Calls for the co-founder and CEO of the Matt Mullenweg PLC, Matt Mullenweg has stage down of its leadership role has increased in recent months in the middle his controversial fight and his legal battle With the WP Engine accommodation company.
Mullenweg has not only intended to stay, but he also thinks about how he plans to manage succession planning. He does not want to transmit what he helped build to a “committee”, but rather to another CEO who will continue to act as a guardian of the WordPress community.
In a recently broadcast episode of Lenny’s podcastMullenweg has largely restored the drama surrounding its fight with the WP engine – a company which, according to him, took advantage of the open -source nature of WordPress to develop his business without returning enough to the project and the WordPress community. The WP engine is built on WordPress.
Mullenweg has also briefly commented on what he sees in the future for the future of WordPress and that of Automattic, the parent company of the WordPress.com accommodation company, Woocommerce, Tumblr and other companies.
Mullenweg stressed that the most “emblematic” companies of our generation are those where the executive has retained a certain majority in the control of the vote, which it considers in the planning of the succession.
“… if or when I left, I don’t want to transmit it to a committee,” said Mullenweg, speaking of what he built with Automattic and WordPress. “I want to transmit it to someone else who could have a role similar to mine, and really try to be a steward.”
“And there is ultimately a check and a balance on this subject, because, once again, the community could leave, they could overflow the software, people could change …”, he added, noting that the role was “much more like a mayor than a CEO” insofar as the person would be ultimately responsible for others, as users and those who contribute to the project.
Mullenweg also praised the role that Automattic itself plays to stimulate the adoption of WordPress, referring to the way the free version of WordPress.com has helped to introduce more than 100 million people to the software.
“This kind of profit for lucrative, non-profit, open source, working in concert-I think it is a really enlightened model that we are starting to see many more companies,” he said about the collaboration between Automattic and WordPress.org. “It is actually very exciting for me that some of the things that have been controversial when we have started – such as open source or distributed work – are now the default value of so many new exciting startups and all this ecosystem.”
