In reply to just some thoughts...

I am certainly newer to WP than say Joomla (which is a cow). WDotNet was not done to compete with WP. It was done to show that it can be done and that the performance of C# / ASP.NET is on a magnitude of 300-400% increase with the worlds most popular Open Source Application. If it were their goal to compete the project would be active .vs. 3.0 it was based upon.

To me.... well, my personal thoughts are that all of these PHP CMS platforms are behind the curve already and will continue to wane as more and more enterprise level entities jump into the fray as they see gold in the horizon. Again, why wouldnt they?

Amazon has a very different plan, I cant speak about it. But suffice to say many years back that did not hire part of Microsofts Core Visual Studio group (now Amazon employees) to convert the commerce venue to .net. They are in fact probably the entity that will be most formidable towards all open source projects that are latched into the PHP universe.

Converting Joomla or WP to .NET is not a major feat as was shown. Its easily done. C# is a far more robust language than is PHP. But why would a third party do that in terms of commercial interests? No doubt that sort of thing would eventually turn to conflict with WP rights. If tons of the user base starts switching, not many options then.

What is really needed in "Open source" is a new system that really leverages todays capabilities in web applications. Have you ever looked at Liferay? Check it out.

Being committed to backwards compatibility is noble. But in reality how many of the plugins or themes have really done so? Regardless of those stats at least IMHO if backward compatibility end up being a roadblock to rapid advancement then its a boon not blessing. Microsoft essentially has proven this though Windows itself. Consumers will pay all over again.

If the core doesnt see this and act upon it then they really are not very committed. It means they then know and accept its days are numbered and are just interested in riding the wave.

They may have more insider info than I get. I know two coders (one I grew up with, one his pal) at Google, I know 3 developers at Adobe (and one that just left 6 months back now at Match), Microsoft I know several and many of those they let go have not exactly been silent. Amazon is a different gig as they are VERY serious about leaks of information but my brother worked tightly with them for quite sometime. Even locally since I made a regiment for several years of attending various user / coder groups and seminars get surprised at who one meets. I went to the places as they were excellent for getting jobs. Heck, we had for 5 years straight politicians paying for Joomla sites. Several LGBT sites, we'd done etc. all off referral from users groups.

I've asked this question many times of folks. Larry Ellison. WHY did they buy up mySQL?

Lots of people were FREAKING OUT if you remember when that went down, "Oh they are going to charge for it on and on", "Oh mySQL they dont want compete with Oracle rdbms" etc etc.

If one thinks like a giant such as Oracle w/ buckets of governance contracts and being one of few players left in the enterprise rdbms shakeout... Why would they spend what was it 1 billion dollars for mYSQL? Granted they snarfed up SUN and Java as well all totalling something like 8 billion?

None of the above.

Here is what I have heard, Its no secret that Oracle has never really fancied open source.

Oracle wont ever charge for it, thwy wont re-license it, they wont sell it (they have had offers), as unification and the regulatory measures begin to unfurl (which we will see starting in the next administration here in the states as the platform is getting set for just that) they will pull the plug on it and they will tie up MariaDB in litigation.

If you worked in enterprise IT then you know that business enemies and business friends reside on the same real estate. It depends which building you go to.