[hn_throwaway_99]

> I see a pattern of open source leaders being judged more harshly than proprietary software leaders.

I will only speak for myself, but I find this to be baloney. I'm not judging "open source leaders" more harshly - I'm judging a single open source leader, Matt Mullenweg, harshly solely due to his own actions and statements.

You say "What WP Engine has done is be soulless." That's kind of my whole point - I don't give a fuck, at all, that WP Engine is "soulless". First, they're a hosting company, not a church. My fundamental issue with Matt's behavior in the first place is that just because a company is "soulless", i.e. whatever line he has in his head that is the "minimum" a company should have to contribute back because they use open source software he first created, that he gets to do a shakedown, take over what was their largest open source contribution in the first place, and then demand 8% of their revenue.

Frankly, I don't believe any of this moralistic framing in the first place. I think he saw WP Engine as an "unfair" competitor to WordPress.com, and his actions are simply to cripple a business competitor.

[benatkin]

> I'm not judging "open source leaders" more harshly

On purpose, no. But it's a question of interest. People seem to have a lot of interest in going after open source tech leaders that they don't have for going after closed source tech leaders, partly because any time they go after closed source tech leaders they have to deal with paid defenders (many who are simply paid by being on the much larger payroll, partly funded by government contracts obtained through bribery).

If you'd have judged a FAANG the same way but don't ever get around to judging them, that amounts to being more harsh with open source leaders.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Whatever man. I think this is all completely irrelevant to the current WordPress saga, not to mention that I totally disagree with your 0-evidence hypothesis in the first place that people are somehow more critical of open source leaders. FWIW, there is plenty in my HN comment history lambasting Google's fall from technically-admired leader to "just another big company led by the bean counters".

[cutemonster]

> People seem to have a lot of interest in going after open source tech leaders

Also, this: Often there's more OSS users (since usually it's free).

If 1% of the users are angry, that could mean many more angry people for a popular OSS project, and comments here at HN, than for some similar proprietary software?