Sorry? Their service is... their service! They can extend of refuse service to whom they want.

Automattic is releasing source code, which, in my book, is being super friendly to competitors. It seems to me you are holding the good guys (that release under FLOSS licenses) to a higher standard than any other company that keeps the source to them selves.

WordPress.org is not "apparently" Automattic

That happens everywhere.

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*OVEEYB4H...

> Automattic is releasing source code, which, in my book, is being super friendly to competitors.

WordPress is a GPL project.

the code is GPL.

services (like the plugin registry, but there are many more) cannot be GPL. they are served by someone and that someone pays for hosting/bandwidth/etc and that someone is free to stop providing that service (to one party or all together).

How is it anti-competitive to stop people smashing your APIs? That shit costs money man. It's not free to provide web resources to hundreds of thousands of people.

WPE is essentially DDOSing WP for free. Obviously that shit doesn't fly. Either pay up or get your own server and host your own shit.

I dont know why you are down voted. I feel exactly the same about it.

Most likely my tone, but I'm frustrated because I don't even understand how this is a conversation.

If any one of us was hosting a FREE service and some corporation came around and hit us with hundreds of thousands of requests, we too would demand money or ban them. Any one of us. So I really, truly, don't understand why we're all sitting here having this conversation.