Replacing Matt With What?

[Rarst]

Not intended to explode into another... discussion. :)

I think part of the problem with current system is discrepancy between stated GPL license and opinions voiced and promoted by Matt.

We may disagree on how right or wrong situation is, but I think there is clear difference between freedoms described by GPL and freedoms Matt talks about.

I think it would be for the best if either Matt agrees with GPL or license is changed to fall in line with Matt's opinion as leader. Otherwise situation is ambiguous and that makes development field unstable.

[andrew]

I hope that if Andrew were elected leader of the project, he wouldn't strip out everything I enjoy using everyday because he thought it was bloat :P

I genuinely think I would do a good job of running the project, and of course the odd bribe for advertising a premum theme on wp.org wouldn't go amiss either :-)

[hallsofmontezuma]

That Matt took millions of dollars VC money and then jetted off on a round the world tour while other *real* open source programmers sweated on making WP better and better just so Matt could continue raking in *millions* while being a total douche to anyone else who even looks like making a cent of money off of WP themselves, not to mention shunning all the hard code WP fans from the early days so as to appeal to the masses with each new WP release.

That's not even close to reality. I hope you are being TIC and don't actually believe that.

Anybody who says that they don't like the leadership should just fork the project. Go ahead, grab a copy of WordPress and make it your own. Rename it to something else first.

I agree. There's nothing stopping anyone from forking WordPress. It's been done plenty of times. Feel free to fork it and make it better. If someone does that, they'd be doing exactly what Matt did to create WordPress. He took an open source project and made it into something better.

[Otto]

Not intended to explode into another... discussion. :)

Fine. Sigh...

I think part of the problem with current system is discrepancy between stated GPL license and opinions voiced and promoted by Matt.

We may disagree on how right or wrong situation is, but I think there is clear difference between freedoms described by GPL and freedoms Matt talks about.

I think it would be for the best if either Matt agrees with GPL or license is changed to fall in line with Matt's opinion as leader. Otherwise situation is ambiguous and that makes development field unstable.

I disagree that there is any ambiguousity (I like that word). The situation is perfectly clear and Matt has stated it many times. The GPL is the license.

Again, why do so many people find this confusing? If you abide by the license and don't violate the trademark, you cannot get sued.

But merely abiding by the license isn't enough to make you win friends and influence people. That isn't a matter of software licensing, now is it?

[brandingdavid]

I didn't want to respond because I am getting tired but the "fork it" statement has to stop. Forking code should occur when the direction of the development is the issue. My issue with the current way WordPress is being run is very small, and community related. Forking shouldn't happen over purely community related issues when its open source software and the community can be fixed.

I don't think that WordPress needs to change its leadership, but what I do think is that it needs a few tweaks.

#1 - More transparency regarding WordPress.org and its management. Who "owns" WP.org and what does that mean for the project?

#2 - Voting on certain marketing, public relations and site evolutions needs to change. WordPress development is fine. Not perfect, but fine. I wouldn't want to screw with that.

I do think though that there are decisions being made without the majority of the community being aware that have created this slight animosity. An issue that wouldn't exist if there was a better sense of the way things are.

#3 - The masses need to be informed better. The majority of the WordPress blogs are unable or unwilling to give a balanced look at WordPress, its Community, and Automattic, the company, and as such, people aren't being truly informed. We get gossip, misinformation, and marketing fluff. Some of which paints people as the Devil, or Saints who are no worse or better than anyone else.

#4 - There should be some controlling councils. Each controlling council should have a specific agenda. Be it Premium Themes, Premium Plugins, WordPress Support, New WordPress features, the WordPress.org Website, and the Codex.

The councils should be small (3-10 ppl) and should be voluntary. I'd hope that an Automattic staff member would chair each community. These councils would vote in place of the community on various topics, and council members would change over time, dependent on whatever factors seem most appropriate.

---

I am a huge fan of transparency. I am a huge fan of community, and I am a huge fan of informing the community, making sure they have a say, and working towards common goals.

If a council was created that was in charge of WordPress.org and they decided to de-list Premium Themes, then people would still moan and complain, but they couldn't blame it on Matt. If they decided that Premium Plugins should have a page, then Matt couldn't kibosh that.

It is all about making sure there is no one that can make such decisions for WordPress.org without the approval of the community. While the whole community can never be represented, a good cross section of people that want to be involved could stand up and speak for them.

I'd love to help shape WordPress by speaking for various groups that I feel aren't getting enough attention and remind people that the average WordPress user isn't giving back to the WordPress community in any way, shape or form, and as such, unless we receive tons of volunteers form currently inactive users, they wouldn't be as strongly represented or "sheltered" as they are today.

I miss the geeky feeling of WordPress and its community. I want the software to do well. I want Matt to stick to his passions, rather than feeling the need to filter and protect a community that should decide for itself.

[Jeffro]

Hey David, I think this deserves a copy and paste or at least it would be cool for you to take a look at this thread and voice your thoughts.

Joomla Community Site Is Cool

[chipbennett]

So, I've seen people suggest Matt hightail it out of the projects way and let the community take over. Not sure if this is such a good idea but I want to hear what your thoughts are on replacing Matt with the community? How would you do it? Do you use PollDaddy to make people vote on every decision you make? Who heads the plugin or theme repositories? Do we then have to worry about corruption within the community?

Again: look to the example of Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and father of Ubuntu Linux.

Shuttleworth provided the vision, the capital, and the initial leadership. He continues to be the face of Ubuntu. But the project is managed by an independently funded foundation, and is governed by a developer council and a community council.

Matt is a fabulus front-man for WordPress. He's passionate, charismatic, and evangelistic. Those are all very positive attributes for someone serving as the "face" of WordPress.

But as for code development and community concerns, Shuttleworth defers to the councils. He calls himself the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life), but doesn't solely make the decisions. (I believe he gives each release its adjective-animal "codename", much like Matt gives each WP release its jazz-artist "codename".)

I believe this model would work for WordPress.

There is no need for a call for Matt to "go away" or "step aside" or somesuch, but rather a diversification of the control and decision-making processes and outcomes.

Edited to Add:

The Ubuntu Project also has a Community Code of Conduct. Such a Code would be a great model for the WordPress community, and would be the ideal place to include whatever expectation the community has regarding the "contribution" or "giving back" of code to WordPress, as well as selling (per-download or subscription) WordPress-derivative works).

[chipbennett]

Anybody who says that they don't like the leadership should just fork the project. Go ahead, grab a copy of WordPress and make it your own. Rename it to something else first.

That suggestion is completely unhelpful. Forking a project over matters of personality or leadership is generally detrimental to the project.

As far as I can tell, people are generally happy with the actual product of the WordPress project. Forking it in response to the issues and concerns that have been expressed wouldn't help in any way whatsoever.

The "if you don't like it, fork!" response is rarely helpful, and usually is intended to be incendiary. Fortunately, I doubt anyone will bite.