Automattic demanding 8% of WP Engine’s revenues because they’re not ‘giving back enough’ to WordPress is a wanton violation of general open source ideals and the specifics of the GPL license.

I suspect Automattic wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to retain WordPress’ shine of open source, but also be able to extract their pound of flesh from any competitor that might appear, whenever they see fit.

David Heinemeier Hansson