I agree that wp engine is taking advantage, but that's where negotiations would pay off instead of the bruhaha we're left with. It wouldn't be that hard to present WP engine with some stats "x resources used by WP engine clients" WP engine has the resources to either mirror the plugin/update resources and patch the server URLs in code, or support WordPress.org with donations to offset their resource usage. But I have no idea if anything like that happened before Matt went all 'guns blazing' and now we get to reflect on his past blunders in great detail.
The real problem with WP Engine is that they have been doing very well as a service. Many people believe them to be the most trusted hosting especially in the premium sector. This is earned reputation that Matt would much rather have for his companies.
All the stuff of them not contributing (while they maintain some of the most essential plugins) and them taking advantage… Is simply desperate search for arguments. Wordpress is open-source project licensed under GPLv2 you can use it however you want in limits of that license. And point of GPLv2 is that you can use it pretty much how you want - redistribute it, sell it, modify it. The main limit is that you have to publish the improvements you make to the software.
Its like if Linus Torwalds was suing Amazon AWS.
WP engine is simply not doing anything wrong otherwise Matt would sue them to the ground years ago. WP engine is just too successful for his tastes.
