In reply to Matt.

I’m surprise the themes in question are a big deal because (1) they’re all GPL and open source (2) they’re all available publicly already (3) they’re all on the directory or in line to be submitted.

It's not really about those themes. It's about this whole approach. The more you integrate .com into .org, the more people will need to create .com accounts to use Jetpack properly and the more potential customers you get, who possibly will leave .org at some point (especially if not tech-savvy) to create a site on .com where they basically can log in with their existing account and start building their site.

This wouldn't be much of an issue if .com would be more open to developers to participate as well, but as it is now, it's quite an exclusive party where it's extremely hard to even get a theme launched. That means users who leave to get a site on .com are lost users for indepenent devs that build stuff for .org.

Another thing is that the more functionality is built into Jetpack, the harder you make it for plugin devs to compete with that. Sure, they can cover a niche that isn't (yet) covered by Jetpack or build a massive plugin that by far exceeds what Jetpack offers. But in the end this leads to a higher entrance barrier for devs because basic plugins for related posts, infinite scroll or whatever are no longer really needed. Who wants to install xx plugins if just installing Jetpack is enough? Most people will go for Jetpack, especially the ones that are not tech-savvy as they won't be actively looking for an alternative plugin (which even may be better).

A big goal of Jetpack is to make it smoother and easier for someone leaving WP.com to have the same experience, and using the same theme is part of that. I don’t see how making it easier for someone to go from .com to self-hosted is shrinking the market for anybody. :)

This is funny. :) I would argue that it's either the other way around. In my opinion SaaS is the future and so you already have lots of benefits with .com over .org. It's of course much easier to compete with Wix and others if you run a company where you just can get things done than having endless discussions in the open source community before things happen (if they even happen at all) and if something happens, then it's also not sure if that really is what the market needs.

So .com is already in a much better position than .org and when comparing the UX of .com with .org, it's a lot different and more convenient. That in combination with the SaaS approach makes it much easier to attract users, for example through Jetpack or the new affiliate program, which both goes in the same direction, user growth, which both makes absolutely sense of course.

But saying that this whole trend isn't affecting independent devs or smaller companies who are working hard (and not have the budget of Automattic) to launch their products for .org is not accurate in my opinion. Of course there is a competition with Automattic and it's a bit like David vs. Goliath. This isn't much of an issue yet as the .org market still is big enough to run a very healthy business.

But it would be interesting to see how that will be in a few years from now when SaaS is the key to success. Of course you can argue that anyone can create a SaaS business, but I doubt that any sane person will invest tons of money to create a SaaS business and compete with .com - good luck with that on the long run.

Of course niche SaaS businesses can be very successful, but that usually still will only be suitable for users that run self-hosted sites (e.g. theme or plugin as SaaS) but I doubt that anyone with a simliar WordPress business model like .com can compete with Automattic, at least not without an insane budget.

So basically the more you put Automattic in focus to people who run self-hosted sites, the more you're basically killing .org. It's not much of an issue today, but in my opinion we'll see that coming. Unless we'll see a complete turnaround on .org with completely different onboarding process and UX, but honestly, I don't see that happen in the near future, especially because people still won't have a one-stop solution like on .com. But we'll see. :)