I thought the structure was set up in such a way that only Automattic has commercial rights to the Wordpress trademark. To balance this, Wordpress.org has discretionary power on deciding whether Automattic are good stewards of the trademark. Can Wordpress.org directly ask for the 8%? It seems like it has to be done through Automattic.

This whole situation was handled poorly, but can it really be considered bullying? It definitely speaks to the heart of the eternal problem of open source: the imbalance of givers and takers at the bazaar.