Thank You, Josepha: WordPress Executive Director Resigns

Josepha Haden Chomphosy has stepped down from Automattic, where she served as the Executive Director of the WordPress project. She was also leading Automattic’s open-source division, championing the efforts of developers, designers, community builders, and WordPress advocates. She has now updated her title in the WordPress Slack to “Community Steward.” Like Josepha, 159 employees left Automattic after accepting the Alignment …

New Social Web Foundation Launched with Automattic’s Support  

The Social Web Foundation was officially launched on September 24, 2024, with a mission to foster a “growing, healthy, financially viable, and multi-polar Fediverse.” This non-profit organization is spearheaded by Evan Prodromou (Research Director), Mallory Knodel (Executive Director), and Tom Coates (Product Director) and is dedicated to uniting social networks through the open standard protocol, ActivityPub. The Fediverse is a …

WordPress Enforces Plugin Check and 2FA for New Plugin Submissions

Security Review Lead Chris Christoff has announced two new changes for the WordPress Plugin Directory, effective from October 1, 2024. These changes aim to enhance plugin directory security and promote best practices among plugin developers. Mandatory Two-Factor Authentication As of October 1, 2024, all plugin owners and committers must enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) to submit new plugins to the WordPress …

Automattic Publishes WP Engine Term Sheet Amidst Controversy

As the Automattic-WP Engine controversy continues, Automattic published the term sheet delivered to WP Engine on September 20, 2024. “In the interest of transparency, we’ve published the term sheet we offered to @LeeEWittlinger and @heatherjbrunner, it’s a simple one-pager.”, tweeted Matt Mullenweg. The announcement post reveals that initial discussions between Automattic and WP Engine began in February 2023, led by Matt …