The past week is all about the new Gutenberg editor and its update to version 0.2.0. We look into the question if the editor is usable at all in the beta version. And Matt Mullenweg delivers in an interview a look behind the scenes of the core team and talks about the future of WordPress.
"Gutenberg is Not Usable at This Time"
Gutenberg is being hailed as groundbreaking for the future of WordPress. And rightly so: the new block system is impressive and gives hope for a future without page builders and widgets. But unfortunately, the current beta version of Gutenberg is not really usable yet. In principle, this is not a bad thing - after all, beta phases are intended to eliminate errors and improve software. If it weren't for Matt Mullenweg's magic limit of 100,000 active installations. Gutenberg is still a long way from that.
Gutenberg 0.2.0 and WordPress 4.9
Last week the update 0.2.0 of the Gutenberg beta version was released. Observing the development of the active installations of the plugin (currently 700+), doubts arise whether Matt Mullenweg's 100,000 goal will be reached in the expected one to two months. Before the Gutenberg editor can actually be adopted into the core, there will most likely first be a 4.9 release that focuses on theme- and plugin-management and paves the way for Gutenberg . The first ideas for the 4.9 update have already been discussed in the Dev Chat. WordPress 4.8.1 is expected to be released in the last week of July and will only bring small fixes.
Matt's look behind the scenes
In a 30-minute interview with apply_filters, Matt Mullenweg, WordPress co-founder and CEO of Automattic, talks about his role as WordPress Development Lead and reviews the history of WordPress, among other topics. Mullenweg also comments on his priorities for 2017, including the planned adoption of the new Gutenberg editor into Core and progress on the REST API. Mullenweg also openly addresses the recurring problem of slow implementation of long-standing proposals and visions for WordPress. In this context, he addresses the downsides of community-based open source WordPress projects.
For example, he describes WordPress releases in recent years as "uninspiring." One of the reasons for the relatively slow development of WordPress, according to Mullenweg, is the prevailing decision-making inertia. This is mainly due to the consensus culture of the WordPress community, he says: "At certain points it might be effective to appoint a decision maker and just disagree and commit, or agree and commit, to the decisions that are made because, in many cases, I think any decision will be better than no decision, which is what many things in WordPress have had sometimes for as long as seven or ten years."
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