Comment by fnky
6 hours ago
He didn't say they made it, he said they _own_ it.
The issue was not that forking of ACF in and of itself was controversial. It was that they hijacked and repurposed the original WordPress Community page and distribution to point to their own, including any subscribers to the existing project in the name of "security".
One could argue that because WP Engine was banned from accessing the WordPress.org infrastructure, it could technically be seen as a form of supply chain attack and brought up questions about trust and possibly monopolistic and anti-competitive behavior.
I wasn't correcting the parent post. I was being sceptical regarding them contributing by owning ACF because they just bought the plugin with the intention to squeeze its userbase for more money for a product that was more or less complete at the moment of acquisition. Or, to paraphrase it, they hijacked and repurposed the original ACF pricing :)
The supply chain attack was shitty and uncalled for but still very tame. I think launching a fork as a separate entry would have been sufficient and less drama.
Surprisingly two wrongs made a right and the average customer got a little bit unfucked by not having to pay for the ACF PRO subscription if they don't want to.