Whatever else may be going on, your observations contain errors. Automattic has been on an insane revenue growth tear for years. WordPress install growth out in the wild has been flat for two years but not ticked down, when 43% of the Internet runs your software there are probably a lot of reasons it's hard to grow that number.

In general, companies in this vertical are not really hurting.

https://getlatka.com/companies/automattic

https://www.wpzoom.com/blog/wordpress-statistics/

Data = good; facts = good

"Insane" revenue growth in the past. The question is: What's going on in Matt's head? What does he see in the future?

Truth: Belief drives behavior.

To go nuclear as MM did, what is he believing? What is his future like?

But you picked a good word: insane.

So yeah, we're on the same page. The difference is direction. Past v future.

Considering he's gone nuclear for dumber reasons in the past(see Tumblr) what he sees and reality are probably far different.

> Automattic's bread & butter - was the big 2nd gen blogging platform

Its not. Its used for everything from marketing websites to ecommerce. CNN, Reuters etc have their blogs run on it too.

That is the .org version. It should not be confused with .com version.

I'm pretty sure CNN and Reuters are actually on WPVIP, which is basically the enterprise version of .com and belongs to the same parent company as .com.