WordPress has a significant problem with toxic positivity. We have seen that over and over in the security space. Where trying to have a discussion about problems and how they could be fixed leads to criticism for bringing up the problems. That not only means problems don’t get resolved, but it helps out those taking advantage of the WordPress community. Along those lines, the latest WP Weekly newsletter mentioned “a petition calling for the creation of strong WordPress Foundation v2″ called WordPress Must Win. The letter is described as an “appeal to divert all energy being wasted in fights towards co-creating a fully independent, transparent, and strong WordPress Foundation v2.” It doesn’t address the big problem with that proposal, WordPress doesn’t have that independent and transparent governance because the person in control of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, doesn’t want that.

Here is how they described the WordPress Foundation v2:

A working group can be set up to discuss the how and the what together with a group of longstanding and trustworthy contributors, consisting of other invested companies, independent long-serving contributors and council from outside of the WordPress ecosystem.

Pivoting the current governance model towards being more transparent and distributed seems quite daunting. It would need a very broad spectrum of support, quite some (international) legal skills and funding.

This will cost money and legal aid, but having an independent and transparent entity as an independent guardian angel of the Project will most certainly boost contributions and serve as an entity to safeguard the co-existence of all companies within the ecosystem and is therefore needed for the future health of a Project as big as WordPress.

They don’t address an obvious problem with this, which is that the WordPress Foundation owns the WordPress trademark, so you can’t call something the WordPress Foundation v2 without their permission. So there can’t be a WordPress Foundation v2 unless the current foundation allowed it or there was a legal battle to rest control of the trademark away from the WordPress Foundation. The latter option clearly isn’t their plan because they write this (emphasis in the original):

Why throw money at legal battles instead of investing it in the WordPress Project?

If the current foundation wanted to change how they operate, they could do that without creating a version 2.

The letter goes on to explain why the current governance structure is bad, which is true, but it never addresses that this is intentional on the part of Matt Mullenweg or how that would be addressed. As we wrote in a previous post about someone calling for Matt Mullenweg to be removed, he is a dictator and “dictators are not exactly known for the peaceful transfer of power to democracy.”

Pretending the reality of the situation isn’t true means the fundamental issue isn’t even attempted to be addressed by their proposal.

The fantasy world the letter lives in is best shown in what the authors call a “future press release,” which starts this way:

In a surprising turn of events, Automattic and WP Engine, two key players in the WordPress ecosystem, have agreed to pause hostilities.

The move comes in response to growing concerns about the future of the project following a public dispute between the companies.

Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, reached out to WP Engine, proposing a joint effort to develop a new governance model for WordPress. The working group will include representatives from major corporations, open-source contributors, and FOSS governance experts.

There isn’t a dispute between Automattic and WP Engine. The CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg, is engaged in a now very public extortion campaign against WP Engine. WP Engine has taken legal action to try to stop it.

The “future press release” continues:

WP Engine has accepted the proposal, signaling a willingness to collaborate for the betterment of the WordPress project. The first meeting of the governance working group is scheduled to take place next week, with bi-weekly updates on the progress of their discussions to be published on https://make.wordpress.org/governance/.

WP Engine isn’t anyway stopping WordPress from having better governance. They don’t have any control over the governance. Matt Mullenweg alone does. WP Engine’s legal action and their willingness to not cave in to the extortion could lead to that, depending on what happens in their cases and potential legal action taken by government entities.

Short of a significant legal battle, the road to changing the governance runs through Matt Mullenweg. Any plan therefore needs to address that, WordPress Must Win doesn’t.