Matt Mullenweg deactivates WordPress accounts of contributors planning a fork

This is - without question - the best thing that could happen for their fork. It’s generating 100x the amount of attention they would’ve gotten otherwise.

I’ve known about Joost for many years and have a ton of respect for his work. Best of luck making this happen!

If they weren't planning a fork like one of the other comments suggests they totally should now because the have the media initiative, people will be looking for it. Strike while the iron is hot basically.

They never claimed to be starting a fork (at least not yet)[0]. They only called for reform to the existing governance structures.[1]

Matt Mullenweg painted it as a fork to suit his narrative and pre-emptively poison the well (by implying they are incompetent) of a potential future fork.[2]

He's done that a couple times now. He claims to support forks and says "I'll even promote them on WordPress.org" (paraphrase) but what he does is post before a fork is even ready or properly organized. Thereby sabotaging the effort and making everyone involved look bad. [3]

It's truly evil.

[0] https://x.com/jdevalk/status/1878210129914409063

[1] https://joost.blog/wordpress-leadership/

[2] https://wordpress.org/news/2025/01/jkpress/

[3] https://wordpress.org/news/2024/10/spoon/

EDIT: Matt just posted another childish taunt in response to Joost's clarification. See https://x.com/photomatt/status/1878227222927933815