[chiefalchemist]

> It's a marketing strategy

And what makes Automattic's contributions any different? They "steer" the product to their benefit and sell that as what's good for them is good for all.

That's rubbish.

It's not contributing to "the cause" when the features you add are solely for your own benefit. Not that self-serving is wrong. But to sell it as benevolent red lines any decent bullshit detector.

Matt defined the license. Now he regrets that and he wants a cut. Nuttin wrong with that. But to sell it otherwise is shite. We're not that stupid.

[shprd]

> And what makes Automattic's contributions any different?

Well, unlike WPEngine, Automattic and Matt make significant contribution beyond their ecosystem, here are some:

- Let's encrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/sponsors/

- Matrix's open protocol: https://matrix.org/

- The PHP Foundation: https://thephp.foundation/

- Open Source Initiative: https://opensource.org/

- And the list goes on: contributing and sponsoring many projects and developers that everyone using the web benefited from, including you and billions of people (not counting wordpress's impact)

Please educate yourself before spreading FUD about people who made great contributions constantly to the open web, the entire industry, and promoted open source on every chance they got.

[chiefalchemist]

You left out Matt & Co partnering with privacy-crusher Google, and other "f*k the users this partnership is good for Automattic and my pockets" deals and decisions. And what about his anti-accessibility transgressions (with Gutenberg).

Matt championing himself as benevolent and using OSS as a shield is BS. No one is expecting him - or anyone - to be perfect. But he and his hypocrisy has jumped the shark.