From “Thank You WordPress“, to “WTF is WordPress?“, to this.
The day WordPress becomes dead to me.
From this day forward, I will not freely write another line of code for the WordPress® platform.
No more releasing new free plugins. No more plugin updates at all.
I will not be fixing any bugs if they get reported.
No Slack convos, no social interactions, and no pretending WordPress® is “open” when it hasn’t been in a long time.
I’ve given 20 years to WordPress® – freely, relentlessly, and without expectation.
In the last year alone, I shipped over 50 plugins.
Tools like BenchPress and DB Version Control that solve real problems and pushed the envelope.
And how did the community respond?
They didn’t.
No feedback or collaboration, just crickets.
Meanwhile, I’ve spent that same year loudly speaking out – not because I enjoy conflict, but because someone had to say what needed to be said.
About leadership, favoritism and the increasing rot behind the WordPress® curtain.
I’ve gone head-to-head with Matt Mullenweg, Woo leadership, and at least a dozen other people from Automattic and it’s affiliates.
I made memes and songs, relentlessly going above and beyond to help protect people.
I’ve defended the community more fiercely than its favorite stewards combined.
And what happened the moment I stepped back?
Everything went back to the status quo, where the same leeches are still trying to suck the community dry.
No change. No backbone. Just the safe, soft, silent dance around the same central power.
Let me be blunt
I called out Kevin Geary for his documented history of racism and bigotry – and instead of support, I was shunned.
The same people who claim to care about inclusion and safety asked me to stop talking, or gossiped about my mental health (sup Oliver).
Taco Verdo and others pleaded for silence when I criticized PressConf for allowing Geary to take the stage.
Taco mentioned how YoastCon had their event darkened by online criticism of it’s Playboy party antics, and how I was doing the same thing to PressConf.
Apparently, partying like frat boys who finally don’t live with their parents is the same as giving the stage to someone who promoted hate and racism online for years 🤷♂️
And during all of this, 99.99% of “the community” stayed silent out of fear that their lives would be upended …
Self preservation over the preservation of the community.
Every 👏 Single 👏 Time 👏
All’s fair in love and war
And now, here comes FAIR – the so-called decentralized package manager – backed by the same clique that has ignored or dismissed most independent contributors.
FAIR is being paraded as some grassroots, community-powered fix.
But let’s call it what it is: controlled decentralization, and just another power play dressed up as progress.
A group of people jockeying for position in an ecosystem run by someone who has no respect for them.
When I mentioned that a post by Joost discussing lack of innovation in WordPress® was limited by not looking outside of the WordPress.org repository, this was his response:
I agree, but it’s rather hard at the moment to get the “outside of the repository” combined, working on that though, with FAIR 😉
– source
If that doesn’t sound like someone on the hunt for control over data sets, I don’t know what does 🤦♂️
I don’t know what to expect from someone who took the SEO for Everyone slogan from someone else and ran with it like it was his own.
Joost deValk. Karim Marucchi. Sarah Savage. A Git Updater dependency. AspirePress code under the hood. And a broken “MINI” plugin as the developer onboarding path?
You want dev adoption?
Maybe start with working docs and a functioning repo.
Maybe talk to the guy who auto-forked WordPress® months ago, wrote a plugin to stop data from being sent to Woo, stopped plugins from being used on wordpress.com and built a plugin to help devs self-host their plugins directly in their WordPress sites.
I raised real questions. Here they are:
“Was this just a buddy club launch? Why wasn’t there more outreach before the announcement? Is the Linux Foundation leading this or just name-dropping? Was this rushed to meet Alt+Ctrl’s deadline?”
Silence.
“How are users supposed to trust something that lacks basic polish – no avatars, no branding, a domain that just redirects to GitHub, which also doesn’t have an avatar?”
Still silence.
When I voiced concerns publicly, I got vague replies and passive jabs.
A message from Se Reed sent to me after FAIR was announced, and after all the things her and I discussed privately, simply asked: “How about now?”
Like my concerns were invalid because this “big thing” was happening behind the scenes that I didn’t know about.
Here’s where I’m at now
I’m done with WordPress®, the WordPress® community and whatever happens to WordPress® next is none of my concern.
Other than freelance work that comes across my desk, I won’t be touching anything related to WordPress®, including Plugin Pal (more on this in another post).
I’m not keeping up with the news or drama, I’m not building for it, and I’m damn sure not playing the political game behind it anymore.
All of my free and premium plugins will stay public for now, but I will no longer be updating them.
Over time, they’ll be archived. Fork them now if you want them – I’m out.
What’s next?
My personal site (robertdevore.com) is being rebuilt on Stattic, my own static site generator.
It’s fast as fuck and it’s going places, if you haven’t heard.
And it’s powered by a mindset WordPress® will never have – people over profits, always.
My attention will now be on building Stattic, and also launching Devio Chat – a tool built for creators, devs, and business owners who want better workflows with AI.
It’s what I actually need, so I’m building it for myself first.
Then I’m releasing it for others who need the same power to produce high quality work at a rapid rate.
And I won’t bend for broken leadership.
This isn’t about being bitter, because I’m not – at all.
It’s about closing this book so I can open another.
I’m done giving free labor to people who won’t say thanks.
Done fighting for a community that doesn’t fight back.
Done hoping for change from “leaders” who’ve proven they can’t do it.
Matt can have it all.
Because honestly, no one else in the ecosystem seems capable of taking it from him.
Not with the kind of extreme leadership it requires.
Which is sad when you think about it, because Matt really ain’t shit either.
So what does that say about a huge group of people who can’t do anything with him? 🤔
I gave everything I had to WordPress®.
Now I’m giving that energy to something actually worth the effort – myself.