People consider WordPress to be the company, this is this great open source content management system (CMS) called WordPress. But WordPress isn't just the open source developer community, which is hosted on WordPress.org, it's more than that. There is also a for-profit website, which is hosted on the domain of WordPress.com and, among other related services, also provides website hosting and domain name registration.
WordPress is now in use, to sell web development. This is a step next to the offer for plugins or hosting. This service is as created by WordPress.
The “Built by WordPress-Site” offers three “Website development plans”, which mainly focus on three types of sites:
This includes e-commerce, Online courses, Education pages and websites for professional services. The professional service websites may be for local websites such as any yoga center or company.
A major theme in the community is awareness, that the web development community helped create WordPress. For WordPress it is, to turn around and compete against those that already exist, like using your own work against them. Someone compared Automattic and WordPress to Amazon and how Amazon makes its own products, to compete with retailers, who sell through their business platform.
The other problem is perception, that the friendliness of an open source domain name from WordPress.org is used by Automattic using WordPress, which may confuse consumers, who may not know, that WordPress.com is separate from WordPress.org.
The goal of presenting WordPress is, keep new businesses within the WordPress ecosystem, instead of in the wix- and Squarespace Markets, where there is no sale at all for WordPress developers. Others waited for the positive announcement, to test, whether WordPress.com would open the program for white label work from reliable agencies.
The entire church was not against the development. Some stated, that this is not a blunt competition with the WordPress developer community, as it focuses more on competing companies like Wix and keeps more of the internet within the WordPress ecosystem.