BuddyPress Lead Developer Mathieu Viet Leaves WordPress Ecosystem

BuddyPress Lead Developer Mathieu Viet has announced his departure from the WordPress community, marking the end of a long-standing association that began with BuddyPress 2.0.

In a statement shared on his WordPress profile, he said, “I’ve decided to stop involving into the #WordPress community following the way WordPress leadership decided to prevent some users to benefit from WordPress.org API services just because they were customers of a specific hosting company.”

Viet has also chosen to stop using WordPress for his personal website. He wrote, “While Mr. Mullenweg’s first attacks pushed me to leave this community and stop contributing to WordPress® open source projects (including BuddyPress®), the latest one (making the premium code of a plugin marketed by the attacked competitor available for free ) convinced me that disapproving and condemning them as a former contributor was not enough. Indeed, I have also decided to stop using WordPress® to manage this website.”

In October this year, WordPress.org took over WP Engine’s ACF plugin, citing security issues, and renamed it Secure Custom Fields (https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-custom-fields/) and then released the ‘Secure Custom Fields’ Plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/secure-custom-fields/) with ACF Pro features last month.

The news of Viet leaving sparked discussions across the WordPress community. One user on Reddit commented, “I don’t blame Mr Mathieu, but honestly, I hope as a community, we can bring this madness to an end, A lot of damage has been done, but I am hopeful we can forget the past at one point, make amends and move forward and come back with a fucking vengeance. Not asking for Peace in the World, just asking for Peace in the WordPress ecosystem.” Others expressed curiosity about which platform Viet would migrate to next.

Since the Automattic -WP Engine dispute started, several prominent contributors, including Bjørn Johansen, Carrie Dils, Andy Fragen, and Chris Wiegman, have ceased their involvement with WordPress. Some have removed their plugins from the WordPress Repository.