Thx for posting. Seeing that this wasn't linked in the "Dear Matt" letter made me wonder if it was left off accidentally or on purpose.
IMO, it looks like the response didn't really address the core complaint of the original letter. Not conclusive, but makes it seem less like an accident.
Neither the CEO or the developer linked to the original. That's definitely on purpose.
For me I see Matt as an dog trying to mark what is his and slapping GPL license on top of everything. If so I would like to see some of the woocommerce plugins released publicly as it falls under GPL
WC plugins are 100% GPL. If you take a delivery of a plugin, you get all of the source code, and have all of the freedoms to use / modify etc. as WP itself.
The whole situation with large amounts of "premium" plugins that apparently are GPL for the most part (or at least should be) but don't like to talk about it, include all kinds of license activation features and are split into a separate "free" version with reduced feature set and advertisements splattered all over is a little strange. It's also very off putting when you're used to the typical way open source is developed and distributed.