Gary Pendergast Praises ClassicPress, Extends Invitation for Collaboration

Gutenberg and WordPress core contributor Gary Pendergast has weighed in with this thoughts on ClassicPress, a fork of WordPress created by Scott Bowler. Pendergast praises the fork and extended an open invitation to Bowler to collaborate in the future.

As a member of the WordPress core team, I certainly hold no ill-feelings towards them, and I hope they’ll be open to working with us in the future. I hope we’ll be able to learn from their work, to improve WordPress for everyone.

Ultimately, we all share the same goal: creating a free and open web, for everyone to enjoy. While ClassicPress has styled itself as a protest against Gutenberg for now, I hope they’ll find their voice for something, instead of just against something.
Gary Pendergast

In the comments of the article, Pendergast received harsh criticism for writing blog posts instead of working on Gutenberg’s 1K plus issues on GitHub. In an example of showing grace, Pendergast responds to the person’s question of whether or not Gutenberg’s development team is correctly prioritizing their time.

“Personally, I believe we’re doing a reasonable job, though we could probably lean a little more towards blogging than we are now,” he said. “There’s been valid criticism that the Gutenberg team has been less communicative than it could be, which we’re working to address.”

Additionally, Pendergast compared the number of open issues in other projects and dismissed it as a measurement of software quality or readiness.

Personally, I miss reading blog posts about WordPress from core developers. Many of the people on the Planet WordPress feed no longer work on the project or write about WordPress.

I always enjoyed when they shared their deep knowledge of the software or explained why they decided to lead the project in a certain direction. Pendergast’s post is a breath of fresh air and something I’d like to see more often from other core contributors.