Please note: This is an opinion piece by Scott Bowler and does not count as an official statement by ClassicPress.

I would like to put a topic to bed. Dislike of WordPress Gutenberg can not be interpreted as a fear of change, to make this claim is disingenuous and demeans the person this claim is directed at.

People who have made their career selling, maintaining, designing and building websites are in a constant state of flux and the vast majority of us are excited to discover, try and learn new technologies. In fact, the ability to embrace change for the benefit of our customers needs to be in our DNA, otherwise we will fail to innovate, compete and earn new business.

On a personal level, I love change so much that my daily routine involves jumping onto ProductHunt at 8am GMT every day (this is when the new products go live) to check out what's new - to see what I can embrace to improve my own workflows or improve the performance of my customer's campaigns. My evening routine involves browsing HackerNews, a variety of subreddits (/r/Laravel, /r/WordPress, /r/PHP), dipping into dev.to and of course chatting with people about ClassicPress.

When I'm not developing with WordPress/ClassicPress, I use the Laravel framework. I was on the BETA waiting list for Laravel Nova since it was announced a few months ago, and had adopted it into new projects within weeks of its launch. Why? Because it is absolutely fantastic! I've dedicated many hours to learning this new tool.

When talking to other people involved with the ClassicPress project I see the same passion for discovery and change on a daily basis. We LOVE change. ClassicPress itself shows a willingness and eagerness to embrace change. Dedicating hundreds of volunteer hours to building something new, building a new approach to community, building novel solutions, building a new brand (the list goes on) - all of this is a massive change from sticking with the status-quo and pushing forward with WordPress.

To say that I don't like Gutenberg because I don't like change is, quite frankly, ridiculous. I don't like Gutenberg because it's UX is horrendous. I don't like Gutenberg because it's buggy. I don't like Gutenberg because it's being forced into core and I'd prefer it to stay as a plugin. I don't like Gutenberg because it's going to cost my business hundreds of man hours in retraining, support calls and slower workflows.

The next time you accuse a Gutenberg naysayer of being "afraid of change", perhaps it's time for a moment of reflection.... Perhaps they're not scared of change - perhaps there is good reason why they don't like Gutenberg. Perhaps you should dig deeper and try and put yourself in their shoes.

It's worth trying change, right?