The unfortunate part is that he became someone you’re happy to see out. I think he’s absolutely become a net negative for Wordpress, but that wasn’t always the case.

it just sucks to see someone who helped popularize something so many people care about change (at least publicly) for the worse.

Exactly. I am very thankful for the experiences and community that WordPress has given me that I seriously consider that maybe Matt has been victim of a social engineering attack to make him be perceived as a little bit unstable... kind of like what happened with the xz backdoor attempt.

But, to be honest, I am not too well versed in the drama. IIRC it started because someone was building something on top of WP but was basically reselling something that was already free without contributing back? Maybe I'm mixing things up and I should really hit the sack.

Nevertheless, my concern lies mostly with the overall security of the platform, as I can imagine serious financial interests (and geological ones, too) might take the time to push out someone that knows the platform inside out.

Matt has made like hundreds of bizarre decisions over the last few years. The WPEngine drama is a big part of it, but he's also been odd with Automattic's purchase and handling of Tumblr and other topics.

Unfortunate this was the result of 23 years, not unfortunate it's happening.