Matt Mullenweg on WordPress 6.9 and Beeper: open source as a 'bill of rights for software'

Summary

Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, joined briefly during WordPress's annual State of the Word address to mark the live release of WordPress 6.9 — shipped on stage, with contributions from over 900 developers across multiple countries and companies.

His word of the year was freedom, framed around a specific argument: as technology shapes more of daily life — who we date, what news we see, how we travel — open source licenses function as a bill of rights for software, granting users rights that no single company can revoke.

Beeper

Multenweg describes Beeper not as a walled-garden killer but as a unified inbox, closer in concept to a multi-account email client than a replacement for individual messaging apps. It aggregates WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, LinkedIn messages, and others into one interface, with cross-platform features like scheduled messaging and filters such as "show me everyone I've messaged who hasn't replied."

iMessage is the notable gap. Beeper supports iMessage on macOS via available APIs, but not on Android or mobile, after Apple made clear it opposes that integration. Mullenweg is direct about the asymmetry: reverse-engineering these networks is technically feasible, but picking a commercial fight with a trillion-dollar company isn't a viable strategy. He leaves open the possibility that open source implementations could go further than a commercial product can, and points to the EU's Digital Markets Act as the more plausible forcing mechanism for interoperability. Apple's lock-in logic is straightforward — iMessage drives device stickiness, and device sales are where Apple makes its money — so voluntary interoperability is unlikely unless compelled.

Bot traffic and the open web

Multenweg argues the LLM traffic trend actually favors publishers with owned domains. Bot traffic — both crawling and user-initiated actions through AI assistants — has already surpassed human traffic on WordPress-hosted sites, and he expects that to keep growing. The analogy he uses is Google: a business that linked out to the open web rather than trapping users, and grew because of it. He sees AI chatbots following a similar model, distinct from closed marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy that keep users inside their own systems.

On the commerce side, Automattic is working with OpenAI and others to let WooCommerce products be browsed and purchased directly inside LLM interfaces. WooCommerce already runs on 8.9% of all websites globally, making it the largest open-source e-commerce platform. For merchants, the destination matters less than the sale, which makes in-LLM purchasing a natural extension rather than a threat.