[melbourne_mat]

From an alternate universe:

I apologize for my erratic behavior which has tarnished our brand and created unnecessary turmoil within our organization. Regrettably, we will need to implement a 16% reduction in headcount to address the financial challenges we now face. I have decided to step aside and hand over control to my deputy, who I believe will provide the steady leadership needed to rebuild trust and restore our company's vision.

[KennyBlanken]

He'll never admit he was wrong or step down. He'll drive Automattic into the ground and Wordpress along with it (until someone forks it, like say...WP Engine, heh. Or Redhat, or IBM, or some huge web design firm, etc.)

He considers Wordpress "his" even though...he took it over from the original author who was abandoning the project.

It reminds me of the rage-bender Jamie and Jim Thompson went on, attacking OPNsense for "stealing" their work and doing a lot of immature things taking over opnsense's domain, their subreddit, etc. via legal actions. And at least one lawsuit. They lost on every front - reddit gave the subreddit back to the opnsense developers, ICANN gave them back their domain name, etc.

Attacking OPNsense for "stealing" pfSense was pretty rich given pfSense's origin; netgate slapped their logo on m0n0wall and started working on their fork. Which is exactly what opnsense did that enraged them...

Especially as pfsense software started getting more user-hostile and shifting functionality into the paid versions, pfsense has rapidly become less and less popular. I almost never see anyone recommend it anymore.

[MOARDONGZPLZ]

> He considers Wordpress "his" even though...he took it over from the original author who was abandoning the project.

Non Wordpress user here, not a blogger, don’t use CMSs. Curious about this line. Reading the history on Wikipedia, the original b2 was the precursor. It was pretty small and being abandoned. Matt proposed forking it in January 2003, and worked with Mike to bring the first version to fruition a few months later. 22 years later it’s a goliath.

Given that history it seems totally fair for Matt to consider WP his thing. You don’t seem to think so, can you explain?

[johann8384]

I have a bright red m0n0wall firewall on the shelf above my desk. Nothing to add here, just its very rare I run across anyone who might think its cool, or even know what it is.

[solardev]

If only we had real leaders...

[joquarky]

We do, but the sociopaths outcompete them.

[facile3232]

You can trust me, facile3232, instead. I will improve upon all things the leader of automattic.com failed to improve upon.

[loco5niner]

I read this out of context and thought it was referring to Trump.

[melbourne_mat]

Actually I wrote it for Elon then added the headcount reduction!