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Tag Archives: Mary Hubbard

13 Jan 2025

New Executive Director of WordPress.org Now Credited as Author of Automattic’s Post Announcing Company’s Reduction in WordPress Contributions

Last week, Automattic announced that they would be reducing how many hours they claim to contribute to the WordPress project under the Five for the Future program. (The accuracy of the Five for the Future pledges in general seem highly suspect.) At the time, the post didn’t have an author shown, but ended “– The Automattic Team.” Since then, the design of Automattic’s website has been updated, causing the credited author of the post to be displayed. You can now see it is listed as Mary Hubbard:

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10 Jan 2025

The New Executive Director of WordPress.org is Now Claiming to Only Spend 5 Hours a Week on WordPress

When it comes to the security problems with WordPress plugins, as well as many other problems with WordPress, the project’s lack of proper governance is a key problem. In addition to Matt Mullenweg, the only person that appears to have an oversight role for the project has been the Executive Director of WordPress. That hasn’t produced good results.

While not disclosed by Matt Mullenweg when he announced the position, the first holder of the position was the head of the open source division of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg’s company. The obvious conflict of interest might explain why that person never released the conflict of interest policy they promised for over a year. That person held the position from 2019 until September, when Matt Mullenweg’s offered a buyout to Automattic employees after his extortion campaign against WP Engine went public. They unsurprisingly operated largely in line with what you would expect from someone that is an employee of Automattic who happens to hold that title. [Read more]

11 Dec 2024

People in Charge of WordPress Don’t Know How Someone Can Appeal Being Banned from WordPress.org

Recently the new Executive of WordPress.org Mary Hubbard, did a question and answer Zoom stream with Matt Mullenweg. WordPress focused news outlets covered this in a rather unquestioning way (no surprise, considering the general lack of journalism from them). Watching it, her and others inability to answer a question pertinent to what is going on with WordPress, was unsurprising to us, but for those not familiar with the lack of proper governance of WordPress, informative.

At the 25:35 mark in the stream, she reads a question about “long term contributors have been banned, blocked from WordPress.org” that “has significant implications for the employees to contribute to Five for the Future.” She goes on to say that this has come up in recent conversations. She then starts to say there is an appeal process, but then pivots to saying she thought there was one. She then throws it to Felipe Santos, another employee of Automattic, who suggests contacting dpo@wordpress.org. That email address is listed on WordPress.org Privacy page as being what to contact it you “have any questions about our privacy policy or information we hold about you.” He then says: [Read more]

9 Dec 2024

The Executive Director of WordPress.org Works For Automattic, Not WordPress

Back in 2019, Matt Mullenweg announced a new role, the Executive Director of WordPress, without disclosing the role was being filled by someone working for his for-profit company Automattic. When that person was brought up after that, it was rarely mentioned that they worked for Automattic, despite the obvious conflict of interest inherent in the situation. That conflict of interest might explain why the WordPress never got its conflict of interest policy, which that person said was coming.

That lack of disclosure continued when Matt Mullenweg announced that person’s replacement, under the slightly changed title, Executive Director of WordPress.org, in October. Considering how clear it has become recently that Matt Mullenweg has been intentionally obscuring the control of WordPress and intermixing of different entities, you might reasonably expect that journalists would be careful about accuracy on things like this. That continues to not be the case. [Read more]