Free software is a participatory effort.
Many people in the ClassicPress community understand this very well, but one thing that is still lacking from my perspective as core/development lead is help from developers who understand how to code and deliver the features we need without breaking the existing ecosystem or otherwise damaging the ways users can use ClassicPress.
I had hoped that the release and maintenance of a stable version 1 would be enough to attract many more contributors of this type, but that hasn’t happened to the extent needed to implement our full roadmap.
Given the current situation, both with ClassicPress and the rest of the world, I will continue making progress on our outstanding items as I’m able. I do have a lot of other demands on my time these days, but in the meantime, ClassicPress is ready for production use and it will remain stable.
I know that not everyone in our community writes code, and that’s fine. There are many other ways to get involved and help ClassicPress keep growing. Here is just one example: Discussions: Should ClassicPress become involved?
As far as improvements to the site and the roadmap, we have also stated multiple times that any suggested revisions to documentation and other site content are welcome. I think it would be a good idea to make some of the pages on the main site available for revision under this system: Contributing to the ClassicPress documentation However, this is another thing that we’ve set up for contributors but has received very little traction from the community.
Finally, about the ClassicPress leadership structure, we had very good reasons for avoiding a “single figurehead” approach at the start of the project, and these reasons are still valid. There is definitely room for improvement here though. So far this year, the committee is not fulfilling the responsibilities that it has set out for itself. The committee hasn’t met since January, and in that meeting we approved some good rule changes for the management of the project, but no one has taken the initiative to document them publicly. Also, we have multiple teams which are not making progress on any of their stated goals or at least not communicating any progress. This suggests to me that we need to change our approach.
I’m also optimistic that regular updates from all team leads will begin to help improve this situation, and you can all expect one from me in the June updates thread by the end of this week.