I don’t generally take note of HN usernames when commenting, but noted. Certainly that does put him in the unique position of being able to substantively disprove me, if he chooses to!
However, if Automattic is indeed flush with unlimited runway, then the lawsuit is not in contention for any resources needed by the Wordpress project, which lends credence to this being simple market manipulation — i.e. “we have ceased Wordpress development to drive the community and userbase into pressuring WPE to increase investment into Wordpress open source work”, which only works when there are few (or no) serious competitors. It could be a precursor to taking future development of the Wordpress project closed-source, too. We can only guess.
However, if Automattic is indeed flush with unlimited runway, then the lawsuit is not in contention for any resources needed by the Wordpress project, which lends credence to this being simple market manipulation — i.e. “we have ceased Wordpress development to drive the community and userbase into pressuring WPE to increase investment into Wordpress open source work”, which only works when there are few (or no) serious competitors. It could be a precursor to taking future development of the Wordpress project closed-source, too. We can only guess.