I don't see anyone realistically expecting a blessing from Matt here. All of that is a warning sign that nobody wants to go the extra mile doing a full divergence, but we're all bleeding as a community:
- We lose business ACTIVELY
- Pipeline is dry
- Accelerating pivot to other site builders, Shopify, enterprise platforms
- Excessive overhead calming clients down, emergency calls, justifying GPL licensing and how "it won't happen with another host/plugin, we promise/hope"
- Pressure from the broader FOSS community
- Random emergencies when accesses are stopped or people can't sign up for events (dealing with sponsors and guests) and all sorts of ridiculous attacks
- Legal question marks around "affiliation" - similarly to the Envato drama a decade ago
So there's been a level of tension bubbling up for years with Gutenberg failing to adapt, WordPress staying behind on UX, stability, performance, maintenance efforts and others. The community has managed to accommodate that while Webflow/Framer/Wix/Squarespace/Shopify keep growing. At least there have been markets that aren't as volatile - large enterprises that can't afford risks from a single hosted SaaS or universities and publishers relying on multisite or just WordPress multiauthor blogs.
When you add the hosting drama, plugin takeovers, limited access to updates or dot org, now a "holiday shutdown" which is immature at best, we end up justifying ourselves to the rest of the web and sitting on night and weekend emergency calls with banks, telecoms, Facebook, private equity firms, VCs afraid they would need to pivot or rebuild or migrate with high urgency in Q1/Q2.
So all that added pressure bubbling up basically means that WordPress can implode within 5 years.
When Matt is completely oblivious to how the world outside of Automattic works (if you watch his site build battle of using Gutenberg and finally realizing how subpar it is), what would you expect will happen?
WordPress imploding due to Matt ruining trust and stability means that tens of billions of market share across Bluehost, GoDaddy, SiteGround and everyone else would evaporate if that transitions into Webflow/Framer/Wix in the next 3-4 years. Add the plugin shops and other ecosystem providers in the mix and you see how this turns into a lethal battle.
Also, the loudest voices are Joost and Karim so far. Joost is already out and investing in businesses today. He's free to invest more in real estate or SaaS or AI as he's not dependent on WP for a living. Karim runs a DXP enterprise agency, pivoting into Drupal or anything else wouldn't be pleasant, but agencies aren't using proprietary software that runs "nowhere else".