Data from Google Trends noted search requests around the website builder boomed in October 2024, especially on October 8, where it reached a peak score of 100.
The spike in interest signals a shift in user behavior, indicating an active search for options which align more closely with user expectations around performance, control, and transparency.
The point of free software is that it doesn’t have owners and you (individually or collectively) can just create an “alternative” yourself by forking it if you disagree with anything its maintainers do.
Yet, wordpress relies on a defacto central store for plugins, where properties (along with the userbases) of private companies can be taken over by Matt Mullenweg.
That definitely sounds like a problem. I am not familiar enough with WordPress, is that store not FOSS or are the plugins not or what is going on?
The plugin was an open source, but commercial product. It was forked and its store page was taken over by wordpress.org which unilaterally controls this store. Plugin updates were redirected to the fork, so essentially all users (bar the ones on wp engine, ironically) were stolen. Also, many sites were broken overnight by this move.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/12/24268637/wordpress-org-matt-mullenweg-acf-fork-secure-custom-fields-wp-engine
It’s a jarring situation, and frankly, I think it goes beyond the CEO being an asshat (he surely is). But I think this whole story shows signs of a mental illness.