Yoast Co-Founder Suggests A WordPress Contributor Board

Joost de Valk, co-founder of the Yoast SEO plugin, published an article calling for more equitable contributions from large WordPress companies, greater financial transparency, and a new board that represents the voices of contributors and companies.

Joost de Valk Supports Matt Mullenweg

Joost de Valk’s article is supportive of WordPress and agrees with Automattic’s CEO Matt Mullenweg that WP Engine should contribute more to WordPress. He praises Mullenweg and Automattic for the amount of contributions they make to WordPress, contrasting Mullenweg’s example against those who are financially benefiting the most from WordPress but don’t contribute on a level that’s reflective of their rewards.

He writes:

“I agree with Matt about his opinion that a big hosting company such as WPEngine should contribute more. It is the right thing to do.”

Joost writes that these aren’t just words to him, that they reflect his values and actions, sharing that his organization contributed so much time to the Gutenberg Project that it was literally at the expense of his own for-profit venture in that, while they “still made a lot of money” their revenue did experience a dip.

He thus envisions creating a board that’s representative of stakeholders as a way to encourage a healthy sustainable open source ecosystem with greater transparency and community representation.

Business Success Informs His Opinion

His idea for cultivating a health self-perpetuating open source community has been his guiding principle and is what he credits for his business success. In a 2013 WordCamp presentation he shared his experience of spending many years contributing to WordPress and creating a wildly popular plugin while not yet making any money. He reached a point where he had a day job to support his WordPress hobby and had to decide how to flip that so that they hobby became his day job.

In that presentation (The Victory Of The Commons) he described two ways of thinking about his situation, one in which he just goes all-in and focuses on doing what’s best for him and another path where he does what’s best for him and the WordPress community.

Joost credits his wife with suggesting to solve his problem by looking at it within the framework of the Tragedy Of The Commons. The Tragedy Of The Commons is a concept of how individuals can decide to either manage a shared resource to create a sustainable living for the community or behave in self-interest and eventually deplete the resource, thus harming the entire community.

He shared the following in that 2013 WordCamp presentation:

“So, if everyone in the WordPress community, if we all looked at it like this, we can make money and make sure that we reinvest that money, we’d grow.”

He said that creating something and giving it away is not necessarily good. He said it’s better for everyone to make “piles and piles of money” with the work but giving some of that back supports you and the community in a self-sustaining circle. He insisted that reinvesting “in the pasture” was paramount to working within the WordPress open source community.

“Reinvest some of that profit into all of our main pasture, WordPress. We all benefit.”

New WordPress Foundation Board

One of the solutions that Joost suggests is the creation of a board that provides representation to those who contribute to WordPress. Joost uses the analogy of taxation with representation as the basis for a WordPress Foundation board so that those who contribute can also be heard as part of the decision making process.

What he envisions isn’t a governing board with decision making power but one that serves in an advisory position that can participate as part of a dialogue within the decision-making structure.

He writes:

“I think this could actually help Matt, as I do understand that it’s very lonely at the top.

With such a group, we could also discuss how to better highlight companies that are contributing and how to encourage others to do so.”

The three main points he makes are:

1. Representation Of Stakeholders

“In my opinion, we all should get a say in how we spend those contributions. I understand that core contributors are very important, but so are the organizers of our (flagship) events, the leadership of hosting companies, etc. We need to find a way to have a group of people who represent the community and the contributing corporations.”

2. Facilitation Of Transparent Discussions

“Now I don’t mean to say that Matt should no longer be project leader. I just think that we should more transparently discuss with a ‘board’ of some sorts, about the roadmap and the future of WordPress as many people and companies depend on it.”

3. Encouragement And Recognition Of Contributions

“With such a group, we could also discuss how to better highlight companies that are contributing and how to encourage others to do so.”

Transparency With Money

One of the points that Joost brings up is somewhat separate from the creation of a contributor board and it’s about the payments made to Automattic for trademark deals.  He says that thing mingling of money creates a situation where it’s uncertain how much of it is used by Automattic as contributions to WordPress.

He writes:

“…let everybody see how the money flows.

Currently the way it works is that the money for trademark deals flows to Automattic, but we don’t know how much of the contributions Automattic does are paid for by Newfold, whom we now all know are paying for the use of the trademark. Maybe the money should go directly into the foundation? If not, I think we should at least see how many of the hours contributed by Automattic are actually contributed by Newfold.”

WordPress May Be At A Crossroad

WordPress may be at a historic crossroad that could lead to different outcomes. Joost suggests doubling down on open source by engaging with the entire WordPress community, returning to the ideal of reinvesting in “the pasture” to create a sustainable system that allows everyone to make “piles and piles of money” and achieve the goals users are working toward.

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