Something which seems more and more important about the development of WordPress is that, in common with most GPL software (most software, for that matter), it has simply gone on, year-in year-out, revising, fixing and improving. But nobody seems to be saying, is that it? Is that the best we can do? Is that what we really want? If we started with WordPress as an idea today, would we build this ~ what we have now?

Now of course I don't know that's the case, since I am not on the team, I just imagine that's the way it is. Just keep your heads down guys, mend things that are broke, add a few bells and whistles now and again.

I don't mean this as a criticism of the team or what they have produced. But as an analogy, think of what's happening in developing countries with mobile phones, for example, a far larger and more complicated problem to fix. I think its a lesson WordPress should take on-board because if Automattic doesn't do it, its for damn sure somebody else will.

They are not re-inventing and maintaining better land-lines, installing whizzy new infrastructure and extending the lifetime of what went before. They've just taken a look at what's on offer, what their experience tells them is needed for the future, and thrown the rest away. Along with the time it takes to fiddle around with and the cost of maintenance etc. In other words, they took the view, since we're starting today with our telecomms infrastructure, what do we need to maintain all that crap for. Mobile devices is all we need. Let someone else do all that.

I don't want to get into the semantics of arguing what's more or less broke, but save to say, there are some huge holes in WordPress. Some big enough to drive a truck through. And despite all the bru-ha-ha and hype it still falls far short as a modem CMS. Even with all the plugins created to fix stuff that's needed but isn't there, workflow management and the WYSIWYDG editor are painful, to say the least!

Isn't about time Automattic ditched all the baggage and developed a brand new WP2? More like Adobe Contribute CS5?

Terence.