The plugin ecosystem is full of freemium garbage. It's also designed so a functional site basically requires the jetpack plugin, which is a connector to automattic's proprietary SaaS.
The codebase is old, like mostly procedural PHP. It's got a long history of security issues, and is just a pain to work with. And it's run by a megalomaniac who doesn't seem to understand what running an open source project is about.
I could open-source defecating into your hands and clapping if you like, but it probably won’t increase demand or convert people, even open source advocates, into true believers if they don’t already like doing it.
And there are absolutely problems with Mullenweg’s stewardship, whatever else you might think of the product.
No gutenberg? I think thats what ive been using since coming back to wp if its the default way of using blocks, I like it. Would you just need to install it as a plugin?
Out of interest, is theme development also the same / similar? I own a small agency and we now use Flynt as our base for bulds which is very much reliant on Timber and ACF. I have been developing on WordPress since its initial inception and reading the classic press overview, it sounds like bliss / it literally has stripped out every single annoyance I have with WP and I'm super interested in having a stab with it.......
I tried some chinese or japanese wp alt, not sure if its opensource started with an H I think, wasnt fully translated but the sites ppl built looked cool