The WP Minute+

Matt: Hey Steve, welcome to the WP Minute.

Steve: Hey Matt, good to see you.

Matt: You can follow him, Steve J.

Burge on Twitter slash X.

Search for Steve Burge on Blue Sky.

I'm sure you're everywhere.

I don't want to say you're an enigma to
me, but you just have a lot of stuff.

Actually, remind Me of me!

With so many different, things going on.

You have PublishPress, you have WP
Metaslider, you have Taxopress, at least

that's the Twitter handle, and then you
have Log tivity, and Steve Burge is your

personal homepage with all the stuff.

20 years of experience,
12 books you've written.

I don't know, man, how do you do it?

How do you keep up with all this stuff?

Do you have like a team of a thousand,
or are you just all in on AI and your AI

agents are building everything for you?

Steve: Neither of those.

we have a, we have a team of, 13,
14 at the moment and, I, I really

haven't done too much to AI in my life.

Matt: Well, I'm surprised.

I'm surprised people haven't been knocked.

Oh, well, let me, let
me frame it this way.

A lot of hype.

We see every, every company
talking about their AI thing.

Are your customers not knocking
on the door saying, Hey, Steve,

give us some AI in your product.

Steve: You know, the best use that
I have for AI in my life is, my kids

are old enough to be doing homework
that I can't help them with now.

Like, their math homework is
too complicated for me now.

And so they'll sit there often with
chat GPT trying to get answers on

their advanced algebra homework.

that's about the most
of AI in my life so far.

AI

Matt: with his math homework, and
I'm like, oh god, I'd want to grade

all this, and I just snap a photo.

I snap a photo of it, and
I go, just grade this.

But, just to give myself some credit,
so everybody doesn't think I'm a bad

parent, I got three young boys, and when
they come home, it's three young boys

trying to get them to do homework, baths.

Food, eat, clean up.

It's, you know, if my wife
isn't around, it's chaos.

So sometimes I, I cheat and I take a
picture with ChatGPT and that helps me.

at least it helps me for
the homework side of it.

Steve: is not helping with
any of those other things.

Matt: No, no, it's not making the food.

It's not cleaning the house.

I wish it did though.

talk to me about the, talk to me about
your background in, in publishing books.

We're going to talk about publishing,
you know, as we were in the green room

before we went into this, but tell me
about the background of, of writing books.

What came first, the
books or the, the plugins?

Steve: oh the books definitely.

I used to be a teacher and, wanted,
wanted to teach and write books, that

was, the thing I still love, you can
see behind me, I've got shelves full of

books here, and I really, I just couldn't
make enough money as a teacher, I was

a teacher until, a wife and kids and a
mortgage came along, and, I was living

in Georgia, north of Atlanta at the time.

as you can tell from my accent,
that's where I was born and bred.

Matt: Where were you born and

Steve: I'm from England originally,
but my wife, my wife is American.

And we moved to a small town in Georgia.

And I think after two or three
years of teaching there, my

salary was 30, 000 or so.

So I needed, I needed to make more
money, needed to pay the bills and I

had been dabbling in open source and
decided to take my teaching skills

and combine them with open source
and launched a training business.

we, we originally were doing it in person.

I'd fly around the country and.

And train people how to use WordPress,
Drupal, Joomla, some PHP training.

And it was wonderful.

I got to explore the country,
went to pretty much 49 states.

I think doing that, no one ever invited
me to Hawaii, but I did get to go to

Alaska once to, to do some training up
there and did lots of government work.

This was 2009, 2010.

We'd be up in Washington DC doing lots of
training and that ended almost on one day.

You know the the guy from Texas Ted Cruz,
the the senator, well back in like 2013

he decided to shut down the government.

Basically he put a hold on things and
the government shut down for about three

weeks and all the training contacts
we had Just disappeared overnight.

I, I thought we were really clever
that we had, lots of, lots of clients.

Our clients were the Department of Energy,
Department of Veterans Affairs, Department

of Defense, Department of Energy.

Well, it turned out that was just
really one client, the government.

And so that disappeared almost overnight.

it never really came back.

Lots of people, had to push
their training budgets a year.

And then a year down the line, things
were different and had moved on.

so I turned my attention to books
and we ended up writing a WordPress

book, a Drupal book, a Joomla book.

it was all written on WordPress.

There's a platform called Pressbooks.

I'm not sure if you've come across them,

Matt: I think I have yeah,

Steve: you can basically write
everything on in the classic editor.

And they will do
everything else from there.

You can upload your images and they will
do an export that you can then send to

Amazon and they will do a print run of
your books whenever anyone orders them.

They will do a, a paperback
copy of a book for you.

And it was a lot of fun for a while.

Matt: I recently acquired and not to
make this about me Steve, but you know,

it's my show No, I'm just kidding.

I recently acquired Master WP and I You
know, listen, I have no immediate plans

as, as I do with most things, I sort
of like launch them, I talk about them,

I think about them, I iterate on the
idea and then I start something small.

And I think, and this is for
anybody's, anyone listening

to this as an opportunity.

I think training for WordPress and
educating around WordPress is actually

even in the face of AI and so much on
YouTube that those kinds of things are

so immediate but so, I'll use the word
shallow, they're immediate but shallow

and I think, you know, people might have,
an affinity with, you know what, give me

somebody in person to Give me somebody
who's been doing this who can come fly

out to me again or at least Connect with
me on a zoom call and like walk me and my

my team through something Do you what's
your what's your gut tell you on training?

What is it could it have a
comeback even in the face of

all this content in front of us?

Is there a chance?

Steve: No, sadly.

I wish it would.

I, I much, I do plugin development now.

And it's definitely a lot more lonely.

I, it was a wonderful experience actually
doing the, the human to human interaction.

talking with people, physically sitting
down next to them and helping them.

But I remember the day almost instantly
when I realized it was dead that a

company flew me out to Silicon Valley
to San Francisco Big semiconductor

company and I was there to do a week
of training for them Walked in that

big conference room and there was a TV
in front of me and there was basically

14 guys in India all zooming in This
is the future in person training.

It was wonderful, but
it's time to move on.

Matt: But what okay, so let
me just Go back to that.

What about just training from another
human, even if it is on zoom, right?

Do you think that there's
opportunity there?

Or is it all given up to a
I and YouTube these days?

Steve: We did try and do the zoom
training, but I think people's

attention span is just much shorter.

Matt: Mm.

Steve: used to get people, I mean
this was really pre phone addiction

days as well, but we used to get
people in a room for eight or nine

hours, and they could sit down and
focus on us teaching them something.

And now you move to zoom.

I don't know if it's something about
the quality of the interaction,

but people's attention really
starts to fade after an hour or so.

Matt: Yeah.

Yeah.

So you end up selling OS training.

The government shutdown happens.

I think I actually do recall
that for those those three weeks.

And then you say, okay, I need,
I need to get something off the

ground, literally to survive.

Had you already started
to build the plugins?

What was the first plugin and
what was that experience like?

Steve: yeah, we had, we'd
started to make the move.

We'd, we sold OS training
when it was still going well.

OS training was the name of the business,
the training business that we had and

a lot of what we try to do in WordPress
even now comes from a lot of those

big clients, like, Like some of those
government contractors we'll be dealing

with I've got a clear memory of sitting
down with someone in one of those big

departments and They just decided to go
with Drupal instead of WordPress And the

reason was that Drupal offered really
fine grained access control Over what

people in the government department could
do and also some way to progress content

through stages before it was published.

And that kind of stuck with me.

There's got to be a demand
for this in WordPress as well.

For people that really
care about their content.

Either because they actually care about
it or because some legal department

is making them care about it.

so we went, we did training
for a lot of universities and a

lot of, government departments.

And so we kind of took those
learnings and tried to apply

them to WordPress, you know.

What would happen if you have
to be really careful about your

content before you publish it?

You probably need something more
than just pending review and

draft to get something ready.

some of the, one of the funniest customers
I remember was a, A medical company,

one of the household name pharmaceutical
companies and they were selling some,

some, some interesting products and they
needed to make sure all the content was

exactly accurate before it goes online.

You know, they can't make any
medical claims about something.

Everything needs to be exactly
proofread down to the letter.

All of the, all of the disclaimers they
have on those TV commercials at the end.

Matt: Yes.

Steve: And they had like 16 or 18
of these stages that the content

needed to go through for approval.

And so most of those people
I think now are on WordPress.

WordPress has kind of taken
over that power of publishing.

Drupal is still around, still doing well.

But I guarantee if I knocked on the door
of all those people we worked with in

the past, that they're on WordPress now.

Matt: Yeah.

Yeah.

I want to talk, obviously we'll talk more
about the, the importance of WordPress

in the publishing space, but, back
to your entrepreneurial journey was,

which came first, give us the timeline,
publish press, meta slider all at once.

What were the first few products
that you started to launch?

Steve: The first one
we launched was Drupal.

There was a old plug in called
EditFlow that, yeah, that

was taken over by Automattic.

Matt: Yep.

Steve: And, Automattic does lots
of wonderful, has lots of wonderful

products, but quite often I think
if someone gets hired by Automattic,

they have to bring their plug in
with them, and maybe it doesn't fit

in with the priorities of the time.

And EditFlow didn't.

And we were using it.

So we decided to fork it and
make it our first test plugin.

And if you haven't used EditFlow,
basically it's like a big editorial

calendar that you can look at all your
content that's coming up and you can

drag and drop it to a new location.

Say, hey, we have a post
that's scheduled for Thursday.

Hmm, let me drag it to
next Monday instead.

Matt: Yeah.

I remember, I remember edit flow.

really well, in fact, now, I mean, I
haven't thought about it since, since I

had used it, you know, many years ago.

so you fork it, and that's the first
iteration of what is now, let me just

look at this, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
9, 10, 11, you call them, I call them,

I would call them add ons or plug ins.

How do you refer to them under
the umbrella of published press?

Steve: Yeah, we've slowly grown and
we may be adding, maybe adding more.

for example, one of the guys who was
Involved with edit flow also had a

plugin called co authors plus that
again for a fairly, a fairly simple

technical problem, like WordPress only
allows you one user for each post.

And he had a, a solution that
would allow you to add two

or three authors to one post.

And he'd just been hired by automatic.

I sat down with him at a conference.

it was the.

The loop conf.

If you remember it, I think it might
be coming back this year in fact.

Matt: It is, yeah.

Steve: loop conf in Salt Lake City.

And he looked at me and said
Steve, I'm going to join automatic.

I don't think I'm going to
have much time to work on it.

You should fork the plugin.

there's plugin number two.

and it

Matt: They should make like a
wordpress movie about you where

you're just like walking along and
all of a sudden like, Plugins land

on your lap and they go, here you go!

Steve: That's really been the
way it's, the way it's gone.

Matt: Yeah.

Steve: we got talking to a guy
in Michigan who needed some

help with our first plugin.

It turns out he's got like three extra
plugins with about 200, 000 users.

It's like, Oh, you seem
to know what you're doing.

we ended up hiring him
and he's still with us.

I think he, just had, it's like
a seventh anniversary with us.

A couple of weeks ago and yeah, just like,
almost like carrying a magnet around.

You suddenly, all these, all these
plugins start popping up until you

end up with a collection of them.

Matt: Yeah.

I can totally understand.

you know, one of the great
things about WordPress.

I mean, obviously it solves so
many different needs from like the

mom and pop shop to the individual
blogger to, higher ed and enterprise

and publishers and all this stuff.

I mean, many of them can all be
interconnected with just a blog, right?

Like maybe all of these avatars have
a blog and that's kind of where that

experience meets in the middle, though.

I might yeah.

I guess it might be challenging
for you from like a marketing

and product positioning thing.

Like are we like just for publishers,
like Publishers capital P?

Are we for enterprise and higher ed
that need more like access control?

Is it all of it?

As you've matured the business of
PublishPress, how have you dialed

in the right customer for you?

Steve: Oh, good question.

I've thought about that
a ton over the years.

we, we originally said publishers and
now we've slightly elongated it to say

people who care about their publishing.

because we do have a lot of publishers,
a lot of small newspapers, magazines,

but also we have the, the government,
the universities, the pharmaceutical

companies, anyone that really cares
about their publishing and doesn't

want to just do a quick AI draft
and hit publish, anyone that really

needs to check and double check
their content before it goes live.

Matt: Yeah.

From, from a, you know, another popular
thing that I see, with, you know, I

would say friends and colleagues of ours
that, have other plugins, you know, I'm

thinking maybe like Syed and, you know,
Awesome Motive and, and other, folks

who distribute to or through hosting
companies, I'd imagine this kind of

thing is, Well, you explain it to me.

I'll pose the question.

How is it to get distribution
through web hosts?

I know, like, Automatic has Newspack.

is that a thing they connect with you?

And you say, hey, look,
you've got Newspack.

I've got a bunch of plugins that work
really well for your type of customer.

Let's collaborate.

What's distribution like
for you through web hosts?

Steve: We're not really one
of those plugins that has

that option, unfortunately.

Newspack is small but mighty.

I, I really admire the
work they've been doing.

They've been, They've been like a fairly
small, division inside automatic, but

really been making some good progress.

They have, I think, getting up to
several thousand websites on their

platform now and they're starting
to add some bigger publishers.

they, I don't think they're really
quite big enough to be, to have

much in the way of partnerships.

And I know they have like a big license
with us and they put published press

on a lot of their, A lot of their
news sites, but they're not quite

there in terms of being a, know, like
hosting companies have, VIP partners

and proper partnership programs.

They're certainly a little more informal,
but they're probably if people ask

me about the success of WordPress
in the publishing space, Newspack

is probably one of the first three
organizations I point to and say, Hey,

these guys are doing awesome work.

Matt: Are there other, who are
the others, that you could share?

Steve: Oh, well, there's,
there's Newspack.

There is, a small, a fairly
small, almost like one man

company called Paywall Project.

He's connected to LeakyPaywall, a
plugin that does paywalls for, for

magazines and just very quietly,

just on his own almost, he's managed
to get several hundred small newspapers

onto his platform and there's a, another
platform called LEED, L E D E, that

spun out of a big agency called Allie.

And they've done really some interesting
work with some new publishers.

There's one called, Defector, which
is a big sports publisher spun out

of, it was called Deadspin originally.

kind of, yeah, related to the Gawker.

The

Matt: Yep.

Steve: space.

so Lead is a kind of spin off
of Ali, and they're working

on some fascinating publishing
projects, all based on WordPress.

A lot of them happen to be owned by the
journalists, which is a really nice spin.

Matt: Yeah.

Based on what you've seen in, the
bigger publishing space or even the

enterprise space, what's your experience
with customers saying no to WordPress?

We don't want WordPress because
what is their reasoning?

Steve: They need simpler.

Matt: Hmm.

Steve: things The people that go away
from WordPress tend to be more like

the small one person sites that would
prefer to go maybe substack or ghost

Matt: Yeah.

Steve: I I don't hear too much of the
cannibalization of the at the top end

you've got organizations like WordPress
VIP around who They're more than capable

of Taking care of the high end kinds If
there is people eating WordPress is lunch.

It's definitely at the, at the lower
end, someone that wants to send out

a newsletter blast once a once a week

Matt: Right.

Beehive, substack, you
know, that kind of thing.

probably kit, MailChimp, like, you
know, people who are just like, Eh,

I just need this kind of solution.

Yeah.

Steve: the recommendation
features built in as well.

if you're on a WordPress site by
yourself, you're not gonna benefit

from all those substack recommendations
that, that nudge other people

to sign up for your newsletter.

Matt: Sure.

I usually have at least one, what I
call, Strap on your seatbelt roller

coaster ride questions, and I'm
going to give you one right now, and

I it's not even a direct question.

I'm gonna throw a bunch of stuff at
you and then look for your feedback.

So, and there's many
threads of thought here.

Let's I'm going to try to wrangle myself
in on this one, too, but we're living

in a world, yeah, you might need to.

So we're living in a world where, I mean,
WordPress is being challenged, right?

The community is being challenged.

you know, with everything happening with
WP Engine and Automatic and Mullenweg.

WordPress is being challenged with,
is this the best tool anymore?

It's, you know, air quotes, monolithic.

It's 20 plus years old.

there's all this new fangled AI stuff.

there's lots of people who question
like, is open source even a viable thing?

Right?

Like I thought we had say
in making this software.

Turns out we don't, fully, should
we even be supporting this anymore?

There's all these things happening.

There's a very chaotic, catastrophic
sphere happening right now,

in the world of WordPress and.

I'm looking for ways to, I guess,
without picking sides, if that

can even be possible anymore, like
how do you continue, how do we

continue to keep WordPress, going,
how do we keep the platform going

and, and propping up open source?

And I was listening to another
podcast, which is not even

in the WordPress space as AI.

It's a bit hypey, right?

He does some pretty clickbait.

I'm actually forgetting the name of
the channel right now, but he's got

a few hundred thousand subscribers.

It's kind of hype clickbaity,
but it's, it's good content.

And he had this really young kid on,
I don't know, low twenties, 21, 22.

I don't know how old he was.

And he's talking about like
building directories and how he

can make all this money, making,
building these directory sites.

And he says, he's explaining
how he does it, does all this

research, does all this thing.

And then he goes, I built this
directory, the example directory that

he was talking about in WordPress.

And he goes, I know, it's a stupid
decision to use WordPress, right?

And I'm listening to this,
and I was just like, why?

So he's like, I'd rather be using like
Framer or I could build this in Bolt.

And then the host is like, yeah, I
can't believe you picked WordPress.

Like, why would you pick WordPress?

And I'm listening to it going.

No, it's actually the best platform to
pick because what you all don't realize

is whenever you vote for your little
AI project or your little side hustle

project, whenever you vote for something
that's closed sourced or, you know, this

Integrated AI platform thing When your
business that you're making money with

eventually actually costs you something
and you're done with like the hype

moment of oh This thing's making me so
much money because you haven't really

scaled it yet WordPress actually is the
best choice because Things are detached.

It's an open source database.

It's an air quotes, open source front end.

You can move it to a different
web hosting provider.

You can analyze your
database and optimize it.

You have a user login system.

You can have theming and I know it's
not beautiful and I know there's

a learning curve, but in fact,
you can pick it apart, move things

around and it is a great solution.

It's just not sexy.

And that's the world we're living in.

I think, with WordPress.

Should we be doing this thing?

There's chaos in the community.

Oh god, AI looks so alluring
compared to WordPress.

What's your thoughts?

On that, on that grenade
of thoughts I threw at

Steve: That sounds more like a
justified rant than a question.

Matt: Yeah.

Bourbon.

Steve: two?

Lunch time.

Um, deep seek.

Like, we just had the, one of the best
selling pitches for open source that we've

had in years just dropped on our laps that
with the power of open source, thanks to

Facebook's decision for whatever ulterior
motives they had behind it to open source

all their research through Lama, we have a
product That is capable of competing with

far, far, far more expensive alternatives.

I mean, that's kind of what WordPress
is empowering still, that, the

technology itself may be a little
old, but the, the principles that

it stands for, are going to be
valuable for many, many years to come.

I, I started my journey here in just pure
PHP, then some Joomla, then some Drupal.

Then some WordPress and the throughput
for all of those has been the value of

doing things in the open source way.

I, I, I've still got a, a little bit of
a Joomla business that's still going.

a little bit of Drupal
business that's still going.

WordPress, even if it was to take
a precipitous decline tomorrow,

it would still be employing.

many thousands of people
for years to come.

Matt: Yeah.

Steve: But perhaps the important
thing is what you were saying in your

justified rant that these kids moving
to to Webflow, moving to closed source

platforms, are losing something of value.

Matt: Yeah.

Steve: If they're building with
JavaScript, for example, Great.

Go for it.

building with, if they're building
with open source tools, I think

they'll find themselves with a better
career, a better future, for themselves

and for their platforms, if, if
they stick to the open source way.

Matt: Yeah.

Another debate that I have, With some
folks, particularly Kevin, Kevin Geary,

is like the core, use case for, for
WordPress, and I don't have an answer,

but I think, as you know, and as a
lot of us who have been in the space

for so long, I mean, it started as a
blogging tool And then, you know, Matt

and Automatic sort of picked up this
torch of, democratizing publishing.

And I think that was the thing,
the North Star, when, when

WordPress and blogs were cool.

Again, a lot of air
quotes in this episode.

I'm throwing air quotes when
blogs and WordPress were cool.

but I think it is oh, so important
as a, as a, as an open source

tool to have an open source
publishing tool like WordPress.

But I think we're also getting tugged
in another direction where it's

like, Oh, but we want this great
website builder tool too, right?

And I don't see those as equal, I
don't see that as the same path, right?

I, I don't know how WordPress can be
the best publishing tool, bloggers.

Editors, collaborators, but also
the best website building tool.

I mean, I get it.

I get why.

I just don't know from like
a product person perspective

like how both of those meet.

your thoughts on WordPress
as like pure publishing tool,

pure website building tool.

How do these two merge or is it not as
complicated as I'm thinking it to be?

Steve: Hmm.

I, I wonder if you take
a step back seven years.

I mean, how old is Gutenberg now?

Gutenberg

Matt: think it's eight.

I think it's eight.

Steve: Okay.

I seem to remember at that time, the
original, the time the, the project

was launched, we were looking at
Weebly and Wix and Squarespace and all

their, their cool drag and drop tools.

I mean, It is useful for, for
WordPress to have those in the core.

I, the, the, what's the word?

steel man.

I think the,

Matt: Mm.

Steve: the, like taking the opposite
side seriously is that, the downside

to taking the Gutenberg approaches.

There's only so many volunteer hours,
so many, contributor hours in the

day that you can't do everything in
the core with a team of volunteers

plus a few paid helpers as well.

So perhaps this was too much of a
big project to take on to, to try

and also, to try and compete with
Weebly's and the Squarespace's of

the world with a volunteer team.

it Part of being an open source probably
is realizing you have some limitations.

You're not,

Matt: Yeah.

Steve: like, how many billions of
dollars are companies like Meta

throwing at the problem of AI?

whole rooms full of people making half
a million or a million dollars a year.

so yeah, maybe the Steelman, way.

To, to think about the people that
don't like Gutenberg or think it

was the wrong choice is should we be
trying to make the best publishing tool

and the best website building tool?

Some of that should probably be left
to third parties to, to the Elementors

and the Beaver Builders of the world.

Yes,

Matt: Yeah.

Yeah, I, I, I tend to agree.

It's one of the great
things about open source.

That's why I don't want to see it.

You know, that's why it's, again,
this is a challenging time.

you know, I feel like everything.

I'm normally half glass full kind of guy
with tech most of the time, but I feel

like everything hangs in the balance
quite literally with WordPress, like as

we wait for this, you know, lawsuit suits
to happen with WP Engine and automatic

and, what does that spell like, you
know, we were really exposed to, at

least I was, I don't know about everybody
else in the room, but I was really

exposed to the truth behind wordpress.

org.

And that makes me, yeah.

Like pause for a moment as like
one of the biggest distribution

point for free plugins.

what happens to that after this?

And, you know, it's, it's really
hard, for me to, you know, just.

I can understand everyone's frustrations.

I'm frustrated, but also at the
same time, it's like, man, look what

we've done in 20 years, even though
if we weren't fully privy to all the

details, it's like, how do you, how
do we positively keep this again?

I go back to like, I can't choose.

I don't know how to choose sides.

Don't want to choose sides.

I just want to positively
move WordPress forward.

but you know, we're just in this moment
where I don't know how that's technically

possible now that we've kind of learned.

org, structure, I guess,
for lack of a better phrase.

it's a bit challenging, in my opinion.

Yeah.

Steve: it's a big moment for WordPress.

I'm old enough to have lived through.

A few of these for different projects.

I think maybe, not an exact, comparison,
but we were very heavily involved

in Drupal when it went from, Drupal
7 to Drupal 8 and they basically

rewrote the thing top to bottom.

And it really.

Really, really blew up in a
big way for the community.

That was the point where we left.

and I saw some research the other
day that when it came to sites on

Drupal seven, more of them ended up on
WordPress than ended up on Drupal eight.

Matt: Yeah.

Steve: Like literally an enormous
chunk of the user base left

and went, like a real kind of.

Stop dead, think hard about things
like this is breaking the community

almost to a point where things are
not going to be the same afterwards.

And you look back now
and Drupal's doing okay.

They, they weren't quite
the same afterwards.

There was a shift and, I think a few
months after, I'm trying to think

of the timeline, but Acquia ended
up selling to private equity for a

billion dollars, you know, like huge
money entered the ecosystem as well.

And things were different for sure.

There was a kind of a hard nosed
realism, like we're doing this under

the eye of a private equity company.

but They've kept going.

A lot of the original people that believed
heavily in open source are still there

in the Drupal community, still going.

there's still a, a community spirit.

There's still a lot of open
source software being made.

the, the people that went
through it and ended up a little.

A little greyer, maybe
not quite as idealistic.

and so word, probably the question
then is where is WordPress going

to be in three, four years?

Are we all going to be perhaps still
here, but a little more cynical?

Matt: Yeah, I, I, I, probably, probably.

Yeah, I mean, I, I think, you know,
we just want to, you know, and I,

I think now as the dust settles,
it's like, just tell us the rules.

In fact, never had problems with,
with the rules before, even though

they were very kind of loose.

and I had even, you know, vocally said
over the years like, Hey, turn WordPress.

org into a traditional marketplace.

I mean, I think now we know why he
couldn't, you know, but, You know,

put it, traditional marketplace,
tax us, like, just give us the

lane we need to operate in.

There's nothing wrong with
Automatic and Matt profiting,

profiting off of this stuff.

it's just, you know, it's just very
unclear and you, this is like, year

after year, you just don't know
where, where you lie on this stuff.

But, anyway, I don't want to
end it on a negative note,

Steve: Glass half full.

It could, I mean, you think, you're
saying, you're thinking it could be

more like, Shopify, like an open source
version of Shopify, like, hey, this is

owned by a commercial company at the top.

Matt: yeah,

Steve: Shopify, this is our
brand, we own the brand, no one,

no one ever argues about the
trademark for Shopify, for example.

There's a marketplace, we take a cut,
we run the thing, but in WordPress's

case, the difference is the code is all
open source, and, I mean, that's kind

of a little bit how it is in Drupal.

That there is a billion dollar behemoth
sitting at the top of the ecosystem.

from day one, Dreece
has always been clear.

We own this.

Drupal is my baby.

I sit on the Drupal Foundation.

so clarity, I guess, is the thing
you're looking for most, most of all.

Matt: yeah, yeah, that, that,
I mean, that, that clarity.

And, again, this is why I'm a proponent
for the, for the open source side of it

and, and, and why I want folks to not just
like Nick, like negatively, talk about it.

Because, yeah, you know, I, no issue
like, and I've been saying this,

on some other, podcasts as well as
like make WordPress, if WordPress.

com has the better WordPress, fine.

Fine make make your better version
of WordPress over there And then the

ecosystem will make their better version
of WordPress through like your tools with

published press somebody might be using
beaver builder That's their better version

and let the ecosystem survive and you
know I'm not super doomsday where I think

all of a sudden WordPress won't be GPL
anymore we won't have that stuff anymore

or that ability but You know certainly
want to encourage You know, WordPress,

excuse me, automatic to survive and be
profitable and do all the things and

maybe that'll make a happier mullinwag.

And then the rest of us can move on with
our lives and, you know, there it is.

you'll see less word camps, you might
see less community stuff because

now people form the pockets of
things, but it's already happening.

So let's just, let's just get there.

That's it.

Steve: I mean, how, how many
successful open source projects

are there that don't have a, a big
corporate behemoth leading the way?

I mean, a lot of the JavaScript
libraries are involved with

companies like, like Google.

it could be a fairly essential
part of a successful open source

project is having an unashamedly
money making part of things.

Um, but, yeah, a key portion of that
is having very clear legal guidelines.

very clear commercial
guidelines around it.

And, yeah, you're right.

Probably.

we don't know in the end whether the glass
is going to be half full or half empty,

Matt: Sure.

Steve: look forward two, three years, we
could still be stuck in sort of little.

Twitter spats or Reddit thread arguments
with, with Matt throwing things out,

or there could be an adult in the
room, hopefully Matt himself, to come

along and say, we're going to run our
community along X, Y, and Z lines.

And, at the end of the day,
I, I'm one of the co founders.

I run the, the corporate behemoth.

You follow X, Y, and Z and
you like it or lump it.

Matt: Yeah.

That's Steve Burge.

That's steve at steveburge.

com.

Check out PublishPress.

check out all of the tools that Steve has.

Folks, definitely give Steve a follow.

Check out his tools, especially
if you're a publisher or you

care about the publishing that
you're doing with WordPress.

Steve, where else do you want
folks to go to say thanks?

Steve: Oh, that's it.

head over to, to PublishPress,
and keep up the great work, Matt.

I've, been following your podcasts
and your Slack channel for years.

one good place to find me would be
in the WP Minute Slack, where we hang

out and talk WordPress every day.

Matt: Yeah.

Yeah.

That's awesome stuff.

Thanks, Steve.

Thanks for hanging out today.

Steve: Cheers, Matt.