Before and since my WordPress Core contribution flow changed, I have tried to play my part, in the community’s interest, to encourage a change of approach by the project’s leadership. Despite this, further community-damaging actions have been taken. As a direct result of this continued unwillingness to respect the community, I am regretfully withdrawing from all contributing to WordPress Core and any WordPress.org property until further notice.
I will continue to:
- act in the best interests of the community’s health.
- contribute to WordPress plugins not hosted on WordPress.org.
- work on other FOSS projects.
- advise contributors to other FOSS projects.
Until further notice, I will no longer:
- maintain any WordPress Core components. Upgrade/Install component meetings will need someone to run them.
- be a member of any WordPress Core team.
- review any Pull Requests to WordPress Core.
- perform any WordPress Core Committer duties.
- use the Making WordPress Slack instance.
- sustain an environment that continues to operate with a willingness to harm the community and thrive on a fear of speaking out.
- listen to a misguided narrative that the community is helped by sustaining such an environment.
I encourage all unsponsored contributors to:
- consider whether your good will and generosity is being taken for granted to sustain a harmful environment with dangerous consequences.
- consider whether you want to preserve the community, or preserve the harmful environment. You cannot do both.
- withdraw, if you can and want to, from contributing to WordPress Core or any WordPress.org property until a healthy environment is put in place.
I encourage all sponsoring companies to:
- offer those you sponsor the choice of whether to contribute to WordPress Core, contribute to other FOSS, or contribute to your company’s products/services not hosted on WordPress.org, with no risk of losing their employment, benefits, or their sponsorship.
- have the conviction to make a healthy contributing environment for you, your employees, those you sponsor, and the community, a must-have with zero tolerance for anything less.
- speak out.
I encourage the community (companies, Make WordPress contributors, extenders, promoters, users, etc) to:
- recognise the value of the community and your value as part of the community.
- respect yourself and each other.
- promote community strength and care.
- stand by each other.
- demand better.
To be clear:
- I do not expect, nor am I asking, for my Core Committer, Security Team, Component Maintainer, or Making WordPress Slack instance access to be removed from me.
- I do not expect, nor am I asking, to have my WordPress.org user account suspended, deactivated, or deleted.
- I will maintain all of the same security practices as I have previously.