Despite the truth, a lot of people love to conflate Automattic with the WordPress core development team. Helen Hou-Sandí noted that of 35 WordPress core committers, 22 do not work at Automattic. Aaron Jorbin took that number and went further. He made the following observations:
- 31 of 35 committers actually committed something in 2015
- Automattic employees had the highest commit percentage, with 20.4% of all commits
- 10up employees were second with 18.8%
- Scott Taylor alone (who works for the New York Times) was third with 18.7%
- At least 18 different employers were represented, though “many don’t do it on employer time.”
- 13 people had 100+ commits
- Self-employed folks made up 9.7% of all commits
- Agency employees made up for 33.93% of commits
Here’s a pie chart Aaron made:
I really appreciate Aaron sharing these numbers, and Helen bringing up the issue. It’s a slap in the face for anyone to say Automattic and WordPress are the same, especially to those folks most involved with the project like these committers.
As annoying as it is to do all the time, it’s all of our responsibility to squash the falsehood that Automattic and WordPress are the same. If you need one, I made a little helper article a while back that you can send people.
