It's actually very straightforward. The reply was by the General Counsel of Automattic and was intended to reduce Autmattic's liability. To that end, the first thing that was stated is that they had done nothing illegal.
That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
And if it is, that’s not my fault.
And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
This is blatantly untrue. WPEngine have repeatedly said they launch WordPress code that is bit for bit identical to the zip file published on wordpress.org. That's a claim that could _very_ easily be disproven if it were not true.
I don't think WPEngine are entirely blameless with regard to the WooCommerce Stripe plugin stuff. But I have two thoughts about that, firstly I think it's sleazy of Matt/Automattic to have slipped in referral monetisation codes into a payment plugin in the first place, and secondly the GPL explicitly allows WPEngine to change the code however they choose anyway. And the "nuclear war" Matt's declared and is fighting is all around WordPress trademarks, not WooCommerce or the Stripe plugin code anyway. Both sides come out looking sleazy over Stripe commisions here though.
The ElasticSearch/Redis/MongoDB vs AWS things are quite different in my opinion. They weren't purely relying on trademarks to "Al Capone" Amazon into handing over money they're not entitled to. Instead they all relicensed their code using something the OSF no longer considers "Open Source" using instead things like "Business Source Licenses", which they could do because they owned all the copyright to all the code, either having written it themselves or having contributors assign copyright to them. Matt/WordPress/Automattic _cannot_ do this, because they do not own copyright in all the code. WordPress itself was a fork of previously existing B2 code who's authors still own copyright but granted anybody (including WordPress) a license to use it under GPL2+ terms. I am almost certain (but do not know for sure) that WordPress does not have a copyright assignment agreement from everybody that's written new code that's made it's way into WP core (and that wouldn't have helped anyway since it was all built on "viral" GPL code so any changes also needed to be GPL2+). I'm 100% certain WordPress have no copyright ownership over almost all of the 60 thousand odd plugins on wordpress.org.
and by design. These are freeloaders because open-source software's intention is to allow for people to freeload off it!
Why should "corporate" freeloaders be considered any different than just a regular freeloader? Just because they have some money?
If said software do not wish to have any freeloaders, don't use licenses that allow it. Use something like dual licenced AGPL or use a non-opensource license.
As an example, Epic's Unreal Engine is not open source, but source available. It's licensed so that hobbiests can use it free of charge, but high revenue generating projects must pay. It's a good license, as it makes their intentions completely clear and on the outset.
> AWS's freeloading on elasticsearch and others.
if elastic doesn't want it, they could've followed the same licensing model as Unreal Engine. But of course, elastic wanted the exposure and network effect of a truly open source license, but wanted to collect when someone manages to make money off it.
Preach!
I'm tired of people complaining about other people using open source software in the exact way it was intended as "freeloaders".
If you want people to pay you for your software, then just make it proprietary. There is nothing wrong with proprietary software if that's what you want to do. But if you make it open source, you can't complain when people use it in an open source fashion.
"In 2021, with the 7.11 release, we moved our Apache 2.0-licensed source code in Elasticsearch and Kibana to be dual licensed under Server Side Public License (SSPL) and the Elastic License, giving users the choice of which license to apply. In September 2024, we are adding the Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved AGPLv3 license as an option alongside SSPL and our Elastic license ensuring our community and customers have open source access to use, modify, redistribute, and collaborate on the code with a clear set of rights of their choice." -- https://www.elastic.co/pricing/faq/licensing
Either you have a legal case, or you don’t, everything else is just yapping. If you want to protect your business against “freeloaders”, choose a licensee appropriately.
And yes, changing the code they run is fair game, especially if nobody cares about that feature. Let’s not pretend that whatever they disabled is such a core feature of WordPress, but somehow basically none of their users cared or care about it even to this day.
Showing up a decade later, saying “nice business you got going on here, it would be a shame if something happened to it, better give me 8% of it, to make sure it is protected” is something I’d expect from a mafia movie, not blog hosting.