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Which would make Automattic the majority owner no? Or has there been enough significant changes that has diluted the majority ownership? I remember a push to in
by yepthatsreality 5y ago
Which would make Automattic the majority owner no? Or has there been enough significant changes that has diluted the majority ownership? I remember a push to integrate with JS technologies several years back where I could see that happening.
- rmccue 5y agoAutomattic is the largest contributor by far, yes, but a majority doesn’t really matter for things like relicensing which require unanimous consent. “Owner” isn’t really an applicable term here; legally, each contributor (corporate or personal) retains the ownership of their own IP. (The WordPress Foundation is effectively controlled by Matt, and is the entity that actually owns the things that have ownership like trademarks.) In the broader context of control as we’re discussing here, Automattic couldn’t eg unilaterally switch to closed source, or misuse the trademarks, or etc. The ownership of their contributions gives them the ability to veto relicensing (which is something many contributors can do anyway), or to assert their own rights if the GPL is violated (as Wix did, and which any contributor can do). By pure size of their contributions, they can steer the project as well, but that’s not unilateral (and is a nebulous issue across the roles of Automattic vs the Foundation vs Matt). Now we’re getting very insider though.
- yepthatsreality 5y ago> Now we’re getting very insider though. This is exactly where a legal process would start.