After reading all these comments, I started to worry and even panic because it seemed to me that I was on the wrong side. HN, which side are we on?
Eg Apple is kinda screwing with Spotify and claim it's their general rules, and it's a long complicated case. But if Apple came out and said "yeah, we do this specifically because we don't like Spotify and to hurt them in particular", that case would be open and shut.
That's why it's so obvious Matt is not listening to the lawyers. Everything in this case is because he said it, putting it in writing when no one asked him to.
If they wanted to legally stop WPE from accessing their servers then adding a policy to the effect of limiting how much traffic a single company is allowed to do without a explicit contract would do that. Many companies has similar conditions added to their TOS at some point after an unconditional free-for-all. They might want to allow small companies to continue use their service for free, but start demanding payment from large companies who can afford to pay and who also have real impact on server and network costs. They don't explicitly write who those large companies are.
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It’s absolutely about both. If Apple kicked Spotify off the App Store right after launching Apple Music, we’d have a better comparison.
You could like Matt and think he's basically right about freeloaders, yet you would still be horrified and absolutely powerless as you watch him shred his once-whole community into halves, then quarters, then eighths as he doubles down and doubles down some more...
The matter is that this "freeloading" is subjective as the GPL license does not really place any contribution requirements. Matt says it is about trademarks but the court stated TMs were not violated either. Dura lex sed lex, he will have to deal with it.
This is just my personal opinion.
...whereas Matt's being a jerk in a way that involves collateral for the general community of people who use WordPress. So everyone is more concerned about him, because he's threatening a lot more people.
I don't think Matt should ever be required to provide the live services of wordpress.org, but as for WP Engine, the license is supposed to be free for them and that's pretty clear.