Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave

cisc

> To replace the board, Mullenweg leveraged his voting shares — he controls 84% of the vote Then what can any board ever do?

RobLach

This is gonna make things messy re: fiduciary duty and liability.

stevenicr

Glad that is settled. Matt has been one of the most important leaders in WordPress and in making publishing on the web accessible to everyone. I’ve disagreed with plenty of decisions made by WordPress, Automattic, and Matt over the years, but that doesn’t erase the enormous contribution he has made to the open web. Surprised the TC article did not mention info from a different TC article recently: 'In the 33-hour window between Mullenweg being put on leave and his return, two key executives at the company signed off on generous exit packages for each other. Davies, who became interim CEO during that window, and Chief Legal Officer Andy Missan, each signed the other’s severance agreement,' $8 million siphoned from the company in 30 hours when they ousted Matt, and doing so knowing that he had 80% voting power to replace anything, seems even more sus than the first time I read it.

4d4m

Good. Matt brought the internet forward in a huge way. Wordpress is awesome - bringing many people and businesses online in a way that didn't completely rely on subscriptions at inflated value. Anyone saying it's too complicated a CMS and isn't the right technical fit is so wrapped up in their own world they don't realize that they're not the userbase. It enabled people of every technical skill level to do great things. It brought millions of jobs and gigs to designers, coders, and plugin developers. Wordpress is a tool - and its success proves it was the right solution for those users back then and still today. Your average user isnt asking AI to set up a custom cms every time they want to make an update. Woocommerce on WP is STILL one of the few ways to self-run a ecomm shop for next to $0 - where the big competitor charges $40 to 300+ a month.