Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, recently held a question-and-answer session at WordCamp Asia 2025, where he faced several tough questions. Topics included whether he was open to discussing change, the steep learning curve of WordPress, and whether he would reconsider reducing Automattic’s contributions to WordPress core.
As tough as those questions were, Matt answered each of them gracefully and focused on staying positive, even when he was saying no.
Mullenweg Says Being Adaptable To Change Is Important
In one of these exchanges someone asked what WordPress would be like in five years and he couldn’t answer it. He explained it that not having a plan beyond Gutenberg was essentially a feature and not a bug, explaining that a shorter term perspective is good for staying agile in a rapidly changing technological environment.
He said:
“Outside of Gutenberg, we haven’t had a roadmap that goes six months or a year, or a couple versions, because the world changes in ways you can’t predict.
But being responsive is, I think, really is how organisms survive.
You know, Darwin, said it’s not the fittest of the species that survives. It’s the one that’s most adaptable to change. I think that’s true for software as well.”
Change Is Not Coming To WordPress
In a seeming about face about the importance of WordPress being adaptable to change, Matt Mullenweg drew the line at being adaptable to change when it comes to governance.
Taco Verdonschot (LinkedIn profile) stood up to ask the question.
“I’m Taco, co-owner of Progress Planner. I was wondering, you were talking about adaptability before and survival of the fittest. That means being open to change. What we’ve seen in the last couple of months is that people who were talking about change got banned from the project. How open are you to discussing change in the project?
Matt answered:
“Sure. I don’t want to go too far into this but I will say that talking about change will not get you banned. There’s other behaviors… but just talking about change is something that we do pretty much every day. And we’ve changed a lot over the years. We’ve changed a lot in the past year. So yeah. But I don’t want to speak to anyone personally, you know. So keep it positive.”
Calls For Change In Governance
There have been many high profile calls for a change in how WordPress is governed, most notably by Joost de Valk, the creator of Yoast SEO software and currently a co-owner of the Progress Planner WordPress plugin.
“A lot has happened over the last few months, that I think all comes down to the above. I’ve often considered how the WordPress world “worked” unhealthy. I’ve spoken to many slightly outside of our industry over the past months about what was happening and several people, independent of each other, described WordPress as “a cult” to me. And I understand why.
I think it’s time to let go of the cult and change project leadership. I’ve said it before: we need a “board”. We can’t wait with doing that for the years it will take for Automattic and WP Engine to fight out this lawsuit. As was already reported, Matt said recently in Post Status that “it’s hard to imagine wanting to continue working on WordPress after this”. A few days later, he gave a completely conflicting message in the State of the Word. Yet he never came back on that first statement or clarified that he’d changed his mind. He also didn’t come back to talk to the community he turned his back on.”
Joost de Valk was supposed to speak at WordPress Asia 2025 but the co-owner of Progress Planner was there and asked the hard question.
Mullenweg Challenged To Adapt To Change
His statement about being adaptable to change set up another awkward moment at the 6:55:47 minute mark where Taco Verdonschot, co-owner of Progress Planner, stood up to the microphone and asked Mullenweg if he really was committed to being adaptable.
Taco Verdonschot is formerly of Yoast SEO and currently sponsored to work on WordPress by Emilia Capital (owned by Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt).
Taco asked:
“I’m Taco, co-owner of Progress Planner. I was wondering, you were talking about adaptability before and survival of the fittest. That means being open to change. What we’ve seen in the last couple of months is that people who were talking about change got banned from the project. How open are you to discussing change in the project?”
Mullenweg responded:
“Sure. I don’t want to go too far into this but I will say that talking about change will not get you banned. There’s other behaviors… but just talking about change is something that we do pretty much every day. And we’ve changed a lot over the years. We’ve changed a lot in the past year. So yeah. But I don’t want to speak to anyone personally, you know. So keep it positive.”
Featured Image by Shutterstock/StarLine
