Automattic could create a PluginV2 system with tightened security and new requirements for plugin developers, then put a plan in place to deprecate and remove support for v1.
[0] which were then massively refactored, twice.
They can't afford it, and most people don't want it. I think history shows that taking flexibility away from something popular because of its flexibility is not good business. At least you can install a plugin now and completely sidestep this awful 'site builder'. If that goes away, hoo boy.
PHP code is not sandboxable (ignoring the ability to disable functions), AFAIK. Is it? So plugins do have complete (read) access over the entire code, the secrets in the config files, the database etc.?
Not allowing plugins to directly execute PHP code would either fundamentally break the wordpress plugin model or require an interpreter for a turing-complete "wordpress plugin programming language", right? That would kill any performance, especially on uncached wordpress instanced, even on PHP 8, wouldn't it?
People said the same about JavaScript, and yet smart people figured out ways to do it. For example: https://github.com/googlearchive/caja
PHP may be particularly challenging to sandbox, but it's not too much for talented engineers to figure out.
As a near-last resort, a secure PHP subset language could be developed.
> WordPress is used by 65.3% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 43.3% of all websites. [1]
And these numbers have been growing for years. In other words, WordPress is and will be widely used for a long time. So I’m not sure WordPress really needs saving. :p The number of OSS contributors has also been growing. So the project itself hasn’t been stagnating either.
Disclaimer: I’ve been a WordPress contributor and work for Automattic.