For better or worse, the .org project is fundamentally tied to Automattic. If you need any more proof that the market does not understand the separation from .org and .com, look no further than the necessary sticky post in this sub and the endless posts for [WordPress.com](https://WordPress.com) support.
There has been a lot of bad publicity coming out of the Automattic camp as of late; with the selling of [WordPress.com](https://WordPress.com) data being the latest news. While this doesn’t directly impact .org sites, it absolutely has an effect on the whole ecosystem.
Anyone else already dreading all the client conversations that are going to happen in the coming weeks asking “Is WordPress selling my website data?”
I’m also worried about the knock-on effects if Wix and others start promoting a “we don’t sell your data to AI” campaign. It’ll be yet another sales barrier for .org websites to overcome.
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Given every hosting solution has WP deployment as standard (or as a headline add-on) it’s fairly obvious that WP is the CMS primarily and the commercial arm is just that.
Is Linux open source, yes. Are there commercial version, yes, but it’s nowhere near the size of the original set of projects.
Dude, you’re online, your data has already been sold a thousand times over.
WP are doing the exact same thing as everyone else.
> Anyone else already dreading all the client conversations that are going to happen in the coming weeks asking “Is WordPress selling my website data?”
The honest answer to that is if you’ve installed any plugin, then your data is almost certainly already being traded and sold.
DotOrg essentially belongs to Automattic, yes. I mean, if Mullenweg wants to add something to WP core, it gets added (see Gutenberg).
The idea that it is open source is really only a fig leaf, hence why I describe WordPress as faux-pensource.
Honestly, I wish this was actually happening to .org as well, maybe then this AI chaos would finally be sorted/organised/controlled, when it burns too close for comfort to those who have money, leeching off of the businesses themselves. It would rain lawsuits. Would have been pretty.