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Matt Mullenweg Overrules Core Committers; Puts Akismet on WP 7's Connector List

58 points by mooreds 7mo ago

AlienRobot 7mo ago
>Automattic-sponsored core committer Jorge Costa >Fueled-sponsored core committer Peter Wilson >Bluehost-sponsored core committer Jonathan Desrosiers >Human Made-sponsored core committer John Blackbourn This is a terrifying way to describe people.
- mooreds 7mo ago
  It does make the implicit explicit though, right? Each of these folks have a personal viewpoint but also represent a corporate viewpoint.
- renewiltord 7mo ago
  People on the Internet are just so dramatic. "Terrifying". Yes, indeed, this induces "terror", abject fear. Give me a break. At worst it's slightly cringe-worthy. This treadmill of dysphemisms is honestly annoying. At this point, all actions are described in extreme terms as if they're life changing when they're only mildly quirky.
- nixosbestos 7mo ago
  Why? People are referred to as committers everywhere. I like the transparency and credit this gives to the ecosystem users helping fund development. When I did OSS work paid for by my employer, I was careful to note and credit who paid for the PR.
- micromacrofoot 7mo ago
  At a dinner party, sure, but if anything we should be this transparent in business and political contexts more often. Who's paying your bills is often very important when outsiders are weighing our choices.
- kelnos 7mo ago
  In a vacuum, yes, that seems weird. But in this context I think it's important to disclose who writes their paychecks so it's easier to understand what their biases might be.
drcongo 7mo ago
What is a "connector" in this context?
- textrunmax 7mo ago
  The Connectors API is a framework for managing connections to services like AI, anti-spam, etc. It was introduced on March 18, 2026 with WordPress 7.0 at https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/18/introducing-the-connectors-api-in-wordpress-7-0/ https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/18/introducing-the-c... and the PR at https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75833 https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75833. It introduces a new prominent page in your wordpress settings that recommends popular services to you. All other services are behind a link that says "Find more connectors in the plugin directory" and are less visible. See image https://developer.wordpress.org/news/files/2026/03/image-1.jpeg https://developer.wordpress.org/news/files/2026/03/image-1.j..., which is the second image on "What’s new for developers?" at https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2026/03/whats-new-for-developers-march-2026/ https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2026/03/whats-new-for-d...
kstrauser 7mo ago
Ok, I think Matt’s goofy for various reasons. From just what this article says, I think he’s right on this one. This is my understanding of it: * The dev team has a disagreement about putting one of the company’s own projects on the available plugins carousel or whatever inside their main product. * They eventually decide not to. * The CEO says “this has been an important part of our product for 20 years. It’s silly that we’re even debating this”, and put it there anyway. And that’s about it? Based only on what I read here, there wasn’t any compelling engineering reason not to do a thing, and the CEO made a product decision to do it. That sounds like something I’ve heard 1,000 times at different shops and I’m not sure what the problem is. Perhaps I’m misreading this, and the main point isn’t “CEO overrides valiant dev team”, but “CEO makes recalcitrant dev team stop bikeshedding”. I say this out of no love for Matt’s… “interesting”… decision making the last couple of years. This sounds reasonable to me though.
- AnonEM00se 7mo ago
  Leaving out the optics and personalities and internal politics, the biggest issue I see is that they added this during the RC phase, which is against their policy. It should have been pushed to 7.1.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7mo ago
    Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money.
    - stackghost 7mo ago
      >Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money. This bush league kind of attitude is why people insinuate that most software development is not "real engineering". When Boeing or NASA lets making money get in the way of good engineering practice, people die.
      - 7mo ago
saghm 7mo ago
It says a lot about what's been going on in the Wordpress ecosystem lately that I had never heard of Mullenweg before maybe a year or two ago, and now I immediately see his name and think "What's he done this time?" Probably very frustrating for many people who actually use the platform, but as someone who doesn't, it's almost morbidly fascinating watching the continued drama and wondering if and when any of it ends up hurting the bottom line enough that something changes. I've joked to my wife before that if they end to running into issues and sell Tumblr, and it follows the trend of how much cheaper it was the second time, it might mean we could just buy it ourselves and run it.
- kstrauser 7mo ago
  Same here. I had no idea who he was before the WP Engine debacle. He’s been fascinating to watch for someone who enjoys the occasional low stakes, high drama public spat.
- AlienRobot 7mo ago
  But what did he do this time, though? I don't understand it very well, but it sounds like they made an anti-spam solution the default? That is good, right? WP gets a lot of spam.
  - saghm 7mo ago
    This one certainly does seem to require a bit more direct knowledge of WP to interpret than I have compared to some of the others. It sounds like the strongest argument against it that is that he previously has been against plugins being listed in the default page and that he doesn't seem particularly open to having published guidelines for what merits being there by default, which means that what belongs there essentially is left up to whatever he decides with no one else having a clear picture of it. In a vacuum, probably not a huge deal, and maybe for people who actually use WP the idea that this is basically something up to a judgment call makes sense. At least from my outside perspective, it sounds a bit like what's on the default page is basically being left up to the whim of the CEO without any real concrete explanation, which would be mildly concerning even if the CEO wasn't someone who's been making the news a lot the past couple years from getting into pissing matches with competitors, causing 8.4% of his employees to take a blanket offer to leave: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/automattic-workers-quit-matt-mullenweg-19816648.php https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/automattic-workers-quit-...
nixosbestos 7mo ago
I guess I'm confused about Matt wanting to "right the ship" so to speak, while also shoving this through. (Idgaf, it's a product call ultimately) But it seems the clean, sustainable, long-term way to do this was to have the akismet plugin simply self-register. Why was this hack easier than just doing that? God I love this place, a simple fking question gets downvoted.
markx2 7mo ago
Akismet makes money for Automattic / Matt. Comment spam is terrible and will continue to get worse. Decent alternatives exist. Increasing the visibility of Akismet should help increase revenue. This is 100% a financial move.
- stevoski 7mo ago
  What are those decent alternatives to Akismet? I went looking earlier this year and found nothing even close to Akismet on a price-to-effectiveness basis.
  - markx2 7mo ago
    Look at WP Armour – Honeypot Anti Spam. https://wordpress.org/plugins/honeypot/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/honeypot/ /r/wordpress will probably have others.
  - altairprime 7mo ago
    Requiring moderation of all comments remains effective.
  - onara 7mo ago
    Oopspam
j45 7mo ago
Maybe someone will put LLMs on Wordpress and make a new backwards compatible one.
- lukevp 7mo ago
  Cloudflare already did that and it’s available now[1], although it’s billed as a “spiritual successor” and not a literal one (so probably not backwards compatible). 1: https://blog.cloudflare.com/emdash-wordpress/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/emdash-wordpress/
0xbadcafebee 7mo ago
Bro really needs an assistant to write his e-mails/comments for him. Every time he talks, people like his company less. This is also more proof that open source owned by a company will never do what a community wants. Sure you can patch a bug if you fork the code, but nobody wants to do that, so it's not much different than using a proprietary product. Better to use open source not owned by a company, as the incentives are aligned with functionality rather than corporate profit.
neya 7mo ago
Maybe the right to time to Ask HN: are you ready for a high performance bullshit-free Wordpress replacement yet? One that has everything batteries included so you don't need plugins for the most part? I would love to hear your thoughts on what your non-negotiables are from a CMS in 2026 and what features are important to you.
- fontain 7mo ago
  There are endless examples of very good CMS software out there already. WordPress is the plugins, WordPress is a website builder that is ubiquitous because of the plugins. If you don’t need WordPress, you can choose from thousands of other options.
themafia 7mo ago
> It is pathological that we keep attacking me and Automattic who have by any measure given the most. "I'm so self important I've decided I get to order you to do illogical things." Some people see leadership as a responsibility. Some people see it as a chit. I really detest the latter group.
beecasthurlbow 7mo ago
His explanation seems pretty reasonable, no? > He pointed out that the Connectors page featured OpenAI and Anthropic, two companies that hadn’t contributed to the WordPress project and nobody had complained about their inclusion. He said Google had contributed in the past but had stopped. > “… how ridiculous is it attacking Akismet, and Automattic, and blocking the thing the person who is our [release] lead asked for,” Mullenweg wrote.
skyzyx 6mo ago
A single individual should not be able to override a set of core committees in a public open source project. Fork WP, and cut Mullenweg out of the loop.

58 points by mooreds 7mo ago

>Automattic-sponsored core committer Jorge Costa >Fueled-sponsored core committer Peter Wilson >Bluehost-sponsored core committer Jonathan Desrosiers >Human Made-sponsored core committer John Blackbourn This is a terrifying way to describe people.

mooreds 7mo ago
It does make the implicit explicit though, right? Each of these folks have a personal viewpoint but also represent a corporate viewpoint.
renewiltord 7mo ago
People on the Internet are just so dramatic. "Terrifying". Yes, indeed, this induces "terror", abject fear. Give me a break. At worst it's slightly cringe-worthy. This treadmill of dysphemisms is honestly annoying. At this point, all actions are described in extreme terms as if they're life changing when they're only mildly quirky.
nixosbestos 7mo ago
Why? People are referred to as committers everywhere. I like the transparency and credit this gives to the ecosystem users helping fund development. When I did OSS work paid for by my employer, I was careful to note and credit who paid for the PR.
micromacrofoot 7mo ago
At a dinner party, sure, but if anything we should be this transparent in business and political contexts more often. Who's paying your bills is often very important when outsiders are weighing our choices.
kelnos 7mo ago
In a vacuum, yes, that seems weird. But in this context I think it's important to disclose who writes their paychecks so it's easier to understand what their biases might be.

drcongo 7mo ago

What is a "connector" in this context?

textrunmax 7mo ago
The Connectors API is a framework for managing connections to services like AI, anti-spam, etc. It was introduced on March 18, 2026 with WordPress 7.0 at https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/18/introducing-the-connectors-api-in-wordpress-7-0/ https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/03/18/introducing-the-c... and the PR at https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75833 https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/75833. It introduces a new prominent page in your wordpress settings that recommends popular services to you. All other services are behind a link that says "Find more connectors in the plugin directory" and are less visible. See image https://developer.wordpress.org/news/files/2026/03/image-1.jpeg https://developer.wordpress.org/news/files/2026/03/image-1.j..., which is the second image on "What’s new for developers?" at https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2026/03/whats-new-for-developers-march-2026/ https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2026/03/whats-new-for-d...

kstrauser 7mo ago

Ok, I think Matt’s goofy for various reasons. From just what this article says, I think he’s right on this one. This is my understanding of it: * The dev team has a disagreement about putting one of the company’s own projects on the available plugins carousel or whatever inside their main product. * They eventually decide not to. * The CEO says “this has been an important part of our product for 20 years. It’s silly that we’re even debating this”, and put it there anyway. And that’s about it? Based only on what I read here, there wasn’t any compelling engineering reason not to do a thing, and the CEO made a product decision to do it. That sounds like something I’ve heard 1,000 times at different shops and I’m not sure what the problem is. Perhaps I’m misreading this, and the main point isn’t “CEO overrides valiant dev team”, but “CEO makes recalcitrant dev team stop bikeshedding”. I say this out of no love for Matt’s… “interesting”… decision making the last couple of years. This sounds reasonable to me though.

AnonEM00se 7mo ago
Leaving out the optics and personalities and internal politics, the biggest issue I see is that they added this during the RC phase, which is against their policy. It should have been pushed to 7.1.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7mo ago
  Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money.
  - stackghost 7mo ago
    >Business objectives should override engineering policies when the two are in conflict, at least if you're a business owner who wants to make money. This bush league kind of attitude is why people insinuate that most software development is not "real engineering". When Boeing or NASA lets making money get in the way of good engineering practice, people die.
    - 7mo ago

saghm 7mo ago

It says a lot about what's been going on in the Wordpress ecosystem lately that I had never heard of Mullenweg before maybe a year or two ago, and now I immediately see his name and think "What's he done this time?" Probably very frustrating for many people who actually use the platform, but as someone who doesn't, it's almost morbidly fascinating watching the continued drama and wondering if and when any of it ends up hurting the bottom line enough that something changes. I've joked to my wife before that if they end to running into issues and sell Tumblr, and it follows the trend of how much cheaper it was the second time, it might mean we could just buy it ourselves and run it.

kstrauser 7mo ago
Same here. I had no idea who he was before the WP Engine debacle. He’s been fascinating to watch for someone who enjoys the occasional low stakes, high drama public spat.
AlienRobot 7mo ago
But what did he do this time, though? I don't understand it very well, but it sounds like they made an anti-spam solution the default? That is good, right? WP gets a lot of spam.
- saghm 7mo ago
  This one certainly does seem to require a bit more direct knowledge of WP to interpret than I have compared to some of the others. It sounds like the strongest argument against it that is that he previously has been against plugins being listed in the default page and that he doesn't seem particularly open to having published guidelines for what merits being there by default, which means that what belongs there essentially is left up to whatever he decides with no one else having a clear picture of it. In a vacuum, probably not a huge deal, and maybe for people who actually use WP the idea that this is basically something up to a judgment call makes sense. At least from my outside perspective, it sounds a bit like what's on the default page is basically being left up to the whim of the CEO without any real concrete explanation, which would be mildly concerning even if the CEO wasn't someone who's been making the news a lot the past couple years from getting into pissing matches with competitors, causing 8.4% of his employees to take a blanket offer to leave: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/automattic-workers-quit-matt-mullenweg-19816648.php https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/automattic-workers-quit-...

nixosbestos 7mo ago

I guess I'm confused about Matt wanting to "right the ship" so to speak, while also shoving this through. (Idgaf, it's a product call ultimately) But it seems the clean, sustainable, long-term way to do this was to have the akismet plugin simply self-register. Why was this hack easier than just doing that? God I love this place, a simple fking question gets downvoted.

markx2 7mo ago

Akismet makes money for Automattic / Matt. Comment spam is terrible and will continue to get worse. Decent alternatives exist. Increasing the visibility of Akismet should help increase revenue. This is 100% a financial move.

stevoski 7mo ago
What are those decent alternatives to Akismet? I went looking earlier this year and found nothing even close to Akismet on a price-to-effectiveness basis.
- markx2 7mo ago
  Look at WP Armour – Honeypot Anti Spam. https://wordpress.org/plugins/honeypot/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/honeypot/ /r/wordpress will probably have others.
- altairprime 7mo ago
  Requiring moderation of all comments remains effective.
- onara 7mo ago
  Oopspam

j45 7mo ago

Maybe someone will put LLMs on Wordpress and make a new backwards compatible one.

lukevp 7mo ago
Cloudflare already did that and it’s available now[1], although it’s billed as a “spiritual successor” and not a literal one (so probably not backwards compatible). 1: https://blog.cloudflare.com/emdash-wordpress/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/emdash-wordpress/

0xbadcafebee 7mo ago

Bro really needs an assistant to write his e-mails/comments for him. Every time he talks, people like his company less. This is also more proof that open source owned by a company will never do what a community wants. Sure you can patch a bug if you fork the code, but nobody wants to do that, so it's not much different than using a proprietary product. Better to use open source not owned by a company, as the incentives are aligned with functionality rather than corporate profit.

neya 7mo ago

Maybe the right to time to Ask HN: are you ready for a high performance bullshit-free Wordpress replacement yet? One that has everything batteries included so you don't need plugins for the most part? I would love to hear your thoughts on what your non-negotiables are from a CMS in 2026 and what features are important to you.

fontain 7mo ago
There are endless examples of very good CMS software out there already. WordPress is the plugins, WordPress is a website builder that is ubiquitous because of the plugins. If you don’t need WordPress, you can choose from thousands of other options.

themafia 7mo ago

> It is pathological that we keep attacking me and Automattic who have by any measure given the most. "I'm so self important I've decided I get to order you to do illogical things." Some people see leadership as a responsibility. Some people see it as a chit. I really detest the latter group.

beecasthurlbow 7mo ago

His explanation seems pretty reasonable, no? > He pointed out that the Connectors page featured OpenAI and Anthropic, two companies that hadn’t contributed to the WordPress project and nobody had complained about their inclusion. He said Google had contributed in the past but had stopped. > “… how ridiculous is it attacking Akismet, and Automattic, and blocking the thing the person who is our [release] lead asked for,” Mullenweg wrote.

skyzyx 6mo ago

A single individual should not be able to override a set of core committees in a public open source project. Fork WP, and cut Mullenweg out of the loop.