The context is getting a bit murky, so let’s start with this:
> That's not my point. My point is: if they want to fork it, it will be expensive.
That was your second point, and I don’t disagree with it.
Now, for the rest of your post.
> Those aren't forks.
I am not sure what point you are making here. Forking has nothing to do with either ripping off anyone or trademarks. The possibility to fork software is a fundamental principle of free software. As in, you cannot have free software that cannot be forked. If you don’t want people to fork it, don’t make it free.
Wordpress itself is a rebranded fork of b2, and nobody has any issue with that.
> Full forking the Linux kernel and rebranding it would be hard for the same reasons as forking and rebranding Wordpress.
If you fork a project you cannot use someone else’s IP, so you have to rebrand if the project name is a trademark. AFAIK, the Android kernels are forks and don’t use the Linux trademark, for example. Rebranding does not make forking any easier or harder, it’s completely orthogonal.
You mean that it would be difficult because they would need to pay developers to maintain the fork, right? This is true, but it has nothing to do with ripping off anyone. Matt is not embarrassing himself because forking would be complicated. His message is clear, and you wrote it yourself: “they profit off Wordpress' brand for free”. Which is dishonest and misleading.