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Automattic Cuts Weekly Contributor Hours to WordPress.org by 99% – Community Members Fear ‘Beginning of the End’

You’ve undoubtedly heard the news by now. But just in case you haven’t, the news is BIG. This isn’t just another case of pineapples on pizza ladies and gentlemen. This is a massive shift in how open-source WordPress has functioned for over a decade – ever since the Five for the Future program was introduced. 1

Last week, Mary Hubbard, the new Executive Director of WordPress publicly announced that Automattic would be cutting their weekly contributor hours to WordPress.org from roughly 4,000 to a mere 45. 2

To understand immediately why this is going to have a number of implications across WordPress, it’s because Automattic was the single largest contributor to open-source WordPress.

By far.

I mean really, really far.

For historical context, the second place contributor’s hours have ranged from about 100 to 400, with 200-ish being the most common amount. It also hasn’t been a firmly held position in the way Automattic has held the number one spot. But it doesn’t take a math prodigy to understand that a couple hundred is not anywhere near 4,000.

With the news so fresh, we don’t truly know the fallout yet – or even if there will be one. For all we know, Matt might reverse this decision in a week or two in the same way that he lifted the “holiday break” he announced in late December. 3 I don’t anticipate he will, but these days in WordPress, anything is possible.

Having said that, let’s assume he won’t be changing course for the foreseeable future and discuss four (possible) effects this will have on open-source WordPress.

Four possible implications of Automattic’s reduction to contributor hours

The WordPress community is passionate, vocal, and very active online. So unsurprisingly, there’s already been a lot of chatter about what we can expect in light of Automattic’s announcement. I believe that the following four areas deserve a closer look:

Let’s talk about them.

Loss of critical documentation and knowledge infrastructure

A very recent blog post from a long-term Automattic contributor – Anne McCarthy – gives us both a small and a large window unto the extensive documentation that’s about to vanish from the WordPress development ecosystem. 4

Small in the sense that she is only one contributor of many.

But large in the sense that her specific contributions are rather sizable for being only one person.

Anne has been with Automattic since 2014. As a Core Team member and significant contributor across multiple teams (including Documentation, Testing, and Community), she’s played a crucial role in keeping WordPress development organized and accessible.

And her contributor hours were just cut to zero.

Zilch. Nada. Naah-ting.

In her post, she lists seven areas that will be impacted by the change. The very first one she highlights – “the Source of Truth” – is also the most critical:

Anne McCarthy's description of her "Source of Truth" WordPress documentation.

Next on the list was her contribution toward the release roadmap, which took her years of experience to truly master. As she stated herself:

“When starting from scratch, it’s hard but, when you have a few releases under your belt, you start to see the flow of features punted from X release but slated for Y and can plan accordingly.”

This is the kind of institutional knowledge you can’t simply replace overnight.

As of the time of this writing, she is the only person to write a detailed blog post about her personal contributions and what their loss will mean in practice – which also leaves us wondering – how many other Annes are responsible for similar critical infrastructure documentation that is now just going to go poof into the WordPress abyss?

Security and development oversight concerns

I already mentioned this in the intro, but let’s talk numbers for a second because they are worth mentioning again.

One year ago, Automattic’s contributor hours to Five for the Future looked like this:

Automattic's contribution to Five for the Future on 15 January 2024.

Since I started typing this article earlier this morning, they’ve been in a gradual free fall:

Automattic's contribution to Five for the Future on 14 January 2025 in the morning and again in the afternoon.

As you can see above, they are currently sitting at 44. Since Mary Hubbard’s announcement promised 45, I don’t expect this number to continue dropping. However, as I also stated in the intro – these days in WordPress, anything is possible.

For the record, Mary stated that they’ll focus these hours on “security and critical updates,” but many community members are raising red flags about whether this dramatic reduction is sustainable. As Reddit commenter, @BestScaler, put it:

“[G]oing down from 4,000 hours to 45 hours is going to have a significant impact on the platform. I’m not sure you can compensate for that with the efforts of approved volunteers. My biggest worry is the impact on security.” 5

The concerns aren’t just theoretical. Let’s break down what this oversight actually entails:

  • Security patches and vulnerability assessments
  • Core development review and testing
  • Performance monitoring and optimization
  • Cross-platform compatibility checks
  • Integration testing with major plugins and themes

Not exactly “minor details.”

Some community members see this as potentially terminal for WordPress’s development momentum. One colorfully vulgar commenter captured it with the following statement, which was appreciated by others:

Humorous Reddit comment about how the reduction in Automattic's contributor hours is going to stifle development.

But is this dramatic reduction actually sustainable?

Reddit commenter @letoiv suggested it might be “a bluff, and kind of a weak one,” 6 pointing to a key line in Automattic’s announcement:

“We’re excited to return to active contributions to WordPress core, Gutenberg, Playground, Openverse, and WordPress.org when the legal attacks have stopped.”

Some community members view this as a strategic move that can’t last long-term. The reasoning is simple: Automattic’s business interests are too deeply intertwined with WordPress’s success. Their Gutenberg investment remains incomplete, and they need ongoing development to achieve their business goals. This suggests the reduction might be more of a negotiating tactic than a permanent shift.

On the other hand, there might be something else happening here… 👀

Potential WordPress.com/WordPress.org split

For anyone new to WordPress – which is probably not most of you reading this – but for newbies, the whole WordPress.com vs WordPress.org relationship can be pretty confusing. They’re two entirely different entities that happen to share a name, which is already unusual in the tech world. But this latest development suggests their paths might diverge even further.

Several Reddit commenters have identified what could be the real strategy behind this contribution reduction. As @ButWhatIfItsNotTrue explained:

“They can just stop open sourcing their work or just have it on .com which is probably going to happen. They don’t need to contribute to .org. They have the trademark for commercial purposes so they can have a better forked product on .com and still call it WordPress.” 7

Think Android vs Google’s Android, but for content management systems. While Automattic’s announcement specifically mentioned making “WordPress.com much closer to a core WordPress experience,” the reality might be quite the opposite – creating a premium WordPress experience that leaves the open source version behind.

Can they really do that though?

If you’re wondering whether it’s legally possible for Automattic to do the above – that’s a fair question.

And Redditor @tedivm answered it:

“WordPress doesn’t have a Contributors License Agreement. People who contribute to it go so under the GPL. Automattic can not legally change that license or close the source. At most they can keep their new contributions private for themselves.”

In short, while Automattic can’t actually close up existing WordPress code (because it’s GPL licensed), they can keep new features for themselves.

If they were to take this route, the implications could reshape the entire WordPress ecosystem:

  • WordPress.org could essentially enter maintenance mode (if not entirely, then at least significantly)
  • New features might debut on WordPress.com first (or exclusively)
  • The ecosystem could heavily split between commercial and community versions
  • Third-party hosts might need to “pay to play” to access premium features

However, some community members see this as a dangerous gamble. One particularly insightful comment by @gschoppe warned:

Reddit comment explaining that WordPress.com's success is only possible because of WordPress.org.

Community governance challenges

This widening gap between WordPress.com and WordPress.org also feeds into a larger conversation about WordPress’s governance structure – a debate that began simmering shortly after the legal battle between Automattic and WP Engine started. 8 9 Recent events, including the removal of prominent community members from WordPress.org, 10 have only intensified these concerns about the project’s leadership and future direction.

The WordPress Foundation question

Let’s address the big X factor: while WordPress is technically an open-source project, the website, repositories, and trademark are all controlled by a very small group of people. This arrangement worked reasonably well when Automattic was contributing thousands of hours weekly to the project. But now it’s a different story and the inherent conflict in this setup has become increasingly apparent.

Although community members have called for releasing control of The Foundation and plugin repository to the broader WordPress community – with several prominent contributors offering to help – the likelihood of such a transition remains low. The current leadership structure shows no signs of changing, despite growing pressure for more distributed governance.

Or to put it more bluntly: Matt’s not going to relinquish the throne.

The intersection has widened

The reduction in Automattic’s contributor hours is forcing the WordPress community to confront some uncomfortable questions about project governance. With the long-time steward stepping back but maintaining control of key infrastructure, where does that leave the broader WordPress ecosystem? 🤔

The reality is that WordPress’s governance challenges aren’t new – but Automattic’s dramatic reduction in contributor hours has pushed them even more to the forefront than all of the preceding #wpdrama. Some developers see this as a potential breaking point, while others are already discussing the possibility of a community-driven successor to WordPress (though the trademark complications make this easier said than done).

However, it’s worth noting that this situation is still evolving. While the community’s concerns are valid, we’re already seeing encouraging signs of other companies stepping up their contributions.

A look at current Five for the Future pledges shows several companies increasing their weekly hours into the 200+ range – from rtCamp’s 454 hours to Multidots’ 291 hours. While this may not immediately replace Automattic’s 4,000 hours, it suggests a potential shift toward more distributed contribution model rather than over-reliance on a single company.

This collective response might actually lead to a healthier WordPress ecosystem in the long run – one where development and governance responsibilities are shared more evenly across the community. Only time will tell, but one thing’s certain: more uncertainty lies ahead (pun intended).

How do you think all this will play out? Did I miss anything with the implications I mentioned? Let me know in the comments and let’s talk about it.

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References
  1. https://ma.tt/2014/09/five-for-the-future/ ↩︎
  2. https://automattic.com/2025/01/09/aligning-automattics-sponsored-contributions-to-wordpress/ ↩︎
  3. https://wordpress.org/news/2024/12/holiday-break/ ↩︎
  4. https://nomad.blog/2025/01/14/known-gaps-to-fill-after-changes-to-my-wordpress-contribution-hours/ ↩︎
  5. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1hxnh73/comment/m6cx3ig/ ↩︎
  6. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1hxnh73/comment/m6d3leh/ ↩︎
  7. https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1hxnh73/comment/m6dwwuo/ ↩︎
  8. https://joost.blog/wordpress-leadership/ ↩︎
  9. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/after-wordpress-morten-rand-hendriksen-mkvgc ↩︎
  10. https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/ ↩︎
Yay! 🎉 You made it to the end of the article!
Martin Dubovic
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Knut
January 21, 2025 1:38 am

This sounds a lot like the beginning of the SCO – Linux battle. And where is SCO now? The open source Linux came out on the top and SCO disappeared into obscurity.

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