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From what I gathered, it is absolutely a question of licensing.
Wordpress is gpl so anybody can host it and provide hosting for others. WPEngine does make money like that and that seemed to rub matt the wrong way.
So he requested more involvement from wpe, claiming they do none (factually false). Then they started trying to extort wpe using trademark as an excuse (even changing the trademark page to reflect their new stance), while also smearing them on the official channels of the project. I'm also skipping the childish behavior of blocking anybody that could be related to wpe from interacting on the official wp.org site, then using this self inflicted wound to say one of WPE plugin is insecure (because they couldn't publish the update) and doing an hostile takeover of it.

WPE is totally within their rights to use the wp software without giving a cent back to Matt. If WP wanted payment for the infrastructure they provide on the .org site, they can change the rules to require commercial entities to pay for it (which they totally could do, but that would hurt the other players in the ecosystem). If they had a (real) trademark issue it would have been resolved under closed doors by lawyers.

there’s an expectation of contributing back or, at the very least, not exploiting the resources of a non-profit.

No, there are no expectations of contributing. It would be worded in the license otherwise (the only expectation of giving back in the gpl is that you publish the changes you did to your users). And WordPress.org is not the non profit but is run by the for-profit company that Matt is the CEO of.

So let’s focus on the actual problem: a large company exploiting a shared ecosystem to run a commercial service.

Like automatic is doing with wordpress? Don't they profit from other devs/companies publishing plugins for them to use on their platform? (Actually not opposed to that, that's the game of open source, but it's a bit hypocritical to only cry when it doesn't serve them).

Edit: From your original comment:

They could have easily avoided this situation without turning it into a turf war.

Yes, then why did Matt turn this into a turf war? He totally expected the community to take his side and turned it into a shit slinging show for all of us to enjoy.

You do realize, mullenberg is also owner of automattic? A large WordPress hosting provider just like wpengine?

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/20/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/

He has some points, mullenberg, but the fact that he's one of three really only active heads of WordPress.org and ceo of automattic, which has wpengine as its direct competitor, just tastes foul.

This has nothing to do with licensing. [...] If you're going to run a business that depends on open-source software, there’s an expectation of contributing back or, at the very least, not exploiting the resources of a non-profit.

Sorry, but you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. It's absolutely and only a licensing issue, and as a user of open source software you are obligated to do what the license states. WordPress is licensed under GPL, which explicitly allows software being run for any purposes, explicitly including commercial purposes. The giving back part would come into play if WPE would use WordPress as part of their own software - which they don't.

WPE did what the license, and therefore Matt and Automattic allowed them to. Matt decided to try and literally extort money from them, before going on his fully fledged meltdown.

Whether WPEs business model is morally questionable is irrelevant. They did play by the rules. Matt did not.

And the situation is not new, as far as I remember redis was the last big player in that situation. But they also did play by the rules, they changed their license starting from a given version, made big hosters that made money by redis-as-a-service pay for using redis, and took the L like grown ups by losing their FOSS community and having valkey as a hard fork and direct competitor now. No drama, no meltdowns, no shit storms and no lawyers involved.

That's how I see it exactly. Matt, as one of few people in the world with the voice and reach to do so, is trying to protect and help support the WordPress ecosystem.

Let's not forget to follow the money, obviously WPE and Silver lake are going to do everything in their power to make him, and by association, anything he's a part of, look like the bad guy.