WordPress 3.0 has been downloaded 3 million times (within 2 weeks of the launch) and the plugin directory followed suit with a milestone of its own: 100 million downloads.

WordPress, like we said earlier is transitioning from a blog platform to CMS and an important part in that transition is to keep the plugins and theme developers happy (and profitable).

We want to provide developers the tools they need to build the best possible plugins. We’re going to provide better integration with the forums so you can support your users. We’ll make more statistics available to you so you can analyze your user base, and over time we hope to make it easier for you to manage, build, and release localized plugins.

We want to improve how the core software works with your plugin and the plugin directory. We’re going to focus on ensuring seamless upgrades by making the best possible determinations about compatibility, and offer continual improvements to the plugin installer. And we also want to give you a better developer tool set like SVN notifications and improvements to the bug tracker.- blog

At a fundamental level, WordPress is one of the most inspiring software development company – they have managed to create a momentum among the developer base, they do triage features in a bit of ‘Hitler’ style (don’t please everybody) and the best part is that they are making money as well! (from enterprise business).