The creator of WordPress opens up about becoming an internet villain, why he’s taking a stand, and the future of open source | Matt Mullenweg (founder and CEO, Automattic)
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Who is Matt Mullenweg and why is he considered an internet icon?
If you're really open and open source, sometimes you have to stand up the bullies and you have to fight to protect your open source ideals. Please put your hands together for Matt Mullenwig.
Matt Molenwig has been making some questionable moves recently. There's a lot going on with Matt and WordPress these days. Twenty plus years of good sentiment burned in days. You were like a hundred percent beloved hero of open source and internet, and now you're like in this a lot of people don't like you.
If you were kind of inside baseball with WordPress, there's actually a lot of people who have been unhappy with me over the years. Previously like one percent of the world thought I was terrible. And now I feel like it's up to like four or five percent.
People that don't know what the hell's going on. Well it's just like the high level overview of what's going on.
There's a company called WP Engine. By 2018, they got bought out by a private equity firm called Silver Lake. You know, since 2019, WP Engine has kind of changed a bit. They started using the trademark. They're offering something called WordPress. I refer to it as like a bastardized, hacked up version of it. It's diluting our brand. Why do you think so many people
are looking at you as the
bad guy? A lie gets around the world seven times before truth has time to, you know, get out of bed.
Today my guest is Matt Mollenweg. Matt is the co-creator of WordPress, which powers 40% of websites on the internet today, including Whitehouse.gov. He's also the CEO of Automatic, which is valued at over $7 billion, and owns products like WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, Gravitars, and Pocketcasts. There is a lot of drama these days around Matt and WordPress and within the open source community. So I thought I'd have Matt on to address many of the criticisms head-on that he hasn't addressed in other places, and also just get the full story and what's going on. We also chat about what incepted him to spend over half his life at this point on open source and creating WordPress. Also, why products like Llama are what he calls fake open source and his perspective on AI and open source.
Also, how AI is actually trained on open source code and what that means. Means for the future and his approach for deciding what companies to acquire within Automatic. If you enjoy this episode, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you now get a year free of Notion and Superhuman and Perplexity Pro and Linear and Granola. Check it out at Lenny's Newsletter.com. With that, I bring you Matt Mollenweg. This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're building a SaaS app, at some point your customers will start asking for enterprise features, like SAML authentication and skim provisioning. That's where WorkOS comes in, making it fast and painless to add enterprise features to your app.
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It's a drop-in replacement for OTZero and supports up to 1 million monthly active users for free. Check it out at workos.com to learn more. That's work OS. Cast.com This episode is brought to you by Vanta, and I am very excited to have Christina Cassiopo, CEO and co-founder of Vanta, joining me for this very short conversation.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Matt Mullenweg and why is he considered an internet icon?
0:00–12:36
2
How did Matt’s early life and career lead to the creation of WordPress?
12:36–25:08
3
Why did Matt help fund and revive the Bay Lights project?
25:08–39:05
4
What does Matt believe makes open‑source software essential for freedom?
39:05–51:27
5
How does Matt explain the WP Engine trademark dispute and its impact on the WordPress brand?
51:27–1:04:19
6
Why does Matt call Meta’s Llama a “fake open source” project?
1:04:19–1:16:44
7
What challenges and opportunities did Automatic face when acquiring Tumblr?
1:16:44–1:28:01
8
What are Matt’s biggest visions for the future of open source, AI and messaging?
1:28:01–1:34:22
Speakers
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