Lately, there has been a lot of noise and from what I understand, the root cause of the issue is that the WordPress Core Team is underfunded.
I am not picking sides, because just as in life, the truth is always somewhere in the middle.
With that said, I don't mean to pick on companies,
But you have some Monsters in the industry both from plugins and themes that are racking in INDIVIDUALLY in some cases over 100 Million annually. They say the Global WordPress economy is valued at over 650 Billion dollars, if not a lot more by today.
Maybe if everyone pitched in 1-2% of their revenue, maybe we would have a WordPress Core team that is the best and brightest and numbers in the hundreds ???
I mean just look at those numbers, you can't just take in life and not give. That is not how life works, unless you are my ex.
Astra: Over 1 million active installations.
Divi: Over 800,000 purchases (premium).
OceanWP: Over 700,000 active installations.
Avada: Over 800,000 purchases (premium).
GeneratePress: Over 500,000 active installations.
Neve: Over 300,000 active installations.
ELEMENTOR: Over 5 million paid copies
.Beaver Builder: Over 500,000 active installations (with a premium version).
Yoast SEO: Over 5 million active installations.
.
Akismet: Over 5 million active installations.
Wordfence Security: Over 4 million active installations.
All in One SEO Pack: Over 2 million active installations.
WP Super Cache: Over 2 million active installations.
WooCommerce PDF Invoices & Packing Slips: Over 1 million active installations.
UpdraftPlus: Over 3 million active installations.
MonsterInsights: Over 3 million active installations.
WPForms: Over 5 million active installations.
Redirection: Over 2 million active installations.
Smush: Over 1 million active installations.
Sucuri Security: Over 1 million active installations.
And the list goes on and on and on.
How about if everyone in the ecosystem had a role in the governance of the project, with a real WordPress Foundation with a coalition board actually running the ship?
Matt built the infrastructure in such a was as to center himself in every decision as the ultimate BDFL of WordPress. Now he’s mad that people see it as primarily his job to care for the system that he maintains complete control over.
not very surprising.
I create a product – theme / plugin.
I listen to feedback, improve, enhance that product.
My product **attracts** people to WordPress
Then one day I think “Hey, making a few $ from this would be handy given the countless hours I am putting in which up to now have benefitted me NONE but have benefitted WordPress”
My premium offering is welcomed. My time gets rewarded, I start to do even more.
And then one day Matt knocks on your door, holds his hand out and says “Nice house …. shame if something were to happen to it”.
How do you feel now?
——
Apart from some errors above, EVERY SINGLE ONE started with one person having an idea then busting their butt to build. They enhanced WordPress, they brought flexibility, they brought users.
**WordPress would be nothing without what developers have brought to it.**
How much are you paying? Bear in mind that Matt does not believe that plugins or themes are contributing.
Missed this:
“the root cause of the issue is that the WordPress Core Team is underfunded.”
Says who?
I’ve long come to see WordPress community culture as having a strong tendency for labor extraction. As they say we all benefit from WordPress – Matt gets a billion dollars and you get guilt-tripped about doing more and talking less. Wait, that seems a little skewed.
And now and then people get so squeezed, and labor extraction starts wobbling, and best idea is like – what if we also squeezed money out of community!?
Which kicks off another cycle of pretentious sponsoring, that’s more about PR than anything. Once upon a time a large host loudly hired a full time core contributor, and after like a year realized that they accomplished absolutely not shit, except starting a lot of toxic arguments on trac. Quietly fired. Results!
We don’t need more squeezing, and more guilt, and more opening our pockets, for people distributing labor and centralizing profits. We need to question and face what are we in this community FOR, what does it offer us for our presence, and time, and effort. If the answer is – being silent bricklayers building Matt’s monopoly estate… Don’t know about you, I have better things to do with my life. 🙂
Have you ever tried taking up a ticket from the core from the trac. You can’t even get a ticket unless you pounce on it within minutes. There is no dearth of developers. Many are in it for the props by editing readme files or updating spelling but the truth is the tickets gets owned without most even getting a chance to look at it.
I don’t be a manpower problem, may be a financial one, WordPress.org just needs to get the funding which Automatic is getting right now in its own hands. A company like Newfold pays Automattic and they use it to funds devs for .org and then they also say we are providing the most devs which is wrong, Automattic is the only one getting external funding to do it, every other company is doing it out of good will and the highly abused and ignored individual devs do it for the community and feel good factor.