Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah the DHH post is an example or projection… Automattic is hosting a lot of WordPress sites but not making anywhere near as much money as the WP Engines and Go Daddy’s of the ecosystem. (And yet automattic contributes the most to the project.) So it’s definitely a point of frustration to the business.
They only contribute the most because they reject anyone else's contributions.
I worked in the WP space for many years and in that time have participated maybe twice in the actual WordPress OSS project: once to submit a patch to remove the “final” keyword from the Post class (lots of support from others that wanted this, and ultimately DoA because no one at the core level supported this) and once for some small thing that was relevant to my work at the time.
The hostility and difficulty in having a reasonable discussion, along with using SVN fwiw, made contributing feel like a chore. I had hopes of being a regular contributor and helping to enhance and extend a project I genuinely enjoyed working with, and nothing about how the core team operated made me feel welcomed.