Delivered by Sé Reed, CEO of The WP Community Collective
Alt Ctrl Org, Basel, Switzerland — June 6, 2025
WordPress was not built by one person.
No true open source project ever is.
Sure, one person can write a piece of software, slap a license on it and call it open source. But the magic of open source isn’t the license. An open source license only opens the door.
The magic of open source happens the moment another person walks through that door and engages with that software.
The magic is in a stranger submitting a pull request that fixes a bug. In a new use case implemented by someone on the other side of the world. In the development of plugins and products that expand the ecosystem.
It is collaboration that brings open source to life.
When we forget that, when we allow a single narrative, a single company, or a single person, to dominate, something vital gets lost.
We start to believe that community is unnecessary. That collaboration is less efficient than centralization.
I’ve heard that argument a lot. “Rule by committee is so inefficient.” “Working in the open is hard.”
Of course it is.
It is always harder to work with others. It is easy to do something by ourselves, in our own way. We don’t have to change or be challenged. But it is in that challenge that we find greater possibilities that we may never have imagined on our own.
In tech, we hear a lot about the “singular visionary leader”. But I don’t believe in that myth.
Sure, one person can have a unique vision. But when has one person ever truly done anything on their own? Do the visionary leaders you know build their own computer chips? Do they lay the fiber that brings them the internet?
No. They rely on infrastructure. They rely on other people. Just like the rest of us.
Collaboration is the root of innovation. It is how we have survived and evolved as a species. It is a fundamental part of being human and the only way we have gotten to where we are.
Collaboration is also a fundamental part of WordPress. It has been since before WordPress was WordPress.
And despite attempts to rewrite history or downplay the significance of more than twenty years of volunteer labor, WordPress is still a shining example of what long-term collaboration can create.
Because the truth is: WordPress exists as it does today because thousands of people, across hundreds of countries, decided to collaborate. And to keep collaborating. Writing code. And documentation. And translations. Leading teams. Hosting meetups. Starting companies. Holding doors open.
Sharing. Helping.
There’s a quote that resurfaces during difficult times, a line from Mr. Rogers, who is basically the American patron saint of kindness. He said:
“Look for the helpers.”
That is the spirit that lives in WordPress. WordPress is a community full of helpers. That’s part of what makes it special. We want to work together. We want to build something better than we could build by ourselves. We see it, we recognize it, we feel it. And we want to help!
WordPress has an ethos. And no, it isn’t “Democratize Publishing”. The ethos of WordPress, the feeling we get from our community, is something different.
It is our collective understanding that we are building this together. That is what makes WordPress feel like home to so many of us.
It is the interaction, the sharing, the connection. The people. The WordPress community is not ornamental or extra. It is foundational. It is the reason we are all here.
Without this web of human collaboration, there is no “global WordPress ecosystem”. Without collaboration, there wouldn’t even be something called “WordPress” at all, because not only was it born from and as a collaborative project, the very name “WordPress” was conceived by a member of the burgeoning community.
But it is precisely this ethos of collaboration that is currently being devalued.
Right now, we are at a crucial crossroads.
And no, it is not a fork in the road. A fork is a choice between two divergent paths. A crossroad is an opportunity to choose an entirely new direction. To do things differently.
Right now, we have the opportunity to decide what kind of community we are and what kind of community we want to be.
Do we want to be the collaborative community that we all thought we were for the last two decades, working together for the common good? Or do we want to be an authoritative community, where ideas can only be blessed from on high, and any dissent is dismissed?
Look, collaboration isn’t easy. Misunderstandings happen. Things can be lost in translation even when we are speaking the same language. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Sometimes we need to hash things out so we can get to a greater understanding.
Sometimes we need to be challenged to get out of our own heads.
Sometimes we need to speak up for others, and sometimes we need to stand up for ourselves.
And let me tell you from my own personal experience, that isn’t always comfortable, let alone fun.
It hasn’t been fun to have my character disparaged on a global scale. It’s not fun to miss Contributor Day because Project Leadership refuses to acknowledge my code of conduct report.
None of this is comfortable for me. I do not enjoy being the one continually bringing up issues. I don’t seek conflict, despite what you may have heard.
But I also will not run away from it.
Because “assuming positive intent” should not be used as a shield for accountability. And silence is not the same thing as harmony.
If we want WordPress to survive this moment, we need collaboration more than ever.
Because this moment is not just about how the WordPress community works. As we face this existential crossroads in WordPress, we’re also living through a historic industry shift that affects all of humanity.
AI has entered the chat. Quite literally, in the form of endless chat bots. But also figuratively, in that WordPress now has an AI team Slack channel.
Because of AI, some might believe, or some might have us believe, that the human part of open source doesn’t matter anymore. That community is outdated and unnecessary. That what we’ve built together for more than two decades can now be streamlined and made more efficient, more convenient, without us.
I want to be clear: I’m into AI. I use it daily, and I’m fascinated by its possibilities. But here’s the thing: AI can generate code. It cannot generate community. It can reflect, but it cannot create.
AI only has the information we have given it, and while people are absolutely feeding their AIs plenty of wild ideas, we can’t even explain to ourselves half of what our brains experience, let alone condense it into an effective chat prompt.
AI can never be human. But we don’t need it to be human! We are the humans.
And whether it’s with other humans, like every movement or community in history, or with machines in our uncharted future, when humans collaborate, awesome things happen.
So what does any of this mean? Like, okay, Sé, this sounds nice, but what does it mean? What are we supposed to do with these feelings?
Well, I’ll tell you what I think we should do.
First, we must discard the pretense that this community belongs to one person. Our contributions (your contributions!) are the true foundation of WordPress.
Then, we reclaim our community. We keep showing up. We keep speaking up. We don’t leave people behind. We don’t accept two sets of rules.
We refuse to be used. And we refuse to be erased.
We care enough to not leave.
We acknowledge that collaboration is what has brought us this far, and we recognize that it is what will take us into the future.
We reclaim collaboration as the core of open source and we infuse it into this project at every possible opportunity.
Then, together, we demand more. We demand accountability. We demand transparency.
The heart of open source is collaboration. And the heart of WordPress is our community. It is a rare and beautiful and HUMAN thing.
This community is worth protecting. It is worth staying for. It is worth fighting for. Because this is OUR community.
WordPress belongs to all of us.