[wp-hackers] Is WordPress Development Slowing Down?

[Roy Schestowitz]

___/ On Mon 15 May 2006 15:45:04 BST, [ Matt Mullenweg ] wrote : \___

> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> To  clarify in advance, this is a benign case of curiosity; not a rant.  I
>> have  been  meaning to ask this for a couple of month, but was too shy  to
>> say anything. Figures seem to indicate that, based on the (admittedly poor
>> indicator  which is) number of commits, WordPress changes less and less as
>> time  goes on. A decline from half a dozen commits per day to just 1 or  2
>> is noticeable.


Allow  me to apologise for generating so much 'noise'. It wasn't at all my
intent nor expectation.


> I think the raw numbers may be misleading. We used to commit thing 
> willy-nilly, often with typos that would be caught minutes later or 
> with obvious bug-fixes that went in a few hours later.
>
> Now with our much more mature use of Trac, that sort of thing is much 
> less common.


I  am  pleased to hear this. I was looking at the scale of changes  before
making any hasty assumptions. I understand that I am right in pointing out
that the extent of changes /may/ have been reduced, yet I was gauging this
at  the wrong 'season', as well as by the wrong criteria. It makes perfect
sense now.


> Two things to note:
>
> Feature-wise, I think 2.1 is shaping up to be really kick-ass. We've 
> got some absolutely killer things like spell check and XML 
> import/export that have been on the TODO forever. To top it off, it's 
> going to be faster and more secure than any previous WordPress, and 
> it includes the work of more people.
>
> Second, I think if you talk about the speed of development, you have 
> to look at things outside of core commits that have happened in 2006:
>
> * New logo and redesign of WordPress.org (and server move)
> * Long-awaited forum improvements (bbPress)
> * Tons of plugins, including some that might be core candidates
> * New theme/plugin download infrastructure and stats
> * Codex stability
> * Making MU not such an ugly cousin
>
> And yes, personally I have spent a fair amount of time on Akismet and 
> WP.com development.


That's  perfectly acceptable. By no means did I criticise. I wish you  the
best of luck and I take pleasure in seeing it develop.


> There are a lot of things that could be done on the code side to 
> benefit the folks that help out on the forums and Codex every day, 
> but there isn't a lot of overlap between those folks and the hackers.
>
> When I look at things that need the most work, it's not the core 
> code, it's in the support services around it.
>
> * The forums need more luv
> * Theme directory, download, discovery, update notification
> * The same for plugins
> * Dev blog posts
> * Actually using our newsletter with 50k+ subscribers
> * Internationalization of WP.org, forums, codex, etc
> * Making documentation less verbose
> * Support, support, support
>
> I think what we do need is more people with commit to WordPress.org, 
> as that'd benefit the community in a very direct way.


I presume  that going  down  the  'Mozilla route' is out   of the question
entirely.  I  would not mind to be proven wrong *smile*. In the long  run,
everyone benefits.

Best wishes,

Roy