[ensignavenger]

Sure, if they put the same requirements to pay on everyone. But specifically targeting one major competitor to the for profit company that is controlled by the same person who controls the nonprofit?

That gets into a pretty.sticky situation real quick.

[RandomThoughts3]

Does it?

The fundamental question is: is the non profit going outside the boundary of its status?

I’m not fully convinced that’s the case even in the context of the for profit disagreements with its competitor.

[TheNewsIsHere]

I agree. And whether or not Automattic gets the money or WordPress.org does matter, but so does the way any such transaction is structured.

If Automattic is an infrastructure vendor (in a technical sense at least) to WordPress.org, it’s still reasonable that Automattic doesn’t want to just give its competitors free infrastructure.

I own a hosting business that’s heavily built upon WordPress and even I — at a scale immensely smaller than WP Engine - CDN some of my critical plugins and themes myself. (For a lot of reasons.)

WP Engine is absolutely massive. The load they put on systems that they consume from isn’t trivial. Asking for remuneration from a competitor that is using your services, according to their means, isn’t anticompetitive.

[ensignavenger]

I'm not fully convinced either, but it certainly raises eyebrows, and might attract an investigation to gather more facts.