David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

I had tremendous respect for what Matt has built with WordPress, what that entire ecosystem has built around itself.

It's a true marvel.

But there's some principles that are larger than my personal sympathies to the characters involved.

I agree.

The Silver Lake private equity company that's involved with WP Engine is not my natural ally.

I'm not the natural ally of private equity doing some game with VP Engine.

That's not my interest in the case.

My interest is essentially a set of principles.

And the principles are, if you release something as open source...

People are free to use it as they see fit, and they are free to donate code or resources or money back to the community as they see fit.

You may disagree about whether they've done enough, whether they should do more, but you can't show up after you've given the gift

of free software to the world and then say, now that you've used that gift, you actually owe me a huge lot of your business because you got too successful using the thing I gave you for free.

You don't get to take a gift back.

That's why we have open source licenses.

They stipulate exactly what the obligations are on both sides of the equation.

The users of open source don't get to demand what the makers of open source do and how they act.

And the makers of open source don't get to suddenly show up with a ransom note to the users and say, actually, you owe me for all sorts of use.

I'm 100% allergic to that kind of interaction.

And I think Matt, unfortunately, for whatever reason,

got so wrapped up in what he was owed that he failed to realize what he was destroying.