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Agree. The fundamental differences between Free Software and Open Source but Commercial Software were always tricky.

The "we'd like you to contribute to our code base, but we want to be the only people making money from it" position of a lot of Open Source companies is untenable. And you can easily see how the original "anyone can make money off this code" position would get warped over time and board meetings to "these parasites are stealing our revenue".

I think it reflects the other side of the problem, the way that maintainers of open source packages get abused and taken advantage of. We need to work out some way of funding and rewarding software development that allows it to be freely used and also adequately compensated. This is not easy.

I think there’s a place for “we did 99% of the work here, but we want you to be able to tweak things if you need, read the code, and compile it for new systems without us in the loop.”

In that case I see no problem with the main sponsor company not wanting just anyone to come and make money off their work. They might accept contributions if offered up, but they are not hoping to gain much from them.

That’s in stark contrast to a project like Linux where it much more heavily relies on outside people getting into the development cycle.

To your point actually, I think it can be sticky for an open source maintainer of a small project when someone comes along and tries to be a more active contributor and treat your project like the latter when you’re really intending it to be more like the former. There’s no great signal of what type of open source you’re intending to create apart from saying “I don’t really want significant contributions” in your readme.

> In that case I see no problem with the main sponsor company not wanting just anyone to come and make money off their work.

There is space for that, but it's not open source or free software, and the project should use a license that reflects that.

From the article:

> WordPress’s GPL code

Which, is a FSF license. What change are you advocating for in this situation?

It's a question of philosophy, not license. The whole "release code under GPL but get angry when other people besides you start making more money than you do from it" thing is strikingly different from the attitude in the GPL FAQ:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.en.htm...

The difference I'm flagging is about why you write the code, not just what license you choose. Free Software is about user freedoms, which freedoms are in no way hampered by the existence of an entity like WP Engine but are hampered when you go scorched earth against said entity.

The issue at hand seems to be WP Engine using Automattic-sponsored infrastructure for their own for-profit services, not modifications to free software.

That's the place that Matt decided to hit them, but that's not where the complaint lies. The complaint as laid out in the blog posts [0][1] is nearly identical to the complaints that Elastic had against AWS: trademark use causing confusion and drawing customers away from the "official" offerings.

Beyond that, Matt absolutely has beef with modifications that WP Engine has made to the free software, going so far as to say that these modifications mean that what they're offering is "not WordPress". Never mind that WordPress.com is likewise a bastardized modification—that's okay because it's "us" doing the modifying!

> This is one of the many reasons they are a cancer to WordPress, and it’s important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread. WP Engine is setting a poor standard that others may look at and think is ok to replicate. We must set a higher standard to ensure WordPress is here for the next 100 years.

This kind of attitude is incompatible with the premise of Free Software, which places a strong emphasis on encouraging reuse and modification to suit user needs.

[0] https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/

[1] https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/

I haven't been following the drama since the beginning so thanks for the perspective. Totally agree this isn't good.

What people say is one thing but one should draw conclusions instead from what they do. Too often the GPL is used to enforce a two-tier system in which everyone is free but some are more free than others. The original creators of a work retain proprietary and commercial relicensing rights while everyone else gets serfdom.

Agreed. And the communications I'm seeing out of WordPress.org around this very much suggest that WordPress is firmly in that category.

That's not because of the GPL. The GPL has little to do with barring access to a platform on which code is published. Arguably, if a copy existed elsewhere, say GitHub, then WPEngine is free to use that code according to the GPL.

In other words: once code is published with the GPL and someone has a copy, the original creators can do little to nothing to stop them from using said code however they see fit. That's what drives forking.

In the same vain, original creators always have, and will have, the freedom as rights holders over creative works, to change the license on new versions published. Of course, the caveat being holding the rights over contributions made by third parties (hence the existence of contested contributor agreements).

The real issue here is a for-profit entity driving the governance of a non-profit entity. There's not just the ethical but also legality at play here. And this has little to do with copyright.

It's also worth noting that WordPress is a descendent of the B2/cafelog blogging software. Automattic, themselves, are the other people making money off of someone else's project...and now they're mad that other other people are doing the same.

You're trying to come up with distinctions between Open Source and Free Software where there are practically none, except for the politics of Free Software, which is inconsequential BS.

I guess what I'm saying is that the politics (I phrased it as ethics, but I think we're talking about the same thing) are far more consequential than people give them credit for, and isolating the mechanics from the ethical framework is why Open Source is losing coherency as a movement—it's a religion with no doctrine, and in the absence of a strong inward-facing ethic it doesn't have enough staying power to hold out in the face of monetary incentives.

The whole point of Open Source was for it to not be a religion.

If anything, it is the indoctrination in Free Software that led many young people to believe that proprietary software is immoral. Coupled with zero-interest rates, this led to companies founded without sustainable business models. The companies making it work are usually doing so by selling products and services where the OSS parts are complementary and not the main product being sold, and it's a good thing they do.

I'd say that the doctrine part doesn't help at all.