> The issue with this is that it absolutely will require a fork
Perhaps?
There is a significant group of people Automattic relies on to make the WordPress project and community a thing. While Matt probably can afford to pay enough devs to maintain WP core, I doubt he's wanting to pay to do all the maintenance for all the OSS/GPL plugins and themes on wordpress.org that are a big part of what makes WP attractive over other free and OSS CMS/blog alternatives.
Those people could probably mount a campaign that'd threaten Automattic's financial bottom line, which since Matt's extortion show that for him this is all about money that someone else has that he wants, perhaps that'd be "enough"?
Perhaps?
There is a significant group of people Automattic relies on to make the WordPress project and community a thing. While Matt probably can afford to pay enough devs to maintain WP core, I doubt he's wanting to pay to do all the maintenance for all the OSS/GPL plugins and themes on wordpress.org that are a big part of what makes WP attractive over other free and OSS CMS/blog alternatives.
Those people could probably mount a campaign that'd threaten Automattic's financial bottom line, which since Matt's extortion show that for him this is all about money that someone else has that he wants, perhaps that'd be "enough"?