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Control of Automattic's Slack workspace outlasted the resolution naming an interim CEO
A board resolution made Automattic's CFO interim chief executive on Wednesday. A spokesperson's sentence to TechCrunch on Saturday put Matt Mullenweg back in the title, and Automattic has not described what authority Mark Davies retains.
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What happened
- Automattic said on September 9th that CFO Mark Davies would lead the company as interim chief executive with the board's full confidence, and that founder Matt Mullenweg was going on paid leave immediately.
- TechCrunch reported that Mullenweg opposed the resolution and received it less than an hour before the meeting, without the extra time he had asked for to arrange independent legal review.
- By Friday he had told employees that the board was back in agreement and that he controlled Automattic again, according to messages reported by TechCrunch.
- An Automattic spokesperson then told TechCrunch that Mullenweg is chairman and CEO with the full support of the board. No public board statement documents a vote reinstating him.
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Why it matters
- constraint A partner that needs an authorised signature from Automattic has to decide for itself which statement is current, because the competing messages left employees, developers and commercial partners to infer how much authority each side kept.
- precedent The week suggests that at Automattic the operative lever is administrative control of the company's chat workspace, so any future board action against the founder would need the systems secured before the vote.
- exposure Contributors to the WordPress open-source project are exposed to the outcome of a corporate board dispute they have no vote in, since the project's central authority and Automattic's chair are the same person.
- contradiction The same board is reported as expressing full confidence in Davies on Wednesday and full support for Mullenweg on Saturday, so a reader choosing one of those statements as authoritative is guessing.
Administrative access changed hands first. TechCrunch reported that Mullenweg removed other administrators from Automattic's Slack workspace, and that Davies's account had been deactivated [7]. Mezha.net reported, citing sources, that the plan to hand interim leadership to Davies could not be carried out [14].
Davies's documented run lasted two days, from the September 9th confirmation of his appointment to Mullenweg's September 11th claim of reinstatement [24]. A board resolution appoints an officer and leaves a record a counterparty can ask to see; the Saturday title came from a spokesperson [8]. Automattic has not said why the leave was ordered, what changed between Wednesday and Saturday, or how ownership and voting are arranged [3][10][22].
Mullenweg has treated the episode as recurring. "This was likely the fifth time I've faced a 'coup.'" he said [12]. According to mezha.net, he called himself a "pirate" in a company message and asked colleagues to step in if the situation had turned into a personnel problem [13]. He promised to publish an explanation of his return and has not published a detailed one, mezha.net reported [15].
Anyone building on the platform needs to know whose approval binds the company. Automattic is the parent company of WordPress.com [26], and Mullenweg founded it in 2005 to build commercial services around open-source publishing, starting with products including WordPress.com and Akismet [18]. He co-created the WordPress software with Mike Little in 2003, when he was 19 [18]. He chairs Automattic's board, leads the company, and remains a central authority in the separate WordPress open-source project [19].
WordPress.org Executive Director Mary Hubbard told the community in a Slack message reported by TechCrunch that Mullenweg remained leader of the WordPress project and that WordPress.org's work would continue as planned [20]. I found no reporting of any effect on the project [21].
Mezha.net reported that accounts of a resignation by director Toni Schneider are unconfirmed, and that sources expect the composition of Automattic's board to change further, with no further explanation from the company [16][17]. The board itself may not be settled. Schneider was one of Automattic's first chief executives and now leads Bluesky, and he did not respond to requests for comment [16].
What to watch
- A board statement or minuted resolution documenting a vote on Mullenweg's status would replace a spokesperson's title with a record.
- Whether Davies remains Automattic's CFO, and whether his access to the company's systems is restored.
- Confirmation or denial of Toni Schneider's board status, and any further change to the board's composition.