Matt reached out to me on Monday night. I was surprised to hear from him. While I will leave what he said private, I will share the gist of what I said: I invited him to have a conversation about shared values and our visions of the future of WordPress. I told him that I would rearrange my schedule to make it happen. And I provided him my email address.
I never got a response. I figured that he was probably busy with his legal filings (due yesterday) and the TechCrunch interview. Such is the life of a busy CEO. I was willing to work around his schedule, and meet with him whenever he had time. I spoke with several members of my community, AspirePress, as well as others I trust and shared with them my plan for responding. And I solicited their feedback on what we should discuss.
Perhaps I am hopelessly naïve. I didn’t think that Matt and I could sit down and in one call fix everything that’s happened in the WordPress community. In fact, with the AspirePress community being only about a thousand people (versus 43.5% of the internet), I was mostly hopeful that he would hear us, and we could hear him. An optimistic view might have seen him agree, even begrudgingly, to leave our work alone and let the “market” decide.