WP Engine is acting scummy and all, but this is the shadow side of releasing projects as open source. You can't force the people using the freedoms you're grant

WP Engine is acting scummy and all, but this is the shadow side of releasing projects as open source. You can't force the people using the freedoms you're granting them to pay you or support you. If you don't like it when people take your code and build a competing business with it, pick a license that (effectively) prevents doing that. With some licenses you can at least get the additions they make out of them under the same license (AGPL and such). WP Engine is ungrateful and generally kind of shit, but they did nothing that WordPress didn't allow. WordPress acted needlessly aggressive and conflated the business side of their operation with the non-profit side of their operation, which is why WP Engine has a legal basis to sue them over in the first place. WordPress has gathered a lot of good will for being open source and having a non-profit that maintains tooling, but if they don't respect the freedoms that made them popular, they're going to lose out in the end. I don't have a horse in this race and I'd have to back WordPress if I had to make a decision, but neither party in this conflict is the good guy here. All of that said, the true vultures here are the lawyers and companies organising the class action lawsuit. All of the customers they "represent" are doing it for a quick buck, and the lawyers are more than willing to blow up Automaticc and WordPress to get their pay day even if it means WordPress will no longer be maintained by anyone. Whatever side you're on, winning this class action lawsuit means everybody but the lawyers lose.