Probably not, but I'm of the opinion you don't need to publicly post what "acceptable usage" is.
It's obvious and up to the maintainer's discretion. If you're nice to them and contribute that's no problem. If you're not, then your hundreds of thousands of requests a day are no good.
Software engineers are often overly analytically minded, but this is not just a technical problem, but a social one. Naturally if I walk into starbucks and order 500 iced coffees they'll turn me away.
But they don't have a sign saying what their coffee limit is, do they? No. It's a matter of courtesy and discretion. Now if I was, say, a shareholder of starbucks, they could very well make me my 500 iced coffees.
> Probably not, but I'm of the opinion you don't need to publicly post what "acceptable usage" is.
The allegation here is that the acceptable usage thing is basically entirely made up and instead WPEngine is being cut off due to a business dispute with a separate entity controlled by the same person.
Arguably if such a thing is true, it is pretty unprofessional. There could be other legal issues involved (ianal), but i think the primary argument is moral not legal.
Having a public policy and applying it equally would be strong evidence that this really is the reason for the block.
> But they don't have a sign saying what their coffee limit is, do they?
Sure, but if they enforced that policy arbitraily they could very easily get in trouble if it looks like there is an unacceptable ulterior motove. The most obvious example would be if they only applied it specific racial groups or something like that - highly illegal.
An example more close to the one at hand would be if one of the board members of starbucks was also on the board of a bulk coffee company and starbucks only refused bulk coffee orders in locations where this other retailer operated. This would almost certainly be considered a violation of antitrust laws. It would probably be a violation of the board's fiduciary duty. Having a public policy that is enforced equally may not be technically required but it is a good defense against allegations of various tyoes of unsavory behaviour.
> The most obvious example would be if they only applied it specific racial groups or something like that - highly illegal.
Right, discrimination based on protected classes is illegal.
Discrimination based on other needs is not illegal, and is in fact how all businesses work. They discriminate based on income, based on how you're dressed, based on how nice you are.
> This would almost certainly be considered a violation of antitrust laws.
Not allowing abuse and DDOS of your free services is just not on this level. Sorry, in my opinion it's not even close to comparable.
If Amazon was your competitor and they also issued hundreds of thousands of requests to one of your FREE APIs would you foot the bill? Fat chance, right? That's what we're talking about here.
> Not allowing abuse and DDOS of your free services is just not on this level.
Sure, the debate is because its not really believable that that was happening, and sounds like a pretense.
> If Amazon was your competitor
That's the core dispute though. WPEngine is not a competitor of word press foundation. It is a competitor of automattic. For word press foundation to treat competitors to automattic as competitors to themselves seems highly unethical and possibly a violation of fiduciary duty.
