Dissecting Matt Mullenweg’s comments at WordCamp Europe, part 2

In my earlier post, I covered the FAIR aspect of Matt Mullenweg’s WordCamp Europe 2025 performance. That is, his response to the FAIR project during the fireside chat between him and Mary Hubbard. I also documented post-WCEU social media posts referencing FAIR.

In this second post, I’d like to cover two other topics that briefly came up during the fireside chat: the WordPress Foundation and Five for the Future.

As in my earlier post, I’ve transcribed the relevant quotes, but feel free to listen to the entirety of Mullenweg and Hubbard’s performance.

The WordPress Foundation’s role and donations

Ahead of WordCamp Europe 2025, I wrote a couple of posts about the WordPress Foundation. Both Please reconsider donating to the WordPress Foundation and A few more thoughts about the WordPress Foundation detail my thinking about why the WordPress Foundation is not a worthy cause and is, effectively, a trademark holding company. Given the recency, I was hopeful that the fireside chat would include at least one question around the WordPress Foundation.

And… there was! Well, kind of? There are two parts I wanted to pull out to think through a bit more in depth.

First, starting at about 00:04:20 into the recording:

Hubbard: And another topic specific to the EU, which I’m really interested about this because it’s been brought to my attention multiple times, and with WordCamps and the more localized, local WordCamps, it’s: whether WordPress Foundation or the WordPress Community Support should establish a legal presence in the EU. And so it kind of tailors or dovetails from there. But, given our global reach, what is the complexity of running events like this? Like, is this something that we should prioritize or even be thinking about?
 
Mullenweg: Um… it’s definitely something I think we should consider, periodically. And we’ve done some experiments here. I think it was in Nepal. But there is, you know, there are some downsides to this as well, largely from admin overhead, maintenance. We try to keep the WordPress Foundation and the WordCamp subsidiary fairly lightweight, so we can focus as much time and energy on, you know, the good stuff. The things that we all come to WordCamps for, and the bringing new people into the community and the do_actions, and all that sort of thing. So, I would say that right now, our current analysis is that the cost-benefit is not worth setting up more local entities, in the various countries that the WordCamps happen. Which, by the way, is different for WordCamp EU every year. I don’t want to give away where the next one is, but perhaps a different country. Hopefully not ruining any surprises there. And yeah, so I’d say right now no, but we can always readdress that. And there might be some countries where the overhead is lower than others. You know, if they have like a really good e-company creation thing, like Estonia I believe does. So there might be some that make sort of the remote stuff easier. We don’t need like, to fly to the country and notarize fifty forms or…
 
Hubbard: Or good partnerships, or good relationships where we might be able to forge or see something to expedite some of these issues.
 
Mullenweg: If there’s existing organizations I think partnership is the best way to go with it. And there’s many many organizations that are very aligned with us. It’s not unlike Charity Water. And I actually just met with the founder there the other day. It’s a fantastic charity, but they now have… his company, the charity only has a hundred-something employees, but they’ve now got, like, I want say it was like 9000 on the ground in Africa, through partner organizations. And that scaled up from a tenth of that, you know, five of six years ago. Drilling wells and things.

The overall question, and sentiment, do not directly relate to the WordPress Foundation, but there is the indirect connection with WordPress Community Support.

Personally, I found the response from Mullenweg to be lacking—I completely understand the complexity and overhead in setting up individual entities in “every” country, as Mullenweg responds with, but the question was about a “legal presence” in Europe. With a little bit of creativity—and an open mind—Mullenweg might have considered a single European entity as an option.

Now, my knowledge of European law is fairly limited, but I have to imagine a single EU-based entity could oversee operations across many, perhaps most, of the European jurisdictions. Would the creation of such an entity making running events in Europe easier? Could such an entity yield efficiencies that make creating and managing WordPress events easier and better for Europeans? I have to assume yes. Contributor experience, like developer experience, is incredibly important and yields long term benefits for projects, but it’s frequently ignored.

The second mention of the WordPress Foundation was a bit more interesting to me, especially given my look into the WordPress Foundation’s finances. In delivering an answer about the occasional profitability of WordCamps, Mullenweg states (at approximately 01:00:50):

Mullenweg: Actually, you saw that the WordPress Foundation did a larger grant to Internet Archive? That wasn’t from donations, that was from excess from WordCamps accumulated over, I think a couple of years, or maybe a year or two—I forget exactly. Now, we want to keep a little buffer there, rainy day fund, but the whole setup of that organization is like, if there’s extra ideally it went back in at the time and if not, we grant it to other great non-profits.

… what?! Given the WordPress Foundation’s 2024 financial statements are not yet public, it’s impossible for me to validate this statement, but it raises questions.

First, going back to the creation of the WordPress Community Support PBC subsidiary (WPCS), there is no evidence that funds “moved” from the subsidiary up to the WordPress Foundation. Nor would I expect there to be, as there could be tax implications with such a financial transfer.

The implication of Mullenweg’s comment is that it was not the WordPress Foundation that donated money to the Internet Archive, but rather its subsidiary, WPCS. This would be news to me, as it’s not what the boarding meeting minutes captured, nor is it what I would expect, given the WordPress Foundation directly donated to the Internet Archive in previous years.

But, let’s assume that the money did come from WPCS. That means those funds came from the community, from ticket sales or WordCamp sponsorship—in my opinion, those funds should stay within the community. Are there not new WordPress events that could benefit from initial funding? Or, perhaps those funds could have gone towards development of a replacement for the grossly expensive Meetup (e.g. GatherPress), benefiting the entire community.

Contributions and the future of Five for the Future

Another topic I’ve written about recently is Five for the Future. I have concerns about the program, overall, and asked a number of questions in my post earlier this year. Given the premise of Mullenweg’s war with WP Engine was a lack of contributions, with Mullenweg using Five for the Future as the defining metric of contributions, any changes to Five for the Future should be carefully considered as, in the future, Mullenweg could again use this program as a “reason” to start a war.

With that background, I was interested to hear how Five for the Future would get framed by Hubbard and Mullenweg. Starting ~00:10:30 into the recording, Hubbard asks about the “vision of the long term” for Five for the Future:

Hubbard: We do talk about lot about the future of WordPress. There’s been a lot of conversations around Five of the Future and what that will look like. So, the landscape of contribution is changing, and we’re seeing more companies exploring how to sponsor maintainers directly, not just in a way that you check a box—hey, it’s Five for the Future and putting my hours up—but understanding how critical work gets done. And so, at the same time, conversations are heating up around how we balance this. With all of these proposals on the table, how do you see Five for the Future evolving? I’d love to hear your perspective short term—what can we do now as we push forward—and then your vision of the long term Five for the Future plan.
 
Mullenweg: I think we made a classic mistake, actually that a lot of managers do, a lot of companies do—and it’s funny because I actually talk about this a lot—which is we were measuring input not output. So, I think an interesting way for Five for the Future to evolve is not just showing the pledge or the commitment, but then also putting right next to that what are the results—at least that are legible to us, which most things are because, you know, work generally involves a change somewhere on WordPress.org; that’s in a database, it’s in SVN, it’s in a ticket, it’s in a forum, it’s in a translation, it’s in a something. I think that would actually be really cool to enhance the badges—you know, there’s the badges on profiles—put some stats in those. It’d be kind of fun to show some rolling stats. Some GitHub-like stats. I think just putting a lot more analytics and stats in there would just kind of make it more fun. And I’m curious about that myself. Also just comparing input to output. I think that’s where we can go a bit with it, and it will tighten it up quite a bit. One frustration I heard from some people sponsoring Five for the Future folks is: how do I know they’re working on the right things? Or, what is the impact of this? Or, is it even aligned with the roadmap or is this just kind of in some corner somewhere and it’s never going to go in core. At the sponsoring level, I think people also want to have the highest impact per dollar.
 
Hubbard: Absolutely. And understanding where that money is going—how they’re sponsoring—and on top of it what you can actually work on and deliver, which is great.

This answer was underwhelming, to say the least. The overall structure of the Five for the Future plan should be actively revisited, on a yearly basis if not more frequently. And, in fact, post-WCEU, Courtney Robertson posted notes from an in-person meeting—which Hubbard was a part of—that outline problems and proposed solutions for the Five for the Future program.^[1]

Mullenweg’s correct: analytics around contributions would be beneficial. And yes, we should be measuring output, ensuring contributors are able to actually contribute.

But this answer ignores the other inherent flaws in the Five for the Future program. As I outlined in my post earlier this year, two major “flaws” in Five for the Future are who directs sponsored contributors, and how those contributors get “inside” the circle of trust that is Automattic.

As an example, if Company Y hires two full time engineers to “contribute”, who is guiding them toward contributions areas, ensuring skillset is matched with needs? At businesses, candidates are interviewed, with the idea being they’ll be hired into a specific role, filling a specific need at the company. But, WordPress doesn’t have the luxury of “choosing” sponsored contributors to hire—instead, a community “guide” should help shepherd contributors into areas that align with their skillset and are high-impact.

I fear this is only going to become a bigger problem as hundreds, or thousands, of contributors join the community as part of WordPress Campus Connect.

This was really the only discussion around the Five for the Future program, but Hubbard and Mullenweg did discuss other aspects of contributing to WordPress.

Around 00:25:55, Hubbard and Mullenweg discussed releases in 2025:

Hubbard: We recently launched the AI team. We have an Automattician that is on it. And, so, I think it was a few weeks back now, there was an announcement about returning to WordPress Core contributions. So, what does this mean in practical terms for the community as well as does it make sense to release, to have a 6.9 or another release in 2025.
 
Mullenweg: Yeah, I think we can get a 6.9 out this year. I’m personally very excited. There’s so much I want to release and there’s so much we can do. And I think there’s a pretty clear pathway to 7.0 and beyond.

With the announcement of Automattic’s return to contribution, there were questions around whether Mullenweg would want another WordPress release in 2025, after telling core committers, effectively, “no”, and reducing releases to once per year. TechCrunch reported that WordPress 6.9 would come in 2025 and, turns out, they were right. It still remains to be seen how quickly Automattic can spin up their contributions, and what can be developed and completed within calendar year 2025, but it seems like Mullenweg is set on increasing the pace.

To be clear, I am happy to hear that WordPress releases are resuming^[2]—I don’t think they should have been paused in the first place, as WordPress is more than Automattic, and non-Automattic contributors indicated they were ready and willing to oversee and lead releases. However, if the rest of TechCrunch’s reporting is accurate, it would be concerning for a full admin refresh to launch in as part of WordPress 6.9 in 2025, given the short timeline.

Shortly afterwards, at about 00:33:20, a question is raised regarding the sustainability team, a contribution team that Mullenweg recently—and unilaterally, despite his comments to the contrary—shuttered. It’s a rather long exchange, but I think it’s important to publish the entire thing.

Jaap Wiering: Hello, my name is Jaap Wiering and I’m from the Netherlands. Tomorrow is World Ocean Day and our oceans are in danger and they have an immense influence on our world climate. The WordPress team that was working on our environmental impact of WordPress was dissolved in January, and the Slack channel was archived. But new leadership has come up and contributors over the last two days. We worked on contributor day on the new team for that, and we’d love to get going again. We can’t do that without Make WordPress and we can’t do that without our Slack channel. Mary already got a petition about it and we have this question for you. Please, could you reactivate Make WordPress and our Slack channel so we can make WordPress more environmental-friendly. I asked you the question, Matt.
 
Hubbard: Should I just drop the mic?
 
Mullenweg: In these Q&As, we often pass things to people that know more or are more qualified.
 
Wiering: I’m sorry, but I already know Mary’s answer and I’d like to know your answer.
 
Mullenweg: Well, everyone else doesn’t know Mary’s answer. Mary, will you try—will you repeat the answer you already told him?
 
Hubbard: I believe that sustainability, environmental sustainability, needs to be embedded throughout the WordPress project. I think that sustainability for the WordPress project, as in Five for the Future, what we’re doing for the contributor base, how there’s many different initiatives that have kind of gotten together with environmental sustainability and the sustainability of the project. One, I think should be embedded in all teams. I think that there’s a… It’s a much wider conversation, one of which I did sit in on for a while today, but we need to start reflecting and thinking about how things get done within the project. A lot of times, people start with a team—it’s an idea and then it goes to a team. And my request about sustainability was sustainability should be in everything we do. It’s environmental sustainability. This is a no brainer, it must be done. And so, if that’s the case, let’s take what we have built, or the handbooks or with regards to events, and let’s plugin sustainability in all that and let’s have a team that holds those WordCamp organizers or specific teams accountable. But let’s not mix sustainability of the project when there are ideas that have come up around how we‘re going to contribute or reorganizing contributors or how we’re going to fund or how we’re going to get funding. Let’s not combine it. Because as I heard Courtney Robinson say today and I heard Sé Reed say today, we’ve been having the same conversations over and over and over again, so I’ve asked to switch. I’ve said hey, let’s rethink Five for the Future, which is why I asked that question for you today, let’s rethink about how we’re going to move the Five for the Future forward, how we’re going to reshape this project and reset that for how we’re getting the funding and what we’re thinking about contribution and let’s separate what was sustainability for environment and let’s let the environmental safety or environmental impact of WordPress go forward in all of the teams. So, I actually asked for a rebrand.
 
Mullenweg: What’s an example or two of something that you feel an environmental team would focus on or hope for as a result or measure.
 
Wiering: There is a framework of subjects to think about, and they already did quite good work, and it was mentioned for example, in how to make an environmental neutral or friendly WordCamps, for example. So there was a handbook for that, and it is already used. But the team already then was dissolved, and I think it’s quite disrespectful to the team using it, and at the same time having the team dissolved.
 
Mullenweg: I am aware of the WordCamp side, and that’s when we get together in person. I think where we have a lot of opportunity for these environmental things. I also saw a lot of work around trying to measure the carbon impact of every WordPress install and some other things that I felt were a little more abstract. Also, it felt like that WordCamp guidelines had a lot of contributors from WordCamp organizers, not just people on the sustainability team at the time. But, do you have any other examples, besides this thing that’s already been done that a new team would hope to accomplish or we would measure it’s success by?
 
Wiering: There should be done a lot of research, and as long as we can’t communicate with each other that would be hard. And as long as we can’t change the information, it will be a team outside WordPress, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. And if you say it’s rebranding, or we have to think about it, then it’s a lot of talking about the team and not about sustainability and this is what I want to get going.
 
Mullenweg: And so you feel like the people working on this need a Slack channel on the dotorg Slack, not anywhere else, not on the Discord or anything like that to do this research?
 
Wiering: If you put it that way, of course not, but we want to be inside WordPress, not like a group outside WordPress, because we love WordPress and we think we can add something to WordPress.
 
Mullenweg: I agree. But it needs to be a more concrete proposal, and like Mary said…
 
Wiering: There was a team. And why was it dissolved?
 
Mullenweg: Uh, so, and this is going to, potentially for any team, that we need to measure results, and I think that one thing that’s been happening is that you have teams that spin their wheels…
 
Wiering: But what kind of results?
 
Mullenweg: … a long time, and they have a lot of people doing meetings every week and you look at what actually comes out of it, and, including I talked to a number of people on the team, I read some reports, I reviewed, I think, 12 months of like blog posts… We want to make sure that when, for example, volunteers come that they’re focused on the teams that are moving quickly, iterating, have a good sort of output culture. And I don’t think the sustainability team had that, if I’m really candid, and so it’s important, as project leadership, myself and others, and by the way this was not a solo decision, it came from a number of people, hey this might be an area that needs a reboot. Also sort of separating out the environmental side to, like, more like the contribution side, which should be more of a growth mindset, versus just sustainability. We don’t want WordPress to just sustain, we want it to grow and thrive and innovate and create great software. So, even that word, but the word is easy to change, I think what we really have to change is our mindset. And I appreciate you breaking out the, sort of, uh, environmental impact side from everything else. I think it’s really helpful because, again, we can embed it in everything we do. But, it is tricky. It’s an area I’ve spent a ton of time on, on a number of environmental non-profits over the years. I deeply care about this. I also feel like, it doesn’t feel like WordPress, at least for me, is the place to have the biggest impact in the world there.
 
Wiering: Okay, thanks for your answer.

There’s a lot to pull out of this interaction, but let’s take it in order.

Hubbard has a solid point. Environmental sustainability absolutely should be embedded across the WordPress project, part of every WordPress contribution team. As we think about the carbon footprint of ”WordPress”, we have to consider not only the code itself, but the environmental impact of travelling around the world to regional WordCamps.

I think the question I have is: how? How should environmental sustainability be embedded across the project? How do we ensure that it’s considered across all teams?

One parallel that comes to mind is the importance of accessibility. Accessibility should also be embedded across the WordPress project. We should consider making every aspect of “WordPress” accessible to as many people as possible. Following the logic… let’s disband the accessibility team. Wait, no, that’s not right.

If environmental sustainability is truly important to project leadership, a team is the bare minimum to ensuring that it’s embedded throughout the project. It does a disservice to this questioner, and to every member of the sustainability team, to state otherwise. And, organizing “outside” of the key communication channels of Slack and Make WordPress, as Mullenweg proposes, wouldn’t feel very “embedded”, would it?

Of course, Mullenweg had additional thoughts.

Initially, Mullenweg pushed the questioner asking, effectively, what’s next? Before being unilaterally shut down, the sustainability team had worked with the community team to create guidelines around more environmentally-friendly WordCamps.^[3] But, what’s next?

This is flawed line of questioning. When the performance team was created to improve WordPress’ performance, there were, perhaps, a few initial ideas of improvement areas, but after the quick wins, the team had to dig in, do the research, and determine what additional areas could be improved. In the interim, the team wasn’t disbanded—performance is vital to WordPress, after all. The team wasn’t questioned about “what’s next”, nor were they lectured about not moving quickly enough, or not having an “output” culture… minutes after noting the output of the team.

I have to imagine that this entire exchange was frustrating for every member of the sustainability team, and every person who cares about environmental sustainability or about the future of WordPress. When Mullenweg objected to the term “sustainability” as it pertains to contributions, noting that “we don’t want WordPress to just sustain, we want it to grow and thrive and innovate and create great software”, I wanted to throw my iPad out of the window in frustration. Yes, we want WordPress to grow. But, to grow, we need a sustainable community, where there’s not one sole company contributing an out-sized amount such that, if they pick up their ball and go home, WordPress pauses it’s releases for the rest of the year. Put another way, WordPress will not outlive Matt Mullenweg if a group of dedicated people are not planning for the future. That is sustainability.^[4]

1. Based on Mullenweg’s response, it seems he had no idea such a meeting had taken place. ↩︎
2. Though the uncertainty around WordPress releases will likely give enterprise risk management organizations further anxiety, and another reason to consider a more stable platform. ↩︎
3. Mullenweg seems to slight the sustainability team for working closely with the community team, with an off-hand remark “… it felt like WordCamp guidelines had a lot of contributors from WordCamp organizers, not just people on the sustainability team at the time.” Yes, that’s exactly how it should work! WordCamp organizers know and understand how WordCamps operate. Creating guidelines in a vacuum, without their involvement, would be ludicrous. ↩︎
4. And, if you don’t like it, you’re welcome to change the English language. ↩︎