove him to madness. In his grief he attacked the very people he had once helped in order to get revenge on those who had wronged him. Truly a classic villain arc if there ever was one.
Still a better person than DHH, hands down.
@tsalVlognot hard
@tsalVlog OH-MA-CHEE - nah, bro
@mjn6six6 are you suggesting a self-proclaimed nazi is okay?
He used a license that allowed businesses to use his software for profit, then got jealous when those businesses did better than he did. Envy is the root of evil.
You've got to be in some serious trouble where the private equity firm doesn't seem like the bad guy in the story.
i feel like everyone forgets that autoMATTic also accepts funding from blackrock which was pointed out in the video, but when silverlake was mentioned numerous times with regard to wp engine, the same was never done for automattic. silverlake total assets, 100billion, blackrock, 170billion. both bad for the underlying cause but matt only has seering rage for one, why might that be.
Just depends on who tells the story no?
This was my vibe re-hearing all of this in this manner... I dislike PE and I know it kills companies but definitely an overreach and panic reaction to take on the bad guy role.
It was only like 5% of people left .. you can get that number or more from any company with that offer.. that’s not that bad lol
No, it's the facts that matter, and they're plain to see that Matt has some mental instabilities
This is something I've struggled with. I have always wanted to give away my software for free to help those who need it. But after a few years of hard financial struggle, I have to choose paths that will lead to my family being able to eat, rather than giving freely to the world. It's so frustrating that money is so important that it eclipses everything else. 😢
Use a license that businesses hate but people don't care about, like AGPL 3. If a business wants the sugar you can sell them a std software license
Software, not sugar 🙂
@shreepads I love that "if the business wans the shuga, they gotta come to me" 😂
You can't figure that out? Use activation code process and give activation codes without payment to those who you can determine are in need and can't pay up. Hire people to help you in processing the applications for free use, or write automatic processor software to process such aplications.
@iamnormal8648 that sounds like A LOT of administrative work for someone with executive processing disorders
Seems like a tale as old as time.
Well intentioned innovator carelessly does what he thinks is right, only to become rightly paranoid that his rash decision draws the ire of the vultures that are asset management firms like Blackrock, vanguard, & the people that run them.
Although his paranoia destroyed his image, he wasn't wrong, their encroachment ended up destroying what he wanted. He wouldn't have done the things he did, if he didn't feel his generosity was being abused.
He knew he was already on borrowed time.
Asset managers like blackrock only get involved if atleast one of them will win. It's about power, not money, & all of their managers/executives run in the same circles, regardless of company ties.
Free flowing information is the only real threat, hence why they always find themselves in publishing or information distribution of some kind.
Matt's "generosity" was to be in the right place at the right time, and have good instincts on how to grow, but he created a cult around WordPress, leveraged the generosity of tens of thousands of contributors while he accrued the lion's share of profits for himself and bullied everyone in the ecosystem that did anything that did not perpetuate an ecosystem where almost all the benefits accrued to him. Research what underhanded things he did to the developer of the Thesis theme. What happened was finally another player emerged that Matt could not bully like he had everyone else in the ecosystem.
Whilst I initially thought Matt was a bit of a villain, I did come round to his way of thinking a little more.
However, I do think his methods were wrong and probably he should have tried to act through legal routes instead of nuking his relationships and reputation to make a point.
At the end of the day, it’s not like his company wasn’t making money too. I get the principles behind his point of view but the execution was just such a mess.
His viewpoint is understandable: he wants nobody to compete with him. That's the goal of every capitalist. Unfortunately, you're supposed to do it by offering such a good product that nobody else can replicate, and not by just sabotaging everyone else.
he is not fully in the wrong but it's clear that the overall ecosystem has a lot of fundamental problems such as transparency in the foundation itself and so on
@thewhitefalcon8539 That is not even close to what he was aiming for, he just executed it in perhaps the worst way humanly possible
Oh he is a bit of a villain. I mean, he has a point, but
a) I don't think there's any step along the way where he handled this well.
b) Automatic is worth billions of dollars. At this point, WP Engine is worth a solid billion or so too. But honestly, this isn't like some scrappy developer that develops open source software then is not being compensated for it. They have healthy market share and healthy amounts of money coming in; so, he wants 100% of the wordpress pie instead of like 90%.
AGPL would have solved this
I'm a vet in the industry. I started with wordpress in 2008. This guy is literally once of the best presenters of his case I've seen in awhile. Very academic and articulate
Its unfortunate he touched his script up with AI. You can tell in the later parts of the video with the script’s AI phrasing telltale signs
@ethan_chungus This AI tambourine with cowbells has gotten dated and become nothing but annoying. Yes, yes, we all know you can tell it from the pixels, but thank you for taking your time for reminding us of your superpowers. Now please let serious people continue the serious discussion. We hear you, thanks once again.
@cykkm what serious discussion, i was replying to someone who was overly glazing lewis (i like lewis too but dont support AI scripts in videos)
I'm old if someone starting with wordpress in 2008 calls himself a vet.
@cykkm"this is AI" has become the new "PS2 graphics," hasn't it
I like these Software History long videos, nice work
24:03 - to have hundreds of your own employees resign just goes to show how unhinged he had gotten
It was also a really good deal... FFS imagine already thinking of quitting a company for completely normal reasons, and you get this offer... If anything 10% is fairly little.
It's only 8.4%, that is normal turnover - people thinking of leaving for other reasons suddenly bring forward those plans with the option of a bonus. You're showing your bias, not summarizing the situation.
Actually goodridance also considering he did it before AI layoff. A lot of those laid off now unemployed anyway. So technically being loyal to Matt probably would pay their bills today.
Unhinged comment.
Never do an update without a full database and site root backup. I've also disabled automatic updates and changed file permissions and ownership at the system level to prevent updates. Because what this video describes is why certain things should never be automated, IMHO. Drupal taught me that! 🤷♂🤣
If you release a software under GPL license, you can't complain about competitors using it for free. If the WordPress foundation had open governance, WP Engine and godaddy would have been able to pay their way in the board like it happens with Linux and any other project with open governance, but than WordPress wouldn't be anymore Matt's private property.
Yeah - that’s right. Equally open source projects should provide no guarantee of any timely updates or updates in the future.
@tomorrow6that's exactly how it works, in open source software you have updates because someone else needs updates. That's how it always worked. Linux easily get big companies to contribute: let's wonder why WordPress is not able to attract contributions.
> If you release a software under GPL license - don't forget that wordpress itself is a fork, it's said in the video. wordpress is gpl not because matt chose it, but because it had to be.
@lllIIIlIlIII He could have just created something himsellf, or fork something that was uner a BSD or MIT license. But here we are...
Issue with original gpl/gpl2 really comes with server run services, like wp engine as gpl never was made with that in mind, ie. SaaS where service provider doesn't need to return anything back.
I have little experience with WordPress development, but found this fascinating nonetheless. Well done on this video! Such interesting commentary
I thought the TechCrunch interview was hilarious. Matt sitting there trying to garner sympathy while wearing a $160,000 watch.
Thing is, Matt held in his frustration for a decade, and then let it all out at once until he was extremely inflexible. Understandable but flexibility would have saved him, but he had none left. CEO rule#1: listen to your team, and create an environment where your team will talk before they walk. I think with AI people will be moving away from WP anyway, and use a headless CMS (like ghost or strapi) and let AI integrate the CMS fields into an AI-first built website.
WP was conceived to perform a very specific task (blogging) that few people still engage in and its actual use depends less and less on a LAMP stack.
I mean when a company benefits from open source they should contribute proportionally to what value the gain from it, dont they think of the developers who maintain it. This is sad and is something we see over and over again
That goes against what Free Open Source Software means... If you want to do something like that? Make tiered licenses.
You can't sit surprised Pikachu Face when they don't contribute.
Sometimes it is another problem. You use WordPress... What about all the plugins? The themes? Etc.? Who decides how much value each adds? Even more so, why would a company want to help maintain all of the dependencies? Then you are just encouraging everyone making bespoke things again, and then FOSS dies from not having enough professional interest.
@SioxerNikitayes. This.
I disagree.
heh, if this were true, ffmpeg would be the most funded open source project on earth. maybe after linux.
@SioxerNikita No, That's definitely not the point of FOSS, maybe that's the point of a project published under MIT or BSD, but GPL was always about sharing and not leaching of projects. If you are a profitable private business you should contribute back to the project, either with money or man-hours, otherwise the project will die and you'll be left with the responsibility of making the work all by yourself which is silly and waists effort.
He had every right to reduce his companies contribution to match that of the competitor, and even limit access to the services for abusive users. his only mistake was not consulting a lawyer on how to go about doing that.
Great documentary. Top Notch
For me, the dumbest thing Matt did was the ACF to SCF bullshit. Until that moment, it felt like “drama,” but when that happened, a lot of alarm bells were ringing, and that legitimately scared me. That was really the dumbest thing he could do.
Also, lol: the whole “they hacked the code” thing because they removed the news from the dashboard, something that you can literally do with filters. I do that now for my clients, and it’s so nice. WordPress 'news' is just straight-up propaganda now.
ACF -> SCF was a nuclear facepalm for sure. Absolutely incredible. The cherry on top was the wp org acf slug 301 to scf.
I hope he's better now.
Yup definitely.
As a tumblr user(automattic owns tumblr), it's pretty well known that Matt went insane (like, more insane than his public wordpress actions would imply), but as an open source nut, it's an entirely predictable crashout
Insane? Someone with integrity and a set of balls is insane? Telling the truth is crazy in a world full of lies.
Yeah... I can't really be all that sympathetic given all the harm caused to trans and minority peeps at his direction and oversight. I assume there was a time he was a bit better, but at this point I can only see the end of his involvement in any of the projects and a positive.
@jajajajajaja867 It's wrong to ascribe insanity to himself. The contradiction arises from a rigidly held but subtly inconsistent philosophical position as it is completely fairly and logically extended up to the point where the hidden, previously unnoticed internal inconsistency exposes itself as said contradiction. I can feel for him as a person. Such realisation indeed comes as a profound shock. A person of genuine integrity is especially vulnerable.
"Why do I recognize this guy's name... 6:00 Oh the guy that owns tumblr." I say as if my website hasn't been running on wordpress probably since wordpress started.
I know this is a video about WordPress specifically, but I was surprised that there was no mention of his reign of terror over there. He’s deeply hated for being racist and transphobic and he’s obviously very full of himself and doesn’t care what the actual user base wants. Nothing about this is a surprise. He sucks, and I don’t feel even remotely sorry for him
I can understand and agree with the pitfalls of getting paid as an open source project maintainer. But this had nothing to do with that. Matt was getting paid, VERY well. He was just jealous that another company was getting paid more. His speeches were all about "give ME your money not them"
The other company was not even being paid more
I get the feeling you are projecting your own thoughts onto this person. However, there are also idealistic individuals like Richard Stallman who couldn't have easily amassed billions if they had given up their own beliefs.
You covered the early history really well.
I worked for a large hosting company. Million plus Wordpress sites. About 1 of 3 wordpress sites have been hacked. It is usually due to the plugins, but I wouldn't ever run wordpress.
So 3 out of 1.000.000 sites got hacked? That's a pretty good track record in my books.
Your software literally allows other people to build their businesses with/on top of it. With absolutely no conditions. Yet he thinks these companies owe it development hours... And blames them for being "parasitic" because they make millions off of that same free tool -- again, no strings attached, everyone is free to use for profit.
If someone gives you a free shovel, asks nothing in return, and you use that shovel to find gold, do you owe that person any of the gold or the money? Absolutely not.
Would it be nice of you to give them some? Sure.
Does it justify them calling you names and publicly shaming you for not donating to their shovel factory? Ridiculous..
I disagree. There's a difference between 'accidentally finding gold with the free shovel' and 'using that free shovel to extract the gold from under the feet of the person who gave you the shovel for free'. It may be legal, but it's scummy.
Well, there’s the attitude that brings all good things down around humanity’s ankles. Most people recognize the need to “give and take” while you seem to have settled on “take.”
@markstevens1729Ask your favorite AI what a GPL license is. It literally allows EVERYONE to do ANYTHING with the software.
@artisanlives Anything including "actively harming the software", he will be regretting his to even have a GPL license on the software.
As the above example put.
"Finding Gold vs Taking gold from the one who created the shovel", basically that.
GPL is not 'conditionless' - it's MIT/BSD you're confusing with. GPL forces you to make your work GPL too - or at least dual licenced with one of them is GPL - so basically, you have to open your source code for modifications you did too. But GPL doesn't force future releases; it's for current and past and here is exactly where ethics and law diverts...
cool video, loved it!
As a WordPress web designer who has since left the WordPress ecosystem, the breaking point for me was when we learned that he basically owned everything personally. He had spent years leading the community to believe that WordPress was controlled by the WordPress foundation and that he only controlled Automattic, but through this experience we learned just how much control he has and that was what scared me. It wasn't just that he caused a bunch of childish drama, it was the fact that he had the ability to lock down the systems we thought were open and community managed.
What are you developing for now if not Wordpress?
Matt isn’t really doing anything for WordPress. He talks about contribution, but it doesn’t feel like he actually cares. Third-party developers building plugins, themes, and page builders are a huge reason why WordPress became so popular.
Great visuals and storytelling!
That's exactly what I love about your videos, although I find it a bit hard to listen to your voice. Would be nice if the audio would be quieter.
I don't use WordPress at all but watched the whole thing. Amazing video!
Thank you for this long video
The "badge on the table" line at the end really got me.
1:13 Static pages didn't require rebuilding back then. They still don't to this day.
If you have a static site with 10 pages and you add a new one and link it to the the header/footer, you'll need to replicate that same header/footer change across all pages (by hand or with a rebuilding process).
It depends. It was (and still is) entirely possible to just raw-dog the HTML on every page. But there is a reason why this practice isn't popular. If you have some common element on each page (header, footer, sidebar) that needs updating, you need to manually update it on every page. This gets out of hand very quickly when you are managing more than just a handful of pages. There are many solutions that have been developed to solve this problem. One solution was to use software built on the idea of statically generating the HTML using templates. This allowed you to make the change in one place, and then run the generator software to update the HTML across your whole site automatically. This is a perfectly acceptable solution if the data on the site doesn't need to change outside of your own updates, and it works on any web host. Running this generator software could be called "rebuilding" your site.
been waiting for two years for this video
I followed the whole story when it happened in realtime, and you accurately depicted everything! Thank you for such refreshing recount of events!
Already know it's gonna be excellent work, as someone who was deep in the WP Industrial Complex at that time, I'll watch the full video now and then post another detailed comment. Just wanted to appreciate you for bringing something that is so closely tied to my being into wider spotlight!
This was great!!
Clippy! 😍
It’s worth mentioning that in the WP community, agencies and freelancers are treated as 3rd class citizens - despite being the ones responsible for bringing people to the platform.
Freelancers and agencies create the demand for the plugins and themes.
One quick correction. It’s pronounced “now-koh tah-kah-noh”.
i watched the intro so far and it's pretty bold to suggest that this feud has resulted in anything meaningful. wordpress's market share continued to climb at the peak of their feud. it's gone down since then, but more likely because the advent of agentic systems have made every other platform just as accessible as wordpress for both developers and users alike. matt's feud with wpengine and everything related to that is just something that a bunch of terminally online weirdos care about. actual businesses who need websites don't give a shit about it. agencies making websites don't give a shit about it. most people don't give a shit about it, and the numbers back it up.
This was so well covered. Definitely will keep an eye on your future uploads!
Moral: don't choose a license you don't embrace.
Great story! Thanks for posting
What an incredibly well done vid! Just subscribed. Can't wait to see what you do next!
I wasn't expecting this. I was bracing myself for another <INSERT_NAME> lost to AI breakdown. Yet here I am, edified and reminded of something not at all inconsequential: Open Source lives!
I don't follow the premise underlying your conclusion. "I need to be paid to give things away." That isn't giving.
Such a quality run down.. Love it..
I didn't use WordPress when I set up my daughter's simple commercial web site, and given the number of WordPress hack attempts I see aimed at her web site - I think that was a good choice!
I was there, 3000 years ago...
Beautiful work. Thanks for your effort making this video
I have built 100s of websites using wordpress and this is the first time I have heard about Matt.
@CodingWithLewis - 2026-09-01
Our longest video yet... and... no ad or sponsor! Thank you everyone for watching. These videos are incredibly fun to make yet time consuming to write/animate/edit. If you like these types of videos, subscribe or consider becoming a member if you want to support further.
Sit tight :) we are ramping up our schedule and will have lots more of these types of videos soon.
@NevidniBudala - 2026-09-01
no ad sponsor doesn't mean no sponsor. it just means we don't know who or why paid you. you smell funny.
@OdinReactor - 2026-09-01
This is also your most boring video yet. So many words, so little said.
@alison2648 - 2026-09-02
I do love this topic, but you used way too much AI in writing this. By the end of the video, it was entirely AI phrasing. The details are accurate and not hallucinated, and so I am sure you know enough about the issue to talk about it yourself, in your own words.
@mipmipmipmipmip-v5x - 2026-09-03
weird pronounciation artifacts, lots and lots of slop here
@JimminyCricketts - 2026-09-03
Wow, your longest yet? Well done to the AI that wrote your script