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Did Automattic commit open source theft?

The maker of WordPress took 2M customers from its biggest rival: has a red line been crossed?

WordPress is popular for several reasons: its permissive GPL license, robust themes, lots of customization options, a strong brand, heavy development investment – and not least, for being around for 20 years. Reviews that point out the heist are being actively removed All users silently migrated: more than 2 million customers that installed this plugin over the last decade – thanks to hard work by WP Engine – now belong to the new owner. If this unfathomable event were to happen, the trust in the npm package system would plummet as would its usage – plus, given Microsoft being a large player itself, antitrust regulators would also surely get involved and could proceed with penalties.

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