we don't know what he has extorted from other non-private equity funded companies.

As I understand it, Mullenweg has explicitly said in his video interview [0] that no other company is currently paying an 8% license fee. The WordPress Foundation trademark policy page [1] states (since Sep. 24) that its only commercial sublicensee is Newfold Digital, and Mullenweg mentioned this in the same interview, but I don't think that the sum that Newfold pays has been disclosed anywhere.

[0] https://youtu.be/H6F0PgMcKWM

[1] https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/

If you are going to trash a specific person in every single comment you make ( https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=meltdownMatt ), please do it using your own account, otherwise I think you are an involved party, like someone associated with WPEngine.

Of course I’m an involved party: every Wordpress developer and user is an involved party.

Matt has (in Slack) advised everybody to obtain their own legal council before they sign in to Wordpress’s support forums/plugin index/issue tracker/community resources again. (Many long-time contributors who cannot afford to hire a lawyer to deal with Matt’s whims have unfortunately decided this means they can no longer contribute.) Matt’s explicit stated (in Slack) intent is to require everybody to be involved in the conflict and choose sides. I’m sure not on Matt’s side, so I guess that means I’m on WP Engine’s, despite their mediocre service and contributions.

But no, I won’t use my own account. Matt seems rather vindictive and I wouldn’t want to risk my employer being subject to that.

While i generally agree with what you’re saying, in this specific case i’d like to side with gp: given the current behaviour by automattic and Matt from wordpress i wouldn’t be surprised by retaliation against a specific individual for speaking their mind.

So it makes sense to allow for anonymous dissent (as long as it stays civil)

As a passive bystander, I was amused by all this drama. However, after reading "Fallout" thread on reddit, I realized it's not amusing at all to a lot people. Some lost contracts, some are very worried about their business, jobs and entire careers.

That's all doing of one man. He deserved all the trash talk he gets.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1g0ycb1/the_fall...

The thing that hasn't got a lot of attention so far is that Automattic sold their stake in WPEngine TO Private Equity.

And that the other active board member of the Foundation is the Managing Partner of a Private Equity firm, appointed by Matt himself.

So I don't really buy it when he talks about PE as leeches (they often are, but I think it's an appeal to popular opinion in this case.)