[startages]

WordPress Foundation is paying for the servers, so I guess they have the right to choose who gets access or not. Using the resources as a single person or a small business is not the same as using them from a hosting company with millions of websites. Other hosting companies contribute to the foundation which keeps the service running. If WPEngine isn't contributing anything, it would be unfair for other contributors/sponsors. Especially that they are making a large amount of money from it.

[sureIy]

How would you feel if WordPress.org suddenly decided to lock ALL installations across the world and ask for $800/site/month to access it?

Is it their right? Sure. I don’t think you’d be here defending them though.

[seb1204]

As so often I think it would be beneficial for the conversation to provide some more context. Single user install generated load VS WP generated load on the infrastructure of WordPress.org

[ValentineC]

What I find fascinating is that people in this thread and elsewhere are saying that Matt funds the WordPress.org servers personally.

[appendix-rock]

You’re moving the goalposts. We aren’t talking about who has a right to what. We’re talking about what is and what isn’t a deranged dick move.

[consteval]

It's not at all a dick move to block IPs that essentially DDOS your free services.

Google, Amazon, you name it do this infinite times a day with crawlers.

If you build a business on taking resources from some public source, on a large scale, you could very well be out of a business at any time. This has been the case for a long, long time. And nobody seems to take issue with it.