TBH I'm not from the US and not quite aware of the happenings in the WP inner circles, I'm still learning about this whole fiasco. The whole fiasco is all about intellectual property rights and whether or not WPEngine owns certain contributions they made to the core WP source code, right?
When everything else is hazy and blurry, we revert back to the core principles, what are they? The core principles here are Software Freedom and GNU GPL 2.0 license (which forms the very foundation or basis on which WordPress CMS was originally created).
What do the core principles say, does WPEngine has intellectual rights over their contributed code? Indeed, yes! The very premise of GPL is that the ownership and control belongs to "commons" here, i.e. anyone who uses, shares and propagates the software. That's the very intent and workings of the GPL here, anyone who has studied even a little bit about software licensing would be able to confirm that.
If Matt or Automattic are imposing undue stress or any kind of "quid pro quo" over WPEngine here, it's totally wrong and against GPL and libre principles. This should be called out not just by those in WP ecosystem, but the entire FOSS community as a whole?
I don't know what state of health RMS is in right now, I hope he is fighting good against the cancer. But if he were to opine on this, he would definitely tear Matt into shreads on this one!