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There's a non-zero chance he might have got one-shotted by Ayahuasca setting all this off.
I mean, one of all of my ex's attempts to get people's validation was doing Ayahuasca (by drinking Yagé). It did nothing for her huge ego - not even throwing up like crazy did anything for her.
It's not the first time Mullenweg shows his megalomaniac side and attempt to manipulate the community for his own benefit. I still recall pretty clearly all the Gutenberg drama. Some people will never change.
Open Source does not mean free labour. WordPress has been built by people employed by Matt either via Automattic or via his other entities. WordPress would not exist as it is without Matt. To the point, if Matt didn't like you, you would find it hard to contribute.
He may be a dickhead and in the wrong. But acting like he's benefiting from other people's free labour just shows you've never paid attention to the development of WordPress.
For example, in the early 2010s I manned a help booth at wordcamp. I frequented the forums and gave folk advice on issues they had with free plugins.
This is entirely distinct from Wordpress core and I would say that the ecosystem of plugins was the driving force behind WP’s rise to dominance. I neither wanted or needed Matt Mulenwegs blessing to participate, but he seems to have forgotten that lately.
Is Matt responsible, financially, for a large portion of WP development? Yes. Is he benefitting from free labor from OS contributors? Yes. Is the WP ecosystem enriched as a whole by commercial and OS contributors? Yes.
This lawsuit is between two for-profit companies, Automattic and WPE. Automattic has investors and revenue streams. As does WPE. This isn't "Matt is financially responsible for WP development".
IMHO, Matt needs to step back from this whole thing and let the lawyers work out the dispute without his emotions clouding things. He also needs to clear up ownership of wordpress.org, ideally by transferring it to the WPF. And finally, he should step down from his role at the WPF to help it become a foundation independent of control from Automattic. He's proven to be an unstable steward of the WP ecosystem at this point and lost trust is hard to regain.
I make all of these statement as someone not connected to the WP ecosystem beyond sometimes helping a friend who leverages WP for his clients.
Using WordPress and paying attention to Trac are two different things.