Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg on 'Leave of Absence': What This Could Mean for WordPress

Wait, What Happened? #

If you’re deep into the self-hosting or open-source ecosystem, chances are you’ve heard the bombshell news: Automattic CEO (and WordPress co-creator) Matt Mullenweg has been placed on a “leave of absence” by the company’s board. First reported by a random comment thread on r/selfhosted, it didn’t take long for the news to blow up. Half the subreddit applauded the move; the other half were dunking on Wordpress’s bloated reputation. Classic.

Whatever your feelings about WordPress, this is huge. Mullenweg is basically the guy when it comes to WordPress’s direction. Call it good timing or bad, but this is especially spicy given that WordPress 6.5 just launched a few weeks ago.

A Quick WordPress State of the Union #

WordPress is by far the most popular CMS on the planet, running over 40% of all websites. There’s no arguing its dominance. But a lot of us in the self-hosting crowd have a love-hate relationship with it. On the one hand, it’s flexible, stupidly well-documented, and you can get it running on a $5 DigitalOcean droplet in 15 minutes.

On the other hand? It’s like the Swiss Army knife of CMSes, but someone crammed too many attachments on this thing, and now it barely fits in your pocket. It suffers from plugin bloat, constant plugin vulnerabilities, and performance issues if you’re not careful (or don’t know how to tweak caching). This is why so many people jump ship to shiner, lighter tools like Ghost or Hugo when they can afford to.

Mullenweg has been steering this tugboat since forever, and let’s be real, he’s been polarizing. Major features like Gutenberg (the block editor) have split the community. Half the devs adore it, half won’t shut up about how they’re sticking to the Classic Editor plugin forever. Toss that into the mix, and his stepping away leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Why Now? #

Here’s where the speculation gets juicy. The official statement (if you can even call it that) gives no reason for Mullenweg’s absence, so… everyone’s guessing. Maybe it’s burnout—dude has been in the CEO seat at Automattic since its founding in 2005. Maybe it’s boardroom drama. Some folks on the subreddit floated the idea this could be tied to strategic changes they want that don’t align with Mullenweg’s vision—things like doubling down on WordPress.com’s managed hosting instead of keeping the software fully open-source.

Another theory I saw: Automattic’s financials might not be as rosy as they appear. They’ve been acquiring companies left and right—Tumblr in 2019, Day One, then Pocket Casts—but what happens when the VC money dries up? Some suspect investors want WordPress to pivot into a full-on SaaS product (which would enrage the open-source crowd) just to make things more predictable.

What Happens to Self-Hosters? #

Let’s talk about who this impacts most: us, the DIY nerds running WordPress on VPS sponsors like Hetzner. Spoiler: you should be fine—for now. WordPress is GPL, and the self-hosted project technically exists independent of Automattic. In practice though? If Automattic pivoted hard towards proprietary features for hosted WordPress.com (paid tiers, exclusive themes, or whatever), the massive weight of that decision eventually swings back to the open-source side. That’s the fear.

Now, is this sky-falling territory? Not yet. But depending on what the shake-up behind the scenes ends up changing, things could shift in sneaky ways. They’ve already started bundling Jetpack features in a way that nudges users toward Automattic services if you aren’t paying attention.

It’s starting small, but we know how these things stack. Apple didn’t kill Intel Macs all at once; it chipped away. Don’t think giant pivot moves only happen to big SaaS like Notion or Slack.

If You’re Eyeing Alternatives… #

If you’re reading this and thinking, “Hell no, I want out of this ecosystem,” there are legit options. Ghost is the darling of modern blogging. It’s fast, strictly focused on content, and the admin UI is actually pleasant to use. The drawback? Hosting it yourself hits harder on RAM than WordPress, so a $5 VPS is probably out.

Hugo is excellent for quick, static sites—I host this blog on Hugo. Zero bloat, blazingly fast (we’re talking sub-100ms page loads on crap shared hosting). But if your site is highly interactive (comments, e-commerce, dynamic forms), you’re gonna have a bad time without a lot of bells and whistles.

Then there’s always the nuclear option: don’t self-host at all and just throw your site on Squarespace. Yeah, it’s embarrassing, but sometimes the best tools come with zero dev hours spent.

FAQ #

Does this affect WordPress 6.x releases? #

No direct info suggests this impacts the immediate roadmap. WordPress is a community-driven project, but Automattic’s influence is major. Watch for changes in how updates are framed in the next 6-12 months.

Will this make WordPress.com less open-source friendly? #

It’s unclear, but there’s reason to be cautious. If Automattic starts prioritizing revenue-focused initiatives, it could bleed into the broader WordPress ecosystem.

Should I switch from WordPress now? #

Not unless you already hate it. Self-hosted WordPress is still the most flexible CMS for most people. But if you’ve been tempted by static sites or leaner blogging setups, now’s a good time to experiment.