[brycelarkin]

I can see Matt’s point of view. Data transfer fees are expensive, especially at WordPress scale. Automattic probably covers a lot of that cost that wordpress.org is incurring and wants WP Engine to pay their fair share.

WP Engine also seems to do some other “not in good faith” things such as change the woocommmerce Stripe attribution from wordpress.org to their own Stripe account.

While the legal dispute is on trademark, I think it’s really on WP Engine profiting on wordpress.org without giving back. It’s not illegal, but blacklisting WP Engine isn’t illegal either.

Automattic is essentially subsidizing a private equity backed company. I’d be upset and frustrated too if I was in Matt’s position.

If you support WP Engine, you’re supporting Silver Lake Private Equity.

[x0x0]

If Matt had wanted to, for example, tell WPEngine they're own their own for hosting these services with a cutoff date at least 4 weeks in the future, then fair play. Or to demand to bill them some reasonable cost share of the price to operate (and let's not play games, a reasonable cost for the humans involved, which likely far exceeds servers or bandwidth), then still fair play.

To pitch a tantrum, cut them off with no notice, then gloat about it online... oof. I can't understand why anyone would want to be in business with someone like that.

[itsdrewmiller]

This position rests pretty heavily on the idea that Wordpress.com is subsidizing wordpress.org, which is a charitable foundation that accepts donations. Do you have any specific reason to believe this is true? I don’t recall seeing that complaint directly here but maybe I missed it.

[brycelarkin]

A quick look at the Automattic site (https://automattic.com/about/) says they dedicate 5% of company time to WP open source.

Their GitHub has over 1000 repos, likely all WP related. https://github.com/Automattic

I don’t doubt Automattic is not putting in their fair share into the WP community.

[itsdrewmiller]

When I say subsidizing I mean financially subsidizing (i.e. paying for wordpress.org bandwidth costs) - that's the only way the comment makes sense, and I am not inclined to believe it to be true without evidence. As the other response notes though wordpress.org isn't even the foundation apparently, so is wordpress.com subsidizing wordpress.org? Have they asked WPEngine to cover their costs?

[FireBeyond]

> Wordpress.com is subsidizing wordpress.org, which is a charitable foundation that accepts donations

Nope. There goes Matt, muddying the waters. Contrary to many people (including myself's belief) wp.org is very explicitly, in his words, NOT the Foundation, just a benevolent gift of his to the community. You could be excused, given all the links to donate to the Foundation and accompanying text, or the fact that it lives on the Foundation's ASN, though.