Forking WordPress is a waste of time – I already tried

It's easy to hit a Fork button on GitHub. But it won't take long to find out that it doesn't make sense unless you have enough money, enough developers to support your cause and a powerful brand that people follow and trust.

I tried to fork WP around a year ago, when no one cared, and my fork was even mentioned in WP Tavern:

https://preview.redd.it/u5f2zqd3fbvd1.png?width=1258&format=png&auto=webp&s=dac07482e45f35d4450c643581af87c80386b66f

After participating in ClassicPress for a while, I started my own fork and worked hard on it. And this is what I concluded:

It does not make sense to walk away from the WordPress community, and create something different while still wanting to call it WhateverPressever.

It will confuse people who want their sites to be compatible with your new fork because, at the end of the day you are a "new, fresh, clean, secure, unbloated and amazing version of WordPress". And if you want to break compatibility, then what's the point of your fork at all, if you can go and use the battle tested and amazing Craft CMS instead?

WordPress already has a name and a community, and it already works astonishingly well. The only real problem here is the centralised aspect of the plugin/theme directory, which causes issues.

But, for everything else, WordPress is still WordPress, unbroken. And it has a great long way to go.

If anything makes sense to fork, it is the plugins and themes directory. Maybe the current times can also inspire some changes in the decision making and democratics of the community.

But, dividing forces into a thousand tiny replicas that will vanish in a few months is in my opinion not the way to go, and I wanted to share this opinion with the community.

5 Comments
  1. You’ve to admit thou, YOUR work is what ClassicPress used to re-build!

    While I agree you better spend your time on NEW stuff or just AROUND the old stuff, your work has not been for nothing. It seeded a whole 2 years of development in cp, just that almost no one knows that.

    As you mention forking the .org repo. You should check out AspirePress. They’re doing something around that thought.

  2. People bashing you without realizing your bigger points. Most non tech users don’t care what WP founder is doing as long as it works. Even programmers who care enough to switch to a fork are a minority.

    Forks can work though. But it takes years before they become viable. If it develops at a faster pace, and becomes a much better option, people will have a reason to switch. Eg, neovim. Forks with non-asshole leadership as a sole differentiator will fail.

  3. For what it’s worth, “WhateverPresser” just jumped to the top of the list of my favorite fork names.

  4. I’ve said basically the same thing and concur:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/s/J2JFgFAYMX

    The issue is the .org chokepoint. Matt is using it to hold the community hostage. He *knows* this is the only thing allowing him to maintain control over the WordPress project, and preventing anyone from successfully forking the project. It’s why he *personally* owns .org. Until we can decentralize the architecture around plug-in/theme distribution and updates, removing Matt’s stranglehold, any attempts at forking will create a splintered ecosystem at best.

 

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