The issue started from WP Engine not contributing back to WordPress, I don't see how they'd ever put up the resources to fork anything.
Matt's demand was allegedly specifically for "tens of millions to his for-profit company Automattic" (i.e. WordPress.com, a for-profit competitor of WP Engine, not WordPress.org) for a trademark license.
> The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit.
Matt's whole "WP Engine needs a trademark license, they don’t have one", to try to extract money from WP Engine, is legally toothless as far as I can tell.
According to WP Engine:
> Automattic CFO Mark Davies told a WP Engine board member that Automattic would “go to war” if WP Engine did not agree to pay its competitor Automattic a significant percentage of its gross revenues – tens of millions of dollars in fact – on an ongoing basis. Mr. Davies suggested the payment ostensibly would be for a “license” to use certain trademarks like WordPress, even though WP Engine needs no such license.
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240901224354/https://wordpress...
1. Fork and cherry-pick from upstream, don't accept contributions from outside. They need minimal changes.
2. Fork and maintain their fork independently, try to get community contributors too.