I have a great deal of respect for Automattic in general and Matt Mullenweg in particular. They have done an amazing job with WordPress, which is now used by more than a quarter of all websites. But they are also a great example of how companies can work in the Open Source software space.
It’s not all just business. Automattic raises the ethics bar quite high. And today there is an excellent example of how they do it. Check out this blog post by Matt on why WordPress will be moving away from the React JavaScript framework developed by Facebook:
I think Facebook’s clause is actually clearer than many other approaches companies could take, and Facebook has been one of the better open source contributors out there. But we have a lot of problems to tackle, and convincing the world that Facebook’s patent clause is fine isn’t ours to take on. It’s their fight.
Respect!