According to TechCrunch, there’s rumors that the Automattic founders will make a bunch of money from the investors in the company, in response to the turned down $200m buyout offer. Good for Matt & Co. of course, I won’t begrudge anyone making money out of good products such as WordPress.com and Akismet.
However, Automattic also controls the opensource self-hosted version of WordPress, and that raises some questions:
- Are you comfortable with a company being the driving force behind the opensource platform you’re committed to?
- What would happen to WordPress if someone bought Automattic?
- Are all decisions being made for opensource WordPress with it’s best at heart, or does the company’s best come first?
Now, don’t get me wrong here, I’m a big WordPress fan, and Automattic have so far not done anything to piss me off. In fact, I think they’re doing a pretty good job, despite the whole sponsor links debacle, and the unfriendly designer credits talked about in the WordPress.com Theme Marketplace idea. And Akismet is great, free, and everything, so I’m committed to WordPress myself.
However, having a company running an opensource platform is scary stuff. How do you feel about this?