I don't agree/disagree with it, but I don't read Matt's motivation as "I want more money" but more like "I want to defend this thing I've built that I feel like is being abused right now", even if I personally might not be able to see it in that light, or agree with the approach Matt is taking.
> Matt seems convinced (for better or worse) that WP Engine tried to mislead Wordpress users, and tried to damage Wordpress in other ways.
He's not.
> The analogy I made is they got Al Capone for taxes,” Mullenweg says. [...] Mullenweg argues one of the reasons for its success is the use of “WordPress” across its site. “That’s why we’re using that legal avenue to really, yeah, pressure them. That’s true: we are pressuring them.”
He wants WP Engine to pay/contribute (while requiring audits to ensure they're properly contributing), and is just using trademark claims as the instrument to force them to pay up.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262232/matt-mullenweg-w...
The argument that WP Engine is trying to mislead people is weak at best. We're seriously saying that talking about WordPress hosting was misleading? To whom? What about every other host that does this?
Also considering the current deliberately misleading state of .com/.org/Automattic/Matt/the foundation etc, I really think they could do a lot to lead by example there before going this unnecessarily nuclear to others. I don't believe it because the reaction is totally out of line with the issue.
Trying to see things from Matts perspective, it totally makes sense to go nuclear in order to defend what you see as your baby being under attack from a hostile for-profit entity.
I don't necessarily agree that the situation actually is "WP Engine is attacking Wordpress", but clearly Matt sees it like that, no matter if it's real or not, and it does make his actions understandable, even if I disagree with them, or how weak the argument is.
Trying to see things from the perspective of the wordpress community, and not just 1 dude: wordpress is not his baby, it is the community's baby, and he is the hostile for-profit entity attacking it with things like this checkbox, cutting off over a million community members from security updates, etc.
tl;dr: nobody is saying Matt doesn't think he's always in the right (obviously he does), we're just pointing out that he isn't, and his actions hurt wordpress and the community.