Your whole outlook is against the philosophy of Free Software. The whole point of free software is user freedom. If users can get better/cheaper services from WPEngine than they can from WordPress, and this is putting WordPress out of business: good. Companies should compete on services, not by enforcing a software monopoly.

This is better for users than the alternative. Since they're using open source software, they can always switch back if WordPress starts offering better services, or switch to some new company that can do it even better than either in the future.

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alganet 3 days ago | parent [-]

Free software has nothing to do with making services cheaper.

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tsimionescu 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

It absolutely does. Even Stallman talks explicitly about this - it's one of the reasons why the freedom to do anything, including commercially, with the code is so important.

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alganet 3 days ago | parent [-]

No, it doesn't. Freedom to commercialize does not mean the movement is designed to make things cheaper.

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tsimionescu 3 days ago | parent [-]

It's not designed to do that, no. But it is one of the goals, or at least one of the bonuses they expect to come of this. A big part of the freedom Stallman wants for everyone is the freedom to pay anyone who has the skills to work on your software, rather than the original creator having a monopoly on that and being able to charge monopoly prices to you.

	▲	alganet 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		That's a stretch. It's like saying the right to repair movement has a bonus of making cheaper phones because it introduces a point in which manufacturers can compete. It's a long set of stretches, actually. People are just using the idea to either side with Wordpress or not, without understanding what it is. It leads to the misinterpretation of what free software is about (which I don't need to explain, since no one is actually interested in it here).

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bdcravens 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Nor is it about any obligation to contribute back.

	▲	alganet 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I never said it was.