Comment by highwaylights
18 hours ago
> I get that Matt based WordPress on open source software initially, but 99% of the work that became what WordPress (and by extension, WP Engine) is today was done by him and his company.
Wordpress became as successful as it did because of the open-source license.
If you were starting a website of your own using a tool just like this, and it wasn’t up on GitHub with a fully open source license, would you use it or look for an alternative that met those criteria?
Wordpress extracted significant value from the open-source license itself (and probably wouldn’t exist today without it). I’m not sure they realise that.
Exactly. It's very convenient to claim that somebody else benefits from the open license when there have always been dozens of competitors behind wordpress ready to take their place.
There are even commercial WP competitors with highly superior product like Craft CMS or Kirby CMS. And you know what? They make fraction of what Automattic does. The strategy to offer free product and then make money on addons and hosting is clearly superior. But let's no mistake WP is for Automattic more like open-source freemium NOT some ideologically pure charity.