[munbun]

That’s really not a fair statement from him given:

1. Based on their github orgs, there is effectively no separation between wordpress.org and Automattic.

2. The core WP contributors trac has a long history of not really being welcome to new contributions. Outside of the design decisions coming from Automattic, third party contributions either die in multi-year deliberations or get directed to the plugin system.

3. The development culture around WP, which largely revolves around the plugin ecosystem - has always trended towards paid plugins over OSS software.