Contributing to the development of WordPress looks like it will be completely different than in the past. According to the dev chat notes published on January 4th on the developer blog, the team has come up with an experimental method to not only create more accountability for everyone involved, but to also try and keep things on track when it comes to schedules. Aside from the team approach, the post also highlights the overall theme for WordPress 3.4, Making it easier to make your site look how you want it to look. Those of you hoping to make a splash in contributing to the development of WordPress 3.4 should read that post and consider filling out the survey attached to it.
This process is an experiment. It’s either going to work out wonderfully or turn into a ball of flames. I hope it works out for the best.
I think that this will go fine, for WP_v3.4. Longer-term, having the ‘experimental’ caveat highly-placed will be valuable.
We’ve been to this movie, repeatedly. See e.g. The Mythical Man-Month
In our favor, early WordPress was pretty close to a classic one-man project … which despite its ultimately fatal limitations, remains the primary creative venue in software … in large part because if obviates TMMM, et al.
Matt Mullenweg, and some of the other key/core personell, clearly know what they’re up against. That’s the main thing. It’s an experimental process, feeling your way into it step by flexible step. The early steps have already been taken, and the stumbles were recoverable.
Some peripheral, less-aware participants will get tender parts of their anatomy pinched in the wringer … but the effort overall to bring more skilled coders, and a ‘degree’ of rational organization to the WP-Dev schema, looks healthy & on-track.
Good-on everyone involved.