@Paul - AMEN! What you said.

I imagine this partly a response to Matt Mullenweg's Oct 7th, 2009 Q&A on WordPress and Open Source

Before WordPress, it was b2, and it was also offered on Fantastico Deluxe. Lots of features have come into play along with the knowledge to do something with WordPress other than use it as a blog platform.

I am against excluding people, especially when the product is open source. The problem is people who want to learn versus people who do not. Let them use it their own way as it is not anyone's else job to tell others what to do or not to do.If you met Matt, he is pretty happy about where WordPress is and there are more things to come, especially by what I remember him talking about at WordCamp Chicago. In fact there was talk about combining WordPress and WordPress mu. I even asked about them during the ending session where he opened the floor to questions, from a webhost's perspective about the chance that even other products like bbpress and others might become one-click installs.

Of course, there will be some degeneration and possibly sites reminiscent of the Geocities days, but hey... people are interested in at least trying something new.