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by photomatt 616 days ago
I'm very excited to have Mary on board. :)
3 comments

Can you clarify if "Executive Director of WordPress.org" is the same job as "Executive Director of the WordPress Foundation"?

I know you personally own wordpress.org and not the foundation (as many people suspected) so this is unclear.

Executive Director of WordPress.org is simply a job title at Automattic. Josepha found out about the WP Engine ban from wordpress.org in real time along with the rest of the community.
There is a wordpressfoundation<dot>org, so I doubt it. In my opinion <dot>org is software repo/wp-inc HQ.. and <dot>com is commercial and hosting enterprise. But of course, let's hear from the horse's mouth himself!! :-P
Totally different. The Foundation has no employees, only volunteers and three board members. (I'm one of them.)
What legal entity is WordPress.org insured under, and who cuts the checks?
Wordpress.org isn't a legal entity. It's simply a domain owned by Matt. It seems Matt has a license to use the Wordpress trademarks.

The Wordpress Foundation is a non-profit legal entity with a tiny budget. It appears the only thing it does is serve as a holding entity for the trademarks and the for-profit company than operates the WordCamp conferences.

I suspect that Automattic is the one who foots the bill for the infrastructure behind Wordpress.org, but that's not clear.

Matt talks about transparency, but how everything operates is a muddled mess.

> Wordpress.org isn't a legal entity. It's simply a domain owned by Matt.

Automattic's website (https://automattic.com/2024/10/02/wordpress-trademarks-a-leg...) says otherwise:

> The Foundation also licensed the name WordPress to the non-profit WordPress.org, which runs a website that facilitates access to WordPress-related software.

The article has been updated.

> The Foundation also licensed the name to the website WordPress.org, which facilitates widespread access to WordPress-related software at no charge.

This is straight from Matt, himself:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41782365

I’d love to see something on the foundation website which explains this.

Thanks for your reply.

Indeed, a blog post with more detail is forthcoming.
Can you clarify when you're going to cease your public tantrums and your erratic idiotic behavior that is causing problems for Wordpress users worldwide?
Can you clarify if this is a 1:1 backfill for Josepha's role or if her scope will be different?
The scope will be significantly broader as Mary brings a lot of talents to the ecosystem.