I switched from Blogger to WordPress and began learning PHP in January 2005. In August 2005 I went to work for Automattic as the second full-timer (after Donnch

I switched from Blogger to WordPress and began learning PHP in January 2005. In August 2005 I went to work for Automattic as the second full-timer (after Donncha, inventor of WPMU). That was before WordPress.com was announced. I am still working for Automattic. Byrne, in his MT-centric worldview, fails to mention a man who contributed more to WP's success than MT's failures could. The name "Matt" only appears within "Automattic" and the name "Mullenweg" doesn't even show up until the comments. Many have said it and I agree: WordPress is shitty software. Having written a significant percentage of the code in WordPress since version 2.0, I can proudly accept the blame for some of the shittiest parts of WordPress. I was responsible for the integration of the rich editor, the widgets system, the media library, and many other poorly-designed components I have since expunged from memory. I wrote this crap because Matt asked me to. In wisdom or dumb luck, Matt saw that a feature that mostly works for most users next week is better than a perfect feature next year. He coded as much as he could, then he learned to delegate and trust others. Then, as far as I could tell from inside my coding cave, he shifted most of his attention from engineering and design to promotion and business. He brought Toni and Raanan into Automattic and that's when the switching campaign really took off. From the early days to now, Matt has exploited every resource for the benefit of WordPress. Even now, non-WordPress Automattic projects help subsidize the core development of WordPress. I don't know how much money Matt has made but I know that everyone who makes a living with WordPress owes him some credit for feeding so much power back into the project. Matt wasn't the only contributor to the success of WordPress. It would be impossible to cover them all; go look at the About page on wordpress.org to get a taste. But if you could use a time machine to kidnap one person off that list, you would do the most harm to WordPress by choosing Matt. Byrne says in a comment that his piece is about WordPress, not Automattic. He works hard to avoid delving into personalities. But the story of WordPress can't be told without discussing Matt Mullenweg. If your goal is to "see what lessons can be learned from WordPress so that others seeking to build a successful product can learn from it" you really should be looking at the people and the work they did more than the project that they worked on.