Duh. Of course Automattic has designed their platform so that it benefits them, and of course the rules they set developers don't apply to them. It's their platform and ecosystem. If you think they're being unfair, go play somewhere else. I honestly don't understand rants like this. It's like people think that they're entitled to something just because they want it. If you can't make money on Wordpress because of Matt's restrictive stance on paid plugins and themes, then you can't make money doing that. Go do something else!
Life isn't fair, and business sure as hell isn't. Business is about tilting the odds in your favor, not making sure everybody is one big happy family.
A better suggestion: if you think your complaints are the same as the rest of the community, fork the project and create a fair and healthy ecosystem for your partners.
Automattic isn't unique, we just follow the same Open Source business models everyone else does. We do hosting, and provide extra services.
There are at least 1,000 plugins in the directory that do the same thing. There are plugins for Youtube, Adsense, Lijit, Flickr, Sharethis, Twitter, Paypal, translation systems, backup services, Statcounter, Facebook...
I'm not sure what that has to do with being GPL or not, or who exactly he claims I've mislead.
I think he's grumpy because Wordpress's actions (and lack of actions) means the healthy marketplace for themes and plugins that could exist doesn't.
A lot of plugins and themes have been abandoned by their creators because they're walking away from unprofitable time sinks exactly as you suggest. The blogger is trying to point out Automattic is doing its users a disservice by keeping this environment.
I don't think he's approaching this from a user-centric perspective, but more from the perspective of how it's not "fair" to developers and designers. To wit:
Theme and plugin developers have helped make WordPress the champion blogging platform that it is today without receiving a single dime of the $29.5 million in funding that Automattic raised last year. Both Matt Mullenweg and his company Automattic benefit financially from the hard work of plugin developers and theme designers. Yet it’s somehow justified in Matt’s mind that it’s not okay for plugin developers and theme designers to directly receive financial compensation for their contributions to WordPress.
To me, that reads as "We've worked hard on Wordpress and we deserve to share in its success." The crazy thing is that a) as far as I can tell, not much has changed in terms of the rules, so if this wasn't a problem before, why is it a problem now? And, b) no one is saying that developers and designers can't offer premium themes and plugins for pay, just that Wordpress won't host those assets for them. How it that unreasonable? Again, this goes back to this guy thinking that he deserves to be able to charge for stuff that Wordpress is hosting for him, for free. Give me a break.
Life isn't fair, and business sure as hell isn't. Business is about tilting the odds in your favor, not making sure everybody is one big happy family.