I run a WordPress agency and although I think the current childish spat will take a very long time to cut through with our clients, if it ever does, I feel huge vicarious embarassment that it's come to this. The fact that Mullenweg doesn't see the conflict of interest, or does see it but is too comfy being in complete control, is a great shame.
To be clear, I think Mullenweg may have a point about WP Engine - I'm not close enough to it to know one way or the other - it's the way that he's chosen to handle it that's embarassing and concerning. As I've said before, adding the pineapple checkbox - in response to a court order - just makes WordPress look fucking ridiculous.
Edit: the other amusing thing was the fanboys commenting under the blog post about how there's no conflict of interest and how Matt would never do anything like this.
All the stuff of them not contributing (while they maintain some of the most essential plugins) and them taking advantage… Is simply desperate search for arguments. Wordpress is open-source project licensed under GPLv2 you can use it however you want in limits of that license. And point of GPLv2 is that you can use it pretty much how you want - redistribute it, sell it, modify it. The main limit is that you have to publish the improvements you make to the software.
Its like if Linus Torwalds was suing Amazon AWS.
WP engine is simply not doing anything wrong otherwise Matt would sue them to the ground years ago. WP engine is just too successful for his tastes.
Hilarious to imagine him writing this with a straight face.
I know many employees of the company Mullenweg runs (mismanages). He is not held in particularly high esteem among them.
Always, always, all-ways wear thick cottony garments so that you remember to pick lint out of your personal "event horizon" - it's a navel! relax, a little - everyone's got one.
