Wordpress Founder Matt Mullenweg is a Stand Up Guy
Yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to what turned out to be an all day online meetup on talkshoe.com with host Jeff Chandler (aka Jeffro). The supposed interview with Matt Mullenweg was nearly canceled with [Ma.tt] being [@M.ia] for over an hour. Some imposter said he was Matt and having trouble logging onto the call. In reality Matt had the time zone wrong and was just late calling in.
Jeff and crew switched things up and decided to forge ahead once Matt was on the line. Brian Gardner, Dave Coveny, Andy Peatling and a who’s who of Wordpress junkies were on hand for the live interview, which Matt participated in an “open mic” format with the entire community. I have never seen something like it with a CEO of a highly respected company and open source initiative like Wordpress! I have to say that after having the chance to hear Matt’s views on GPL and his viewpoints, open communication style and complete transparency were refreshing.
Can you imagine Steve Ballmer doing a call like this? The topic was the recent removal of 201 themes from the wordpress.org themes directory but topics ranged widely after Matt opened questions to over 200 participants and before you knew it 2 hours were gone. Matt answered every question and was very clear and logical in the discussion.
Any Matt Mullenweg conspiracy theories I might have subscribed to previously are debunked completely. Matt is doing what he thinks is best for the Wordpress community in the long term and his views on closed, proprietary software licensing models versus the open model of GPL.
People who think Matt and Automattic are against others profiting from Wordpress should definitely listen to this interview; it should convince any rational person that these conspiracy theories about Matt are way off base.
Thanks Jeff and Matt for the great interview. If you haven’t listened to it yet, check it out at weblogtoolscollection.com