@Coen Jacobs - Agreed. It would impact the WordPress project itself and could bring the end of a lot of Automattic funded free labor on the project. But it doesn't mean whoever acquires Automattic "owns" WordPress and plenty of contributors aren't Automattic employees, including some very active core contributors such as Nacin and Jaquith.

@Jobalicious - I guess you didn't read my response above. Ultimately it's not entirely up to Matt. It's up to what the investors behind Automattic's venture capital funding want to do.