But WP Engine was equally shitty (even if it's "legal" - OSI purism has no sense of justice) to steal his company's lunch, from their decades of hard work, and contribute absolutely nothing back.
Again, it reeks of the same foul behavior we see from the hyperscalers.
If you call me names, you’re misbehaving and should be called out for it. If I retaliate by knocking over your fence and spraypainting your cat, you get to sue me even though you were the one who behaved poorly, but legally, to start with.
TL;DR Matt claims WPE acted unethically, which is shameful. WPE claims Matt tried to ruin their business, in ways they say are illegal.
By the letter of the law, WPE is squeaky clean. But by kumbaya ethics or community spirit or whatever you want to call it, they're scummy vultures.
They're dipping into the "take a penny" jar and not replenishing it.
I can't square this with any sense of justice or morality.
ACF was so important to the ecosystem that Automattic felt the need to grab it after they kicked out the maintainers. Doesn't that go against the story that WPEngine was contributing nothing?
> They're dipping into the "take a penny" jar and not replenishing it.
> I can't square this with any sense of justice or morality.
Speak for yourself. Other people have different values and therefore interpretations of what's "moral" or "just".
If you want to make the argument that the only use of open source that's moral is one in which the user contributes back, that's fine. But I think you'll find yourself in a minority.
The last time I encountered someone making these points, they had a financial bias. Is that true for you?
Absolutely nothing besides:
- contributions, bug and security fixes to the core codebase
- the creation of multiple plugins which were free to use (though some had a premium offering)
- the contribution of at a minimum several hundred thousand dollars a year on event and other sponsorship, including for events they were banned from attending, had all mention removed (and in one case, Matt stood on a stage and spat venom at them for 45 minutes).
"Absolutely nothing" indeed.