Leaders and the greater good
We [WordPress developers] are living in an open source licensed micro-universe. All we code and create has to first serve the greater good (freedom of use) and then our self. That’s a fact and the license under which we contribute (GPL or any compatible) takes care about that. Well, that’s only half of the truth, because then there’s also the WordPress Foundation. To clarify what exactly this foundation does, we probably just have to look at the index page of the foundations website.
The WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software. (…) The point of the foundation is to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the software projects we support. (…) As part of this mission, the Foundation will be responsible for protecting the WordPress, WordCamp, and related trademarks.
This all sounds nice and there’s even a bunch of buzz words in there, that make it sound even nicer: democratize, open source, GPL, free access, etc. Now that words all imply something. Namely a democratic structure and open doors and an open ear for the community. At least the foundation is like the communities Shepherd. From what one can read on the WPF site, it does quite a bit of that. WPF organizes WordCamps, pays for video equipment and seems to run WordPress.tv(?).
So far we’ve seen a fair amount of activity that sometimes clearly states that it was done by the WordPress Foundation and sometimes just implies it. And then there was the point where the foundation “protected” the Trademark against Jake Caputo. And this was the same day the following question was raised:
Who exactly is the WordPress Foundation? Who “runs” it?
This simple question gets asked in different places now. But to answer that question, I thought the easiest thing would be to ask Matt Mullenweg directly.
@photomatt Any info about the #WordPress #Foundation available aside from this? www2.guidestar.org/PartnerReport.…
— Franz Josef Kaiser (@unserkaiser) 26. Januar 2013
Sadly I haven’t gotten any answer. So me and some other guys tried to answer that question our selves and did some research. The only hint were the “News” posts, as the WPF site says nothing about its members, it’s board (does it have one?) or about any community decisions that were or are going to be made. And those (four) posts are written by Jen Mylo, formerly known as Jane Wells, and Matt Mullenweg. Digging a little further and you’ll find out the EIN# 205498932. This allows us to check the WordPress Foundation via the IRS and the Office of the Attorney General. And this is where it ends. No further information aside from the name M.Mullenweg and a nice address in South Beach San Francisco.
The question I ask is simple: Who in detail is “the Foundation” and if this is confidential, could we please know why?
WordPress-Geschichten: Foundation | WordPress, Communities, Meetups, Themes, Tutorials
Matt – 30.01.2013 22:57
From an ultimate decision-making point of view, the Foundation is mainly just me. However it is extremely rare for decisions to come to me: Day-to-day on the trademark protection front there are a number of lawyers involved, on the backstopping-WordCamps front Andrea and the make.wordpress.org/events group contribute, and Jen has helped out from the beginning and will lead some of the educational and women-oriented contributor efforts happening this year, which is being discussed on make.wordpress.org/community. The Foundation has no employees and no one draws a salary, everyone is a volunteer, except for the professional services (legal and accounting).
It’s worth noting that the Foundation was created purely to be a trademark and IP holding entity that Automattic could transfer its ownership of the WordPress trademark to. There are no “members.” It later expanded to help out some WordCamp finance stuff, because organizers were getting into personal liability and trouble, but all of the actual community organization, input, feedback, and decision making happens on WordPress.org, as you can tell from the relative complexity and activity on the respective websites. :)
Ryan Hellyer – 31.01.2013 12:20
It would be nice if this could be outlined in detail on the official site(s) as there seems to be a huge amount of confusion regarding this issue amongst the community.
Rilwis – 31.01.2013 15:29
So, there’s hard to have a clear answer to the question Kaiser asked in the post: who is responsible for the decision? You, the events group or the community? And in case of Jake Caputo, how to help him solve this problem when he doesn’t know whom he should fight back.
Matt – 02.02.2013 22:58
There’s nothing to fight back. If he wanted to change the guidelines we’ve had on WordPress.org for 5+ years to not promote non-GPL things, I guess he’d have to convince me, all the core devs, and some plurality of the community since that’s a pretty core part of everything we do.
As for what triggered the situation with Jake, I believe he reached out to Andrea to ask for clarification if distributing themes with a proprietary license violated the guidelines (it does) and if violating the guidelines meant you couldn’t speak at a WordCamp (it does) and if we could make an exception in this case since he wanted to be fully GPL but ThemeForest didn’t allow it (we don’t do exceptions because it’s a slippery slope). Andrea looped me in and I chatted with Jake directly about it prior to his blog post, after which he chose to continue violating the guidelines and withdraw from the WordCamp.
David Coveney – 31.01.2013 16:01
I think Rilwis asks the perfect question here – who is responsible for decisions. And, as in any formal organisation I’ve been involved with, how does one appeal?
If the MSA (of which I’ve been an on/off member for a long time) decides that I should be banned from competing, I have the right to appeal and that appeal has to be fully documented and the reasons given. I can then take this further to tribunal, but very few bother.
In the WP community as led by WPF the rules are variable, not clearly written, and there’s no due process. That’s open to abuse and helps to reduce faith in the system.
Caspar Hübinger – 31.01.2013 17:07
@Matt Thanks for clarifying. Is it true then that those volunteers are all Automattic employees?
Because as efficient as it may have been at the time the Foundation had to be put on its feet, it wouldn’t look very democratic to me from a nowadays point of view if Automattic had created
…only to practically hold on to that ownership of the WordPress trademark later on by letting (please notice I do not say: having!) Automattic employees volunteer to run the just created entity and thus practically control its actions, willingly or unwillingly. Long sentence, I know.
Willingly or unwillingly, because even if inherited control wouldn’t have been the intention in the beginning, the situation would break down to another simple question: How free in his/her thinking and decision-making would any employee loyal to his employer ultimately be?
Would… so is it true?
that girl again – 03.02.2013 03:52
So it’s official; the WordPress Foundation = Matt, just as I called it three years ago.