This has nothing to do with licensing. […] If you’re going to run a business that depends on open-source software, there’s an expectation of contributing back or, at the very least, not exploiting the resources of a non-profit.
Sorry, but you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. It’s absolutely and only a licensing issue, and as a user of open source software you are obligated to do what the license states. WordPress is licensed under GPL, which explicitly allows software being run for any purposes, explicitly including commercial purposes. The giving back part would come into play if WPE would use WordPress as part of their own software - which they don’t.
WPE did what the license, and therefore Matt and Automattic allowed them to. Matt decided to try and literally extort money from them, before going on his fully fledged meltdown.
Whether WPEs business model is morally questionable is irrelevant. They did play by the rules. Matt did not.
And the situation is not new, as far as I remember redis was the last big player in that situation. But they also did play by the rules, they changed their license starting from a given version, made big hosters that made money by redis-as-a-service pay for using redis, and took the L like grown ups by losing their FOSS community and having valkey as a hard fork and direct competitor now.
No drama, no meltdowns, no shit storms and no lawyers involved.
Sorry, but you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. It’s absolutely and only a licensing issue, and as a user of open source software you are obligated to do what the license states. WordPress is licensed under GPL, which explicitly allows software being run for any purposes, explicitly including commercial purposes. The giving back part would come into play if WPE would use WordPress as part of their own software - which they don’t.
WPE did what the license, and therefore Matt and Automattic allowed them to. Matt decided to try and literally extort money from them, before going on his fully fledged meltdown.
Whether WPEs business model is morally questionable is irrelevant. They did play by the rules. Matt did not.
And the situation is not new, as far as I remember redis was the last big player in that situation. But they also did play by the rules, they changed their license starting from a given version, made big hosters that made money by redis-as-a-service pay for using redis, and took the L like grown ups by losing their FOSS community and having valkey as a hard fork and direct competitor now. No drama, no meltdowns, no shit storms and no lawyers involved.