In reply to Jon Brown.

It baffles me too, it's changed the way I look at WordPress and Matt's stewardship. It feels like the push to grow toward ever larger market share (is it even wise to have such an explicit aim?) and a general anxiety around keeping up with the Joneses has lead to choices that undermine what makes the WordPress special in an online world dominated by titans that are ruled by growth at any cost (see FB, Google etc and the subtle and not so subtle sacrifices they were willing to make to users' interests and projects in the name of growth).

It seems to me that lawyers said the FB license was technically kosher enough and that is all what was needed, despite the license itself and the company behind it generating a smell that can be detected all the same. The fact that Matt ignored the smell and was content with a green light delivered by lawyers and developers (who were just wanting to build with cool tech) alarms me.

I've always been huge supportive of Matt for doing things that other people were critical of, he was militant about GPL enforcement and I valued that. We had a leader who was going to go to bat for the stuff that most people underappreciated, but was hugely important. He became a villain to some in his exchanges over the years, but I always felt he was protecting the best interests of WordPress. I'm not sure he does that anymore and it saddens me.