• dot20@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The guy who, in the first place, came up with the idea for a fork of b2/cafelog (which would come to be known as WordPress), is Matt Mullenweg. He’s still the lead developer of the open-source WordPress project to this day, 20 years later.

          It is true that Mullenweg’s company Automattic gave the WordPress trademark to the WordPress Foundation in 2010. The founder of said foundation is the very same Matt Mullenweg. It is not the case that Automattic and the Foundation “legally […] have to be separate”, that’s a choice that Automattic/Mullenweg made.

          It is a fact that without Mullenweg, WordPress would not exist, period (neither .org nor .com). Mullenweg/Automattic do not only “[influence] the WP org”, they created (and still lead!) the WP org.

          Of course, I’m sure WP Engine is a fine host, and all the better that they also contribute back to the WP project (that’s the power of open source!).

            • dot20@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Is Red Hat a conflict of interest? MongoDB (pre-2018)? Docker? Nginx? These for-profit companies all sell proprietary software alongside their open-source offerings with the same name.

              Is it a conflict of interest that Plausible Analytics profits off a hosted version of their open-source software? How about GitLab? How about Bitwarden?

              If you take issue with companies selling products based on open-source software they created (and using the same name), there are a LOT more companies you should take issue with than just Automattic (who, as discussed, voluntarily spun off their trademarks into a non-profit, unlike the companies named above).

                • dot20@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  So, all the companies I named and many more, then.

                  Go on, go on Docker’s or GitLab’s website (just to name two examples), and let me know how clear the distinction between their proprietary and open-source software is.