Comment by omnimus

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.