Should WordPress have an Advisory Board?

by ThemeAlert
14 November 2014

An interesting article recently cropped up on the ManageWP blog and it really grabbed our attention. Vladimir Prelovac sparked a fascinating discussion about whether WordPress should have an advisory board.

The vision of WordPress is almost solely driven by Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress and mind behind Automattic. Mullenweg has been a driving force behind WordPress since its inception and has led the open source project from the initial spark of an idea to WordPress being the most popular CMS worldwide, so clearly he knows what he’s doing!

However, would it be helpful for an advisory board to be set up, to help guide the future of the community and make important decisions? As Prelovac says in the original article:

‘The main trigger for forming an advisory board usually happens when the project not only matures but its users and the community becomes so incredibly diverse and complex, that a board has to be formed to balance the needs of all these different types of users.

The seats on such board would not be ‘sold’ or ‘sponsored’, they would be open to the entire community and transparently allocated to individuals and companies that have objectively shown particular interest in contribution and well-being of the project.’

So, what do you think? Should there be a community-driven WordPress advisory board? Or do you think things are just fine the way they are?