


And what we were trying to co-create together. “And so the folks who were left were really the missionaries, they were the ones who truly believed in the potential of the web. It was just post the dot.com crash and the people who were left were the mercenaries, because the money had gone. The next transformational moment was moving to San Francisco in 2004. There were very few cliques, or anything in the school, it was really more about your art area than it was about your background or where you live or anything like that.” “That kind of environment was just so generative, and so creative. One of the most transformational moments of Matt’s life, he says, was being accepted in the High School for the Performing Visual Arts in Houston, Texas. How does their personality and passions translate into what they care about and how they set up their place where they live?” The defining moments of Matt’s life “But gosh, I think of how kids decorate their rooms or their lockers at school, or how I love visiting people’s homes just to see what it looks like. You can’t change the format, the font, even the colours. Because who wants a cookie cutter like Twitter or Facebook? With these platforms every user is the same. With broadband, more advanced devices, the march of technology is hard to counter.īut it’s just as exciting, says Matt, to think about how much creativity is going to be unlocked in the world when suddenly these extra billion people have access to the world wide web.Īnd, says Matt, if that happens successfully, the internet will become a little weirder, a little more unique and individualistic – which is perfect. The thing is, in the next 10 years, one billion more people will be coming online.
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And if you understand open source, you’ll get a lot of why I do what I do, and why our companies do what they do in terms of releasing code or giving extra control to users.” So open source is definitely the big thing in my life. “I believe, as more and more of our lives become governed by technology, it’s important that the technology that we have agency over, that we are able to influence, change, and control it. Without open source, he says, his companies simply wouldn’t exist. In fact, says Matt, he feels like he’s more in service to the idea of open source than to WordPress or Automattic, because he is such a strong proponent of it. To understand Matt is to understand the philosophy of open source. So typically, a solution for that would be to slow down, or do some sort of check in, or talk to friends.” Understanding the need for Open Source When I think of times, maybe when I felt fear, it’s often that sense of being out of control.

“Fear is not a word that I associate a lot with. That was a brave decision for a 23 year old to make, so how did Matt find the courage and the resolve to stick to that decision? WordPress did was take that open source model, this idea that the code really belongs to the people, everyone using it, that we can collaborate on it all over the world.”
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Just look at the history of technology from the first example of free and open-source software – the A-2 system, developed at the UNIVAC division of Remington Rand in 1953, to Linux, to things like Red Hat, etc WordPress, says Matt, is a continuation of a movement that was going on way before he was born. And WordPress powers more than 40% of the websites on the internet.īut what was the spark that made Matt decide that WordPress should be free and open source for all users, world wide? The genesis of WordPress Today, after many twists and turns, the company has nearly 2000 employees and a valuation of $7 billion. So he launched the idea on his own, eventually tucking the service into an umbrella company called Automattic. And around 2005, he pitched the idea for WordPress to his bosses at CNET, but they turned him down. He had an unshakable idea that users should be able to share and tweak the code that powers their websites, and that most of those tools should be free to use.Īs far back as college, Matt was collaborating with fellow coders to make blogging less clunky and more elegant and intuitive. Matt Mullenweg turned his early passion for blogging into a flourishing business. Show Notes Why WordPress is Free and Open Source with CEO and Founder, Matt Mullenweg
