• ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    What a bizarre headline. No it’s not. It’s proving why FOSS is important. In fact, it’s specifically the non-open part of the project (the servers Automattic owns) that’s the problem.

    Speaking of which,

    Mullenweg has demanded a royalty fee of eight percent of WP Engine’s monthly revenue for continued access to Automattic’s WordPress servers and resources.

    tbh, that’s totally fair (well, the idea of being paid is, I don’t know if the actual cost is). Automattic owns the servers and makes them available to the community, but WP Engine is probably using more than their fair share of it. Probably a better way to do this would be instituting a “free tier” of server access that WP Engine would outcap; after that, either pay your fair share or find another solution.

    Instead, Mullenweg throws a tantrum and tries to make this sound like some righteous fight against opponents of open source, rather than what it is: a for-profit company wanting fair compensation for services rendered. It’s not some moral thing.

    • ericjmorey@programming.dev
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      22 days ago

      Everyone can save time and just read your synopsis. These are billionaires backed by huge investment funds fighting over service fees.