In reply to Jeffr0.

GPL is great Jeff, but being willing to release the core of one's code as GPL is a different proposition than giving away all of your code. As we are both aware, GPL is a two-edged sword. Unrestricted GPL licensing lost Jigowatt a two year investment in Jigoshop when Woo poached their top two developers with zero compensation.

Woo on the other hand was able to make Automattic pay richly for the same team and the rights to the name and customer base just a few years later. So GPL seems to work well for bigger companies (within a respective IT space) now and less well for smaller shops (Jigowatt). GPL probably still works for sole-proprietor as the poaching company has to make an offer to the founder (as s/he's the principal coder).

GPL means that the dominant player in the space (Automattic) can offer Microsoft terms to anyone in their ecosphere. For those who remember those terms were "sell to us or we will clone you and destroy you". There was a large anti-trust war over Microsoft's tactics. GPL was in part a defensive reaction to Microsoft and Oracle (and even Apple) business practices of the walled garden and/or excellent software becoming abandonware. In many ways, clever contemporary businessmen have managed to subvert the intent of GPL and the GPL has become an even more dangerous capitalist weapon than proprietary software.

Software ownership and business issues are complex. I'm just suggesting that the GPL is not the blanket panacea which it's being presented. Even the deeper motivations of GPL proponents may not always be noble. I remember well a time when WordPress was about creating great free solutions. Revenue was supposed to come out of implementing the solutions and not the shared code. WordPress was supposed to put an end to expensive proprietary solutions. Now just the code updates for a halfway capable WooCommerce shop will set you back $1000 or $2000 annually, unless you buy from one of the GPL warehouses. As you so eloquently described, the backend admin of WordPress has become a minefield of advertising and self-promotion.

This isn't shareware. This isn't free software distribution. It's something else entirely. The GPL alone hasn't saved us from the tragedy of the commons.