Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of contributors planning a fork

This isn’t unexpected; I’ve been deactivated on Slack since very early in this dispute, and later banned from the issue tracker as well. I’ve been contributing for 20 years to the project, am a committer, and built several large parts of WordPress including the REST API.

Matt is banning anyone who speaks out at all, even when they agree with points he’s made. A large group of contributors felt they had to make an anonymous statement from fear of the same retribution I suffered: https://www.therepository.email/core-contributors-voice-conc...

(I am a less active direct contributor these days, so I’m still able to contribute even while blocked - but many people’s livelihoods depend on it, as sponsored contributors.)

I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that Matt Mullenweg is in desperate need of an intervention. Seriously, the man should seek professional help.

I've been saying this on twitter for months now. I don't believe this is a mentally healthy individual. His continued defence of his behavior with the whole "if you knew what was happening you would understand" style responses indicates he's lost in the sauce.

If he's not having some sort of mental health crisis it really begs to question how we got here with someone like him running those organizations for this long.

If he is, and he makes it out of this state, I feel for the emotions he's going to have to deal with when he sees (with a different perspective) what he's done to what is ultimately his life's work.

It's sad. All the way around, truly just sad.

I thought that too until you go down the rabbit hole and realize it's been this way since apparently the beginning. It's also interesting to note just how hard everyone was tearing the author apart in the comments only for it to basically become true a decade later.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110117190122/http://wpblogger....

I guess money is just some force multiplier for negative aspects of someone's personality. Just never get to see it in the beginning.