I agree with you that Automattic needs a paradigm shift (massive leadership change, probably), but I don’t think the openness of their software is the problem.

Just because they have a huge number of OSS projects. Most of it is open source, even things that really don’t see 3rd party contributions (like https://github.com/Automattic/vip-go-mu-plugins, https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso, https://github.com/Automattic/redvelvet-lib, https://github.com/Automattic/newspack-plugin, https://github.com/Automattic/pocket-casts-ios)

Automattic has other issues (leadership, especially!!) but software development happens largely in the open. Just look at the GH issues and PRs in the WP-calypso and Gutenberg repositories, and you’ll see even a lot of technical discussion and planning happening completely public. You can even chime in if you want :)

Automattic has lots of issues. But they simply have much more open software development practices than nearly any other tech company (most of which are completely private and closed source). I just don’t think this is the core problem.