Heartbroken

These remarks reflect my personal position alone. They do not reflect the position of AspirePress or anyone else.

Today, I am heartbroken.

I feel many different emotions. Anger. Fear. Sadness. But most of all, its a feeling of profound loss that breaks my heart.

Matt reached out to me on Monday night. I was surprised to hear from him. While I will leave what he said private, I will share the gist of what I said: I invited him to have a conversation about shared values and our visions of the future of WordPress. I told him that I would rearrange my schedule to make it happen. And I provided him my email address.

I never got a response. I figured that he was probably busy with his legal filings (due yesterday) and the TechCrunch interview. Such is the life of a busy CEO. I was willing to work around his schedule, and meet with him whenever he had time. I spoke with several members of my community, AspirePress, as well as others I trust and shared with them my plan for responding. And I solicited their feedback on what we should discuss.

Perhaps I am hopelessly naïve. I didn’t think that Matt and I could sit down and in one call fix everything that’s happened in the WordPress community. In fact, with the AspirePress community being only about a thousand people (versus 43.5% of the internet), I was mostly hopeful that he would hear us, and we could hear him. An optimistic view might have seen him agree, even begrudgingly, to leave our work alone and let the “market” decide.

I wish that conversation had been possible.

This morning I saw that the official WordPress X account had attacked Vinny Green, of FreeWP. Vinny has been a staunch supporter of the AspirePress project from the beginning. The post made fun of the fact that Vinny’s website is…well, you can see it…somewhat disorganized. That’s life when you’re standing up something new. This came on the heels of a blog post which called his project a fork of WordPress. Matt later edited the post to include AspirePress, which is also not a fork of WordPress.

When I saw the attack on Vinny, I felt like I should respond. As a community I feel we owe it to each other to offer care. It’s part of being in a community. That’s why churches bring meals to expectant moms, and it’s why we have fire departments staffed with volunteers who go unpaid and rush into burning buildings. Being a community means embracing a higher calling than yourself, and considering the collective good as part of your essence.

I’m not without introspection of my own actions. I admit that if I could rewrite the messages I posted, I would. I would not have included so much snark or posted a link to Wikipedia. In some ways I “poked the bear.” And I own that part. To the WordPress and AspirePress communities, I apologize for my part.

The response, though, was beyond the pale. I can’t even link to it, it was so vile and hateful. Matt (or someone working for Matt but I assume not) took the post of a little community of six hundred Twitter followers and little more than 1,000 people globally and viciously attacked it in overtly sexual and sexist language. I have considered circumstances in which the language used might have been appropriate and I cannot fathom a situation where that response would be okay. Not from a major brand account. Not from any person to any other person or organization, ever.

My heart is broken. This is a community that I love. I attended the first WordCamp in Baltimore, organized by Aaron Brazell, before WordCamps were super popular or even well known. I remember going to Aaron’s going-away party when he moved from DC to Austin to start working at WP Engine. I attended WordPress meetups, and even invited members of the WordPress community to speak at the DC PHP group I led. I had friends who worked in WordPress. And I worked in WordPress.

I don’t know what Matt’s thinking is. I don’t know if he doesn’t recognize me all these years later, or if he’s just willing to throw away the relationship I had with him and his work. For years I thought Matt was really cool. I thought his stance on open source was refreshing, and his work incredibly beneficial to the world. In my twenties I wanted to be like him, and have a community and a project just as big as WordPress.

While one day AspirePress may be the community I envisioned at 25, I no longer see Matt as the person to emulate in leading it. Losing that respect you had for someone for many years is very similar to losing something of precious value, or even a part of yourself.

The attack this morning on myself and AspirePress shattered any hope I had at reconciliation for the community or integrating our work into WordPress’ core. I never expected a fully unified community that was one mind about anything – my hope was that the community would have choices so that disagreements wouldn’t morph into outright brawls. Choice is a key tenant of freedom. WordPress is supposed to stand for that.

I hope for peace again in the WordPress space, where different opinions can be expressed calmly and without vicious, personal attacks. Until then, I will forge ahead with the work that the community is doing. AspirePress is bigger than I am, bigger than any one person. And for those participating today in it, as well as for those who will come in the future, know that I am proud of you and excited for you and we welcome you with open arms.