[nperez]

The preamble of the GPLV2 begins with: "The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. "

I don't think Matt should ever be required to provide the live services of wordpress.org, but as for WP Engine, the license is supposed to be free for them and that's pretty clear.

[claudiulodro]

That's Matt's whole argument, no? That anyone can grab it from e.g. Github, but he's not compelled to provide access to the wordpress.org servers or the WordPress trademarks under the GPL.

[nperez]

Not a lawyer but my opinion is the law shouldn't be used to compel anyone to provide unpaid services. With that said, I still think it's terrible for the community. If other package repositories like npm, PyPI, and others decided to randomly block people over grudges, it would create a lot of dysfunction. The consequences should come in the form of Matt no longer being reputable as a provider of services to the community