Wow, might be time to fork the project.
Some years later I believe the story I saw said that they had less than $200 / month being donated to the project to keep it going.
Now I LOVE the idea of a wordpress minus gutenberg, with all the code quality and security updates and modern themes and plugins all working together..
Do I think this is legit going to be sustainable with hardly anyone chipping in time and money - well, for an open source hobby site, $200 a year put into security might be fine..
Some of the more important websites using wordpress as a backend might want to rethink all of that.
Which is funny, because essentially that is what Matt is saying in the first place - for those who profit from it and can afford to, please donate so we can keep on keeping on.
However I have around 50 websites or so that are running just fine without Gutenberg.. and if you count the number of updates WP and plugins and themes have rolled out since Gutenberg and multiple that by 50, most of these updates have been an annoying use of time.
That being said, Gutenberg stuff today is pretty mature and I do recommend it and use it projects launched post 2024, partially because it's mature at this point, but not insignificantly because it is built into core.
I railed long ago that Matt and co should develop Gutenberg, but do it as an optional add-in.
I would still build sites today without it if it wasn't baked into core..
altough I will say that as of today, core gutenberg and default theme with FSE is a fine way to build,
it's different in many ways, sometimes confusing especially for those who are not used to navigating around FSE differently - but it can be decent to look at on the front end with default tools, and it's lean as far as size and page speed / load time (comparatively speaking).
But depending on the use case, and what tooling one may already have at hand, I still feel it could be fine to build without Gutenberg completely.. astra / spectra and stuff from brainstorm force for example would be decent to build with the past few years with not guten needed..
other page builders like siteorigin's were already doing most the things without the delays in development, and removal of standard long standing features like the menus screen and hiding the custom css option..
Sure, some sites may have chosen to use a site builder or Classic Editor with ACF, but those that didn't are left out in the cold by ClassicPress's decisions.
I don't think it's just 'some sites' choosing to use other builders and reject Gutenberg. the plugin repo shows that the 'classic editor' plugin has over 10 million active installations.
(classic editor removes gutenberg from the backend screens) - so it's not being left out in the cold, it's keeping things running fine without Gutenbloat.
So there was/is a huge need for ClassicPress - it's just that there is an easier way to get a very similar result with WordPress and that is install an extra plugin to remove the 'new plugin' of Gutengerg -
and since it's so easy to get back the functionality with a few clicks, may people are leaving many websites without the performance boost of leaner WP and getting the same classic backend..
If autaomattic had not put the classic editor in the repo, many more would of sought out the fork and classicPress would be dealing with more than 10 million sites relying on it.
This has been a pretty big issue for some time now, and only very recently would I start to lean into Gutenberg being a mature enough replacement that I start to advocate for it's use.
But really there is no need for it - if you wanted a page builder years ago there were plenty, and still are.
The great thing about it has been the pulling in other aspects like performance issues and reusable styles and such - so it has helped make WP better in other areas along the way, so now I am okay with it.
Being left out in the cold without Guten just means a leaner site that loads faster unless you get into elementor or some other heavy bloatware to have click/drag GUI - but it's not the only option now or back then.
Today, it's fine either way.
Maybe setting up a proper independent governance of the WordPress project would encourage more independent contributions.
>"it's free but only until the project owners deem you too successful and then you'll have to pay 8% of your revenues to support the project".
https://world.hey.com/dhh/automattic-is-doing-open-source-di...
Among all the more visible issues with this whole situation, he calls out a few things that I think need more awareness:
1. Matt decries Private Equity as leeches and freeloaders on free software, open source, and their community.
2. Automattic invested in WPE in the early days. In fact, Silver Lake, the PE firm that owns WPE, bought Automattic's share! Automattic sold to PE.
3. The WP Foundation has three members, two of whom show any sign of activity: Matt himself, and another person that Matt personally appointed who is... drum roll... the Managing Partner of a Private Equity firm.
Somewhat ironic for someone who shit talks their competitors and Private Equity so vocally.
He chose to use an open source license and benefit from all that open source entails.
You can’t turn around and ignore the terms of the license just because it doesn’t suit you.
Open source is based on idealistic and community based mindset and modern tech is now based around extracting the dollars. The two aren't really compatible and it's really quite sad to see.
That being said this the most stupid way to go about it.
The moral obligation to not screw over a million innocent users also outweighs Matt's driving desire for more money.
Several of the most popular plugins are maintained by WPEngine.
WPEngine donates/sponsors hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to WordPress community events. Indeed, the convention where Matt went "nuclear" was sponsored by WPE to the tune of $75,000 (and despite these all being supposedly independent entities, somehow WPE was banned from attending by the Foundation. No refund, though).
> So if you're eager to volunteer to be their free labor, be my guest.
Matt is demanding that WPE provide his for-profit company, Automattic, free labor, to be directed as Automattic see fit. Not the Foundation, not the open source project.
> WordCamps come in all different flavors, based on the local communities that produce them, but in general, WordCamps include sessions on how to use WordPress more effectively, beginning plugin and theme development, advanced techniques, security, etc. To get an idea of the types of sessions typically seen at WordCamps, check out the WordCamp channel at WordPress.tv.
If a 'company' is just digital landlordism it's not surprising makers don't want to subsidize your free ride...
They don't get secretly blackmailed and publicly shamed for failure to do so. There are a lot of other WP hosts too (Pantheon, Cloudways, etc.) and they also don't get this same treatment, unless they all silently paid up and we just didn't know...?
Sure, there's a gentleman's understanding that companies with resources should contribute back to the projects they use, but it's not a hard and fast moral or legal code.
It's disturbing and frankly terrifying for all downstream WordPress companies and users for Matt to blow this so out of proportion to the actual crime of "failing to contribute back to open source", which so many of us are guilty of every single day.