Statement from WordPress public community rep Birgit Pauli-Haack (@bph) in Gutenberg plug-in reviews:

29 minutes ago
I don’t feel there is a massive outcry. There are over 120,000 Active Installs. That early in the life cycle of this plugin is a good size of people are providing feedback and the amount of issues is growing everyday on GitHub. There are plenty of people who use it. A mere 0.8 people left reviews, a big chunk of the 1-star reviews are from a group of angry, I don’t like change group.

The reviews of Gutenberg also reflect the five stages of grief we all got through when dealing with major change: Denial, Anger, Depression, Bargaining and Acceptance. Some people bounce between Bargaining (keep as plugin) and Anger (I hate it). And some people get past it without ever updating their review they wrote six or seven month ago.

All the power to those who want to fork WordPress. It’s a massive undertaking when in reality the adjustment to Gutenberg for a developer is supported by a huge amount of WordPress support people, plugin & theme developers, teachers, consultants and WordCamp and Meetup organizers.

If you think a transition to Gutenberg is hard, wait until people see the amount of work that it takes to make a successful fork of WordPress that won’t have the army of volunteers around anymore. Especially, when all that is needed is a couple of days reading through the documentation, connect with the Gutenberg developers on Slack channel and get your plugin compatible with Gutenberg.