> People don't want to fork because they don't want to pay for wordpress development.
People don't fork because they wouldn't stay compatible with core, and thus not keep compatibility with most of the plugins if they do anything meaningful to improve the code (and if you don't, why would you fork?)
core and plugins are handcuffed together: plugins are nothing without core, but core is just a horrible mess of spaghetti code with no value without plugins. yet core can't really be improved without abandoning a bunch of plugins (on which they depend for being viable as a CMS).
So far, core seems to err on the side of plugin authors (unless they're deemed competitors to .com), i.e. rug-pulls and replacing the plugin with malware-adjacent "new functionality" is totally fine for .org's plugin masters.
People don't fork because they wouldn't stay compatible with core, and thus not keep compatibility with most of the plugins if they do anything meaningful to improve the code (and if you don't, why would you fork?)
core and plugins are handcuffed together: plugins are nothing without core, but core is just a horrible mess of spaghetti code with no value without plugins. yet core can't really be improved without abandoning a bunch of plugins (on which they depend for being viable as a CMS).
So far, core seems to err on the side of plugin authors (unless they're deemed competitors to .com), i.e. rug-pulls and replacing the plugin with malware-adjacent "new functionality" is totally fine for .org's plugin masters.