The current WordPress / WP Engine drama demonstrates how differently things can go with your community depending on how you support it.
WordPress and Drupal were both born around the same time, use the same technology stack, and are similar in too many other ways to talk about right now.
They both have a "Benevolent Dictator for Life" as project lead, both of them run a non-profit organisation to support their open-source project, and both of them run a huge for-profit company to monetize their open-source work.
WordPress
From what I can tell, WP's lead runs Automattic, runs wordpress.com (commercial WP hosting), controls wordpress.org (WP community infrastructure), and is reportedly the only active member of the WordPress Foundation's 3-person board).
in other words, every bit of controlling power in this community is centralized in the person of Matt who is free to go where his internal or external motivators drive him.
Drupal
The Drupal Association works out in the open, has community-elected board members, and gets its funding from corporate and individual membership fees that are used to keep Drupal's project and infrastructure running. This includes source code collaboration tools, discussion spaces, and download access to all of Drupal's contributed extensions - modules, themes, distributions, and more.
The Drupal community has spent a lot of time and effort over the years to come up with the unique contribution credits system that encourages code and non-code contributions alike, and rewards contributors by boosting their visibility.
Though the system has had its issues with abuse and unfair advantage to larger contributors, at its heart lies a community-driven algorithm, scrutinized and continuously improved by the community.
In conclusion
Both projects face the problem of unevenly distributed contributions and convincing those who benefit more to contribute more.
One leader spends decades building a community governed by its members, shares his thought process on Makers vs Takers, and asks for feedback.
The other leader does not, and uses community infrastructure to attack specific competitors under the guise of forcing fair play.
In a truly open and collaboratively run community, a rising tide lifts all the boats.
Where there is centralization of power into a single person, combined with no checks and balances, a strongman is a weakness that will inevitably bring things crashing down.
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