Yep, Matt (wordpress guy) has a dramatic writing style, but in essence WPE is using plugins, their security research, user system, theming store etc, without contributing back that much.
Worth adding that WPE is owned by private equity, and they allegedly tried to remove the newsfeed from wp-admin to hide his (dramatic) posts about them
Does your company offer a competitor to what Automattic is offering, taking revenues from them, and make 500+ millions in revenues a year? If the answer to those is yes then I’d probably keep quiet before Matt notices you :)
That is a really problematic question to ask. Because remember, Automattic is not the Foundation or the open source project...
so then the question becomes "Why is the Foundation/project hamstringing a competitor to their director's for profit company who is, in theory, and legally should be, independent?"
We are talking about yearly revenues here, and something tells me that your company is not in the business of selling services that depend on WordPress code being developed
Open source is a gift. There's etiquette involved.
Suppose one of your developers writes on twitter that you don't permit contribution, and you fire that developer on the next day. What reaction do you expect from the people who pay for most of the development?
Hiding the widgets isn't the main issue. If you infringe the WordPress trademark in commercial use, and ignore any attempt to make it right, and pursue legal action, W.ORG does not have to provide those free services to you.
I'm guessing you are not size of WP Engine and Silver Lake, honest question, if you were, would you want to contribute back to WordPress?
Worth adding that WPE is owned by private equity, and they allegedly tried to remove the newsfeed from wp-admin to hide his (dramatic) posts about them