Next Steps for ClassicPress

Over the last few days it has become crystal clear that the community feels that the Directors of the ClassicPress Initiative are now hindering the progress of the ClassicPress Project.

As such, Michelle and I have decided to resign our positions as part of the non-profit organization that oversees the ClassicPress community, the ClassicPress Initiative. This will allow others to step in and move the ClassicPress Project forward.

Both Michelle and I have been here since the beginning of ClassicPress, back almost 4 years ago. While it is sad to be leaving the community we saw grow and evolve over time to be the most successful fork of WordPress in years, it is time for a new direction under new governance.

We don’t want to leave the project in a mess, so before our resignation, we are looking for active members of the community to join the board of the ClassicPress Initiative who are ready and willing to push the project forward. Once the new board is in place Michelle and I can contribute a couple of hours for the first few months to help with training and transition.

For clarity, the ClassicPress Initiative is a 501(c)3 organization currently based in Virginia. The new directors will need to take over the following:

  • The bank account
  • Responsibility for the taxes and all applicable organization registration and licensing
  • Mail box
  • All management of the servers hosted on DigitalOcean
  • MailGun
  • BitWarden
  • Domain Registration
  • Stripe account
  • Shop
  • Slack
  • GSuite
  • The GitHub organizations
  • Namecheap
  • Cloudflare
  • Wave Accounting

and any other items that may arise as necessary during the transition.

If you are an active member in the community and are interested in helping push ClassicPress forward by taking over the Initiative and oversight of the Project, please reach out to @Directors via PM.

If there is no interest in stepping up to be part of the board by Friday, June 24th we will have no choice but to dissolve the ClassicPress Initiative. Michelle and I will advise no later than June 25 whether or not anyone has stepped up to take over the non-profit and then the Community will need to decide whether or not they wish to continue the project without the funding support of the non-profit.

For anyone interested in continuing the project absent the 501c3, they should plan to take over the following at a minimum:

  • All management of the servers hosted on DigitalOcean
  • MailGun
  • BitWarden
  • Domain Registration
  • Stripe account
  • Shop
  • The GitHub organizations
  • Namecheap
  • Cloudflare
  • Slack

For transparency, though it is also listed publicly as part of the 501c3, the monthly costs in 2021 averaged to be $99.74 USD with donations averaging only $10.34 per month. At time of writing there is $352 in the bank account.

One way or the other, in order for the Project to move forward, someone needs to take responsibility for the critical functions that keep it running. If no one in the Community steps forward, we will dissolve the ClassicPress Initiative effective July 31, 2022. This will end funding of any paid services listed above.

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For more clarity, here is the 2021 Profit/Loss from our 2021 taxes:
ClassicPress Initiative Profit and Loss 2022-06-20-15_29.pdf (17.7 KB)

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