Mullenweg Shuts Down WordPress Sustainability Team, Igniting Backlash

Members of the fledgling WordPress Sustainability Team have been left reeling after WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg abruptly dissolved the team this week—an action prominent tech journalist Kara Swisher has described as “bizarrely heinous behavior.”

The disbandment happened after team rep Thijs Buijs announced in Making WordPress Slack on Wednesday that he was stepping down from his role, citing a Reddit thread Mullenweg created on Christmas Eve asking for suggestions to create WordPress drama in 2025.

Buijs had hoped 2025 would bring more positivity to the WordPress community following the “WordPress drama” of 2024, referring to Mullenweg’s public feud with WP Engine. But said the Reddit thread was more proof that the community needed a change in leadership.

“These acts of a single person are so counterproductive to the economic, social, and ecological sustainability and longevity of the project. Personally, it’s not sustainable for me to invest any more energy into this project under the current leadership,” Buijs posted.

Ninety minutes later, Mullenweg joined the #sustainability channel, and 4 minutes later, he announced he was shutting down the team.

“Today I learned that we have a sustainability team,” Mullenweg said.

“Thank you @Thijs Buijs for your effort in this area, looking at results of the team so far, and the ROI of time invested, it’s probably a good time to officially dissolve the team entirely.”

“It doesn’t seem like creating a team around this was able to further any of its goals, so we should probably try a different approach, or consider whether it’s salient for us to be involved at all. 

“(For example, is it worth talking about the climate impact of WordPress, or instead should we just have really great performance metrics and try to optimize our code as much as possible, and focus on that efficiency.)”

Mullenweg’s announcement prompted outrage on social media and in Slack channels, with many in the WordPress and wider tech communities criticizing Mullenweg’s hypocrisy, pointing out that it was his idea to create the sustainability team. Critics also slammed his apparent disregard for the self-sponsored team reps and their contributions to WordPress.

In a scathing post on Threads, veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher posted a screenshot of Mullenweg’s announcement in Slack and called him a “stone cold asshole.”

“The @wordpress platform was where @mossbergwalt and I started All Things D and later Recode, because it was so good and @photomatt was always very helpful. But what a pathetic turn for him into a stone cold asshole,” Swisher said. “I take no pleasure in saying this, but it’s true and I am so sorry for the staff there. Oh yeah, Matt, please don’t contact me offline trying to explain your current bizarrely heinous behavior. In other words: Over and out.”

The #sustainability channel in Making WordPress Slack was created during the Q&A at WordCamp Europe 2022 after UX/UI designer Nora Ferreirós raised concerns about sustainability in WordPress with Matt Mullenweg and former WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy.

Ferreirós was one of the original proponents behind oursustainablewp.org, a website she launched in 2022 together with Hannah Smith (Director of Operations at the Green Web Foundation), Csaba Varszegi (Sustainable Web Designer at LittleBigThings), Nahuai Badiola (co-founder of OsomPress), and Buijs (owner of Yellowlime). The website aimed to get people thinking about what sustainability could look like for WordPress.

Ferreirós, Varszegi, Badiola, and Buijs became the sustainability team’s four founding reps when the team became an official Make WordPress team at WordCamp Europe 2023. The team’s primary objective was to embed sustainable practices into the WordPress community and its processes to ensure WordPress’s social, economic, and environmental longevity.

Badiola said he was still processing the teams’ shock disbandment and was disappointed Mullenweg had been unaware of their work over the past 18 months.

“The team was formed mainly by self-sponsored people (including the team reps) so the pace of task completion was much slower than we would have liked it to be,” Badiola said. “We were doing the best we could with what we had.”

Varszegi added: “We were a young team still trying to find our way in a system that was unknown for all of us. Also, the team had several new, complicated responsibilities, hard to tackle on the short term. With a growing contributor base, the team could have achieved a lot in my opinion.”

Varszegi said the team’s most impactful contribution to WordPress was the publication of the Sustainable Events Handbook, designed to help WordCamp organizers improve the sustainability of their events. The team was also developing a plugin to help site owners estimate the carbon footprint of their website.

According to the sustainability team’s roadmap, published last September, contributors were also exploring ways to make WordPress financially sustainable, using platforms like GitHub Sponsors and Open Collective to fund Make WordPress teams, contributors, and priority projects.

The team had also been working with GoDaddy’s Courtney Robertson and Automattic’s Hari Shanker on the WordPress contribution health dashboards initiative. Robertson said it was concerning that the team had been shut down without prior warning or consultation, particularly as it impacted several active projects, including plans to unify WordPress’s DEIB, Five for the Future, and contributor dashboard initiatives under one team.

“These efforts were crucial in establishing social and economic sustainability for WordPress and its community and I remain committed to advancing these initiatives,” Robertson said. “I hope that we can revisit these vital areas of work to ensure the continued growth and support of the WordPress contributor community.”

Image credits: Jeroen Rotty, WordCamp Europe 2024.

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