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Found this comment from May 2017: Matt Mullenweg on WordPress.com is not WordPress, Automattic’s use of the WordPress trademark, Jetpack as an alternative option of product branding for A8c and the like. Highlights by me are neither endorsement, nor critique.
5. Automattic can lose its license to use the WordPress trademark if it misuses it. Also the company has been moving to brand things with Jetpack or other names other than WordPress (even though it’s not required) to help clear up confusion. This move is being done at significant cost.
6. You might not agree, but I think that WordPress.com has strengthened the brand and reach of WordPress in a way that creates a flywheel effect with all of the action and code happening on the .org side. The fact you can start using WordPress for free, with unlimited traffic, you could have signed up a decade ago and it’s still free, and the free product is more functional than the cheapest paid plans at most competitors is huge.
7. .Com now supports plugins and themes on the business plan, so you don’t have to say that one supports plugins / themes and one doesn’t anymore, which was a huge source of confusion.
9. Automattic has 23 people contributing full-time to the open source and community side of WP, and dozens more supported by the company and contributing part time. (I’m not counting any of the 28 people on mobile. I agree that the constraints of mobile platforms and app stores are hostile to open source and distributed apps.) We sponsor every single WordCamp, and contribute wherever we can.
10. The restrictions of many advertising mediums don’t really give us the room to spell out the subtleties of the tripartite relationship between .com, .org, and WordPress itself, not even to get into the Foundation, versions, security, commercial themes and places like Themeforest… we have a pretty complex and nuanced world we live in! I think, and hope, that people brought into the WordPress sphere will learn and appreciate the amazonian complexity we’ve built up over the past 14 years, but it’s probably not the best thing to bring up on the first date?
You can read the full comment and article on Things That Matter Most.