Categories
Releases WordPress

WordPress 5.9 Core Contribution Statistics

WordPress 5.9 « Joséphine » was released on January 25th, 2022. This version is named « Joséphine », after the international jazz singer Joséphine Baker. She also had French nationality and entered the Panthéon last year, in 2021.

This release was a big one. It unveiled to the public the first implementation of the Full Site Editing features. The release was delayed from December 2021 to January 25th, 2022, to make sure it’s ready to go. I was honored to contribute to the release squad as Triage Lead, and I really enjoyed to work with all these talented people 💙

As for previous releases, let’s have a look on a few stats about this release.

In the past, I already published some contributions stats for versions 5.35.45.55.6 and 5.7. I did it again for WP 5.9, so we can have an eye on the relative “influence” of countries and companies on WordPress Core.

Before diving into WordPres 5.9 Core contributions stats, I wanted to share a few disclaimers, for better context:

  • These statistics only relate to Core contributions (= props gained for source code contributions) of WordPress. There is a lot of other types of contributions, not listed here: marketing, communication, translation, testing…
  • To get these stats, I parsed the WordPress.org profile page of each contributor to get some public informations about them: country, employer, and wether they already contributed to WordPress Core or not.
  • It includes both Core contributions on Trac and Gutenberg pull requests on GitHub.
  • Those stats are based on what’s declared in each contributors’s wp.org profile. Users with empty profile informations are not taken into account.

WordPress 5.9 Overall Stats

624 people from at least 54 countries and 159 identified companies contributed to WordPress 5.9.

Worth noting that 192 people contributed to WordPress Core for the very first time! That’s around 30% of the total number of contributors.

The ratio of new contributors was lower than in previous releases like 5.5 or 5.6, but it’s higher than 5.7 and 5.8 and it still represents quite a good onboarding ratio for an open-source project.

Overall contribution evolution across recent releases (click to enlarge)

Country ranking by number of contributions

It’s interesting to see how much WordPress is a worldwide project. Contributions come from all over the planet ♥️

The USA is still number 1 by far with 1169 contributions, but Russia is behind with 330 contributions, still led by Sergey, the second person who made the most individual contributions on this version of WP. Australia follows, with 281 contributions overtaking the United Kingdom (243 contributions) and France (202 contributions). The Netherlands, Algeria, Canada, Greece, Georgia and Denmark are following.

Map repartition (click to enlarge)
Countries by number of contributions

Country ranking by number of contributors

Countries by number of contributors

If instead of counting contributions, we prefer to count the contributors (number of people credited in Trac tickets or GitHub issues), then we have the following results.

USA is still on the top of the game with 109 people. India is still second (since WordPress 4.7) with 43 contributors.

UK comes at the third place with 31 people, Canada and Germany both follow with 16 contributors, and France with 15 people credited.

Map repartition (click to enlarge)

It’s interesting to note that some countries are in the top ranking with only a few contributors. For example, Georgia and Denmark are in the top 10, but they both have only one contributor!


Company ranking by contributions

Automattic is still the most prolific company with employees credited in no less than 1787 contributions (by 83 contributors), and is followed by plugin editor Yoast with 454 contributions (by 11 contributors) and the Whodunit French agency (170 contributions). Next, we have Bluehost (165), a freelancer (!) named Advies en zo (161), Godaddy (156), and international WordPress agencies 10up (104), Human Made (85), Alley Interactive and XWP (56). Google is the next company with 52 contributions.

Worth noting that major stakeholders can still be categorized in three sorts of companies: agencies, plugins/themes editors and hosting companies. Well, and of course, Automattic 😜

In the graphic below, you’ll see all the company credited in WordPress 5.9 and the number of contributions of their employees.

Company ranking by contributors

Of the 159 identified companies that contributed to WordPress 5.9, Automattic had by far the most contributors, with 83 people involved. 10up and Yoast are the second biggest contributors with 11 people each. rtCamp and Multidots come third with 6 people each (they dont have much contributions, but they have more contributors than many other companies in the ecosystem!). Then, we have a group of companies with 4 or 5 contributors: Human MadeBluehostWP Syntex (the company behind Polylang), GoogleXWP, WebDevStudio, and Awesome Motive.

Thank you to everyone who helped
to release WordPress 5.9. Big or small,
each of the above companies contributes
to the Five for the future initiative 💙

Individuals ranking – WordPress 5.9

Here is the top 30 of WordPress 5.9 contributors. You can also checkout the full table on this spreadsheet.

WP UsernameContributionsCountryCompany
hellofromtonya363United StatesAutomattic
sergeybiryukov326RussiaYoast
audrasjb168FranceWhodunit
jrf161NetherlandsAdvies en zo
desrosj155United StatesBluehost
mamaduka142GeorgiaGoDaddy
youknowriad132AlgeriaAutomattic
ntsekouras113GreeceAutomattic
joen112DenmarkAutomattic
sabernhardt83United States
mciampini79Automattic
peterwilsoncc78Australia10up
costdev73
ellatrix71BulgariaAutomattic
talldanwp69AustraliaAutomattic
johnbillion67United KingdomHuman Made Ltd
noisysocks66AustraliaAutomattic
get_dave64United KingdomAutomattic
jorgefilipecosta61PortugalAutomattic
glendaviesnz56
kevinfodness55United StatesAlley (https://alley.co)
zieladam55PolandAutomattic
aristath49GreeceYoast
kevin94072648TaiwanAutomattic
carlosgprim48United States
azaozz47CanadaAutomattic
isabel_brison47
poena47SwedenYoast
spacedmonkey45United KingdomXWP
mukesh2744India

Noteworthy contributors

Below you’ll see the list of noteworthy contributors for this release. Please note that noteworthy contributors are people who took part of the release squad, + people with many contributions or people who contributed a lot of time to help the release to ship (they are nominated by the release leads).

Noteworthy ContributorsUsernameDetailsOther details
Matt MullenwegmattRelease Lead
Tonya MorkhellofromTonyaCore Tech LeadOver 300 contributions / Release coordinator
Robert AndersonnoisysocksEditor Tech LeadOver 60 contributions / Editor Docs
George MamadashvilimamadukaEditor Tech LeadOver 130 contributions
Jb AudrasaudrasjbTriage LeadOver 160 contributions / Core Docs
Marcus KazmierczakmkazDocumentation LeadOver 30 contributions / Editor Docs
Kjell ReigstadkjellrTheme LeadOver 20 contributions
Jeff OngjffngTheme LeadOver 20 contributions
Josepha Haden ChomphosychanthabouneMarComms Co-Lead
Mary BaummarybaumMarComms Co-Lead
Abha ThakorwebcommsatMarComms Co-Lead
Anne McCarthyannezazuTest LeadHelpHub Docs
Piotrek Boniuboniu91Test Lead
Jonathan BossengerpsykroTech Writer
Ahmed Chaionchaion07Triage Deputy
Milana Capmilana_capDocumentation Deputy
Matias VenturamatvebLead Architect of Gutenberg
Sergey BiryukovsergeybiryukovOver 300 contributionsMission Control
Juliette Reinders FolmerjrfOver 150 contributionsCore Docs
Jonathan DesrosiersdesrosjOver 150 contributionsBundled Themes updates
Riad BenguellayouknowriadOver 125 contributions
Nik TsekourasntsekourasOver 100 contributions
Joen A.joenOver 100 contributions
Stephen BernhardtsabernhardtOver 75 contributionsCore Docs
Marco CiampinimciampiniOver 75 contributions
Peter WilsonpeterwilsonccOver 75 contributionsSecurity Team
Colin StewartcostdevOver 50 contributionsHelped a lot on triage/review
AndréoandregalOver 50 contributions
Ella van DurpeellatrixOver 50 contributions
John BlackbournjohnbillionOver 50 contributions
Daniel RichardstalldanwpOver 50 contributions
David Smithget_daveOver 50 contributions
Jorge CostajorgefilipecostaOver 50 contributions
Glen DaviesglendaviesnzOver 50 contributions
Kevin FodnesskevinfodnessOver 50 contributions
Adam ZielzieladamOver 50 contributions
Ari StathopoulosaristathOver 40 contributions
Kai Haokevin940726Over 40 contributions
Carlos GarciavefusionOver 40 contributions
Andrew OzzazaozzOver 40 contributions
Isabel Brisonisabel_brisonOver 40 contributions
Carolina NymarkpoenaOver 40 contributions
Jonny HarrisspacedmonkeyOver 40 contributions
Mukesh Panchalmukesh27Over 40 contributions
Beatriz FialhobeafialhoTwenty Twenty-Two Design
Pablo HoneypablohoneyhoneyTwenty Twenty-Two Design
Nalini ThakornalininonstopnewsukAbout page/MarComms contributions

Mon texte alternatif

I hope you liked that post! Comments & shares are welcome 😍

You can also buy me a beer or a coffee if you want 🍻☕️

Feel free to reuse any graphic or data used in this post, without any limitation. The raw data are available on this spreadsheet.

Contact me if you have any question.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Legal notice