[emn13]

One man's extortion is another's negotiation. I think this framing, however natural given Matt's phrasing, isn't really helpful. We all routinely extort better deals - we just call it negotiation, and we usually try to be less plainspoken about it.

Even the kind of leverage/threats he was making aren't abnormal. What's threating to defame or emphasize looked at from one side is offering to sign a non-disclosure or non-disparagement from the other.

The content of these threats may be less tolerable than other negotiating tactics, but they are entirely normal in negotiations we don't label extortion. He's not donating horse heads.

As to pulling access to plugins - if at its heart this is about freeloading, then that action seems proportionate in principle as it's one of the few possible leverage points - it did not block existing installations, merely new ones - but the effect was likely poorly thought out as it relates to updates. Then again, WP engine had a workaround in pretty much no time, so even the update issue is not a big one; i.e. that power you state that Matt has does not appear to actually exist.

The whole saga seems very much in the eye of the beholder. Whether the end result will end up achieving Matt's apparent aims is of course another.

I doubt current wordpress sites will suffer much long-term harm in the crossfire, but they will perhaps have a short-term mess. But the power balance shift may well harm the overall ecosystem severely. The loss of trust alone is problematic; and if this takes down the de-factor maintainers of the wordpress core, which seems possible right now, that would be bad. Or worse, if it convinces them to go semi-closed source, and they then drag out their decline in a way that makes a finding momentum for a replacement hard.

[lolinder]

> One man's extortion is another's negotiation.

No, this isn't a matter of perspective, it's a matter of law, and it's specifically part of the complaint brought against him [0]:

> WPE has been injured in numerous ways as a result of Defendants’ ongoing extortion, including, but not limited to, measures taken to respond to the extortionate threats, loss and continuing loss of customers, and injury to its goodwill and reputation. WPE is entitled to monetary damages as allowed and injunctive relief to prohibit Defendants from continuing their unlawful actions.

The court will decide if it's attempted extortion, and if it is then Matt and Automattic will owe damages.

[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...

[emn13]

Let's let the judge or jury figure out the legally pertinent facts and standards; that does not always correlate well with either morality or plain language. I wouldn't be surprised to learn some example of clear extortion in plain English isn't once judicially decided; the converse is just as likely. Famously extreme examples of that disconnect include the Californian bees that are actually fish (legally speaking), but less extreme examples happen all the time.

People sound like they are angry because they feel it's extortion - and I don't think it should matter what the judicial technicalities of some law say about some legislative definition of "extortion".

And in any case; ideally the law follows common sense not vice versa, so in the event that the law disagrees with common sense as a person with no stake in this game the legal ruling just doesn't interest me except as to the degree of damage done due to the judgement.

Finally, there's a very good chance all of this will be settled and we either won't hear about the terms in detail; or we'll hear some agreed upon compromise that won't reflect either of the party's actual beliefs, nor common sense, nor a judicial ruling - merely some negotiated settlement.

[Kye]

There's no practical way to make WordPress closed source. 23 years of contributors would have to sign their code over. It might have been possible to get enough people to do it and rewrite the rest before the community was put in such a polarized state, but now there will be significant contributions made by people who won't do it on principle.

[emn13]

That's good to hear; some projects require copyright assignment before merging contributions, or some extended license that might permit re-licensing, and I wasn't aware of the status of the Wordpress code base in that respect.