Matt Mullenweg (WordPress): “As we adopt proprietary technology, we become less free”.

The State of the Word 2023, WordPress’ annual event, was held for the first time outside the United States, crossing the pond to Palacio Neptuno in Madrid, Spain. There, Matt Mullenweg, founder of the platform, reviewed the evolution of the platform over the years, as well as revealed the challenges and plans for the future.

Before the talk, we had the opportunity to speak with Mullenweg, who told us a bit more about WordPress, and gave us his perspective on the world and generative AI.

20 years ago the first version of WordPress was born. We are talking about a time before Facebook and YouTube, when mobile connectivity was scarce and eCommerce almost non-existent. How do you remember that time? What was Matt Mullenweg like then?

I was only 19 years old. I used to play jazz on my saxophone and spent much of my day playing music. I was making money playing saxophone and building websites for people, who were often other musicians. The cool thing was that I could see how the software was used, how people interacted with it-especially non-technical people-and it became real time.

At that time there was no social networking and people interacted primarily through blogs. WordPress became a space that people felt like they owned and not just a generic profile page.

Also, these were the early days of open source for consumers, and it is key that WordPress started out that way, because that means it belongs to everyone.

What do you think has been the most important moment in the evolution of WordPress and how have you experienced it from the inside?

Something very important in our early days was that because we were very small and we developed really good importers for other systems – like Movable Type, which was very big – that forced us to make sure that we could match all the functionality that they offered. So when those competitors made mistakes, people could switch to WordPress easily.

On the other hand, one point that has been crucial to our growth is the continuous change we have maintained over the last 20 years. This has been key, because the only thing constant, especially in technology, is change. I am sure that the things we consider important today will be very different 10 years from now.

You are a very relevant person within the open source and open source field. How do you see the current state of this movement? What do you think are the biggest challenges for the long-term sustainability and survival of open source?

As technology increasingly influences our daily lives, it is very important that we have rights and freedoms attached to that technology. But as we adopt proprietary technology we become less free, because we have no control over what is happening; we are at the mercy of that company and its license, which could arbitrarily change at any time.

In open source it is not about the rights of the developer, it’s about the rights of the user. So when we adopt open source, we become more free. We often trade freedom for convenience and use platforms that are less free because it is more convenient. Even I do it, because I have an iPhone, which is very cool, but to install an app you have to go through Apple’s app store and its approval process.

Since the mobile era was born, pretty much since the launch of the first iPhones, we have traded a lot of freedom for convenience, and now, 15 or 16 years later, we’re realizing that we want freedom back and so there is a push, often led by the European Union, to force these platforms to open up.

What is your vision for the medium-term future of WordPress?

We’re at a very exciting and changing point. Right now, we have Project Gutenberg, where we are taking a lot of the basic ways that WordPress has worked for the last 10 years and changing them. In this regard, what is coming are collaborative features, where two users will be able to edit the same post or page at the same time, and seeing each other’s changes.

“Two users will be able to edit the same post or page at the same time”

WooCommerce is a reference platform to get started in eCommerce. What are your plans in this field? What do you think are the threats compared to the big CMS for eCommerce that exists right now?

Our plan is for WooCommerce to do for eCommerce what WordPress did for content management. The world wants an open source solution in eCommerce, and if we can create a great product, it will be our chance to power 50% or 60% of all the online stores in the world.

Regarding the CMS, we are working mainly with everything digital, where you can cover everything just in software. But a lot of the commerce is physical, and you have to take care of the offline issues, like shipping, taxes, refunds, returns, invoicing, credit card processing, and this makes it really complex and not standalone.

In addition to this, today eCommerce is a very fragmented ecosystem and some parts are always going to be proprietary, such as payment networks, and this makes it much more complex.

I hope that eCommerce will lend itself to an open source approach.

How do you see the state of the evolution of generative AI and how is AI integrated into your plans for WordPress?

For me, this is the most exciting time to be working on WordPress, because it is like the field is wide open. There are so many opportunities with generative AI, and I am very excited that they are making so many capabilities and tools available to everyone. It’s a very democratizing technology.

What I love about generative AI is that it is still us driving. Humans are at the center, but we have this new tool that allows us to produce so much more than before.

I would like to introduce generative AI into as many parts of WordPress as I can. Currently, people can use AI to upload images to the platform, edit their posts, fact check, get headline ideas, and so on. And this is precisely one of the reasons why WordPress is well-suited for the AI revolution, because you still need a place to put everything you create.

We are always looking for ways to make WordPress more accessible, and I am curious if it would be possible for it to have a conversational interface, where you can tell it “I want my site to be blue and have clouds in the background” and the AI can not only do it, but show you how it does it and learn along with it.

In 2020, you published your vision on how to approach remote work with a five-level pyramid. How has remote work evolved since then? What are the main sticking points for its full implementation?

In most of the world today, we have all the conditions necessary to work remotely, such as good internet and good audio and visual devices, to get many of the benefits of being in the same room.

While I think these tools will continue to evolve and I am curious to see what happens with the metaverse or other technologies that allow us to be together, even without physically being in the same place, I have begun to appreciate much more how important it is to meet in person.

I think the virtual and physical worlds are complementary. Before we were very focused on face-to-face, which was not good. Then Covid came along and forced us to be completely remote and it was terrible. Now I feel that there is a balance between face-to-face and working remotely, which will allow us to have much more fulfilling lives and value the time we spend together even more.