I haven't done Wordpress dev work for money in over a decade now but I have kept up with the project and run some sites still. In recent years it seems like Mullenweg has lost it mentally. Maybe he's always been like this and it was just masked by the project's success.

I think projects like Wordpress and Drupal (content management systems) that have grown utility are in real danger due to their complexity and technical debt. Each project has their unique challenges. For Wordpress, centralization is a real issue. Automatic has a very strong hold on the open source project. Specifically Mullenweg.

It does seem that he has a scarcity mindset. This is very different from the Drupal culture and its founder Dries who fostered a culture of growing the pie. I think many Wordpress shops are very uneasy about the future of the project after Mullenweg's antics over the last year.

Being involved in open source communities for a long time I have seen these attitudes about open source change. To me it seems like envy. You will hear the platitudes about free and open but as soon as someone makes a ton of cash and doesn't donate "enough" money or do whatever the critic thinks they should do, they are "stealing". Its interesting to watch this human behavior. Its very inconsistent and as DHH has pointed out it is harmful to the broader open source idea.

Excellent, thanks for posting. We do tons of WordPress work & it always feels like an afterthought to most devs. I love the description about how WP is unattractive but necessary.