[wp-hackers] Community Views on Now and the Future

[Matt Mullenweg]

Rich Bowen wrote:
> Flaws? Well, I find that the community to be deeply frustrating. The
> "one chief, many indians" nature of the community leads to a bit of a
> monoculture with regard to decisions. Folks seem terrified that they're
> going to say or do something that Matt disagrees with. Whether he is
> entirely responsible for that state of affairs, I really can't say,
> having only been around for about a year.

Well, assuming this is true, thank you to yourself and skippy for 
breaking the mold. Reasoned debate never hurt.

> I see repeatedly good ideas surface, with people tentatively supporting
> them, while actively supporting them on IRC, but then back off when Matt
> suggests that he's not behind it. That sort of single-personality
> management leads to a lack of new ideas, and, perhaps as concerningly,
> leads eventually to a project where nobody wants to contribute anymore,
> because they're sure that new ideas are unwelcome.

New ideas are constantly being integrated as they come up, which is one 
of the reasons our roadmap has never been very accurate. That's okay 
though, because things on I put on the roadmap that draw no interest 
often do so because they're not that useful, see RFC 3229 support or 
whatever it was caused.

Some people feel their ideas get included less than others, which 
certainly may be true, but that's because of the ideas not because of 
the person.

> This isn't to say that the leadership doesn't have good ideas. They
> certainly seem to. But they also tend to disregard ideas from external
> sources, with a really bad case of Not Invented Here.

Other systems have always provided inspiration for WordPress, which I 
think has done well by synthesizing some of the best ideas from other 
projects. We're the only project I know of that links to direct 
competitors on our about page and thanks them.

-- 
Matt Mullenweg
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