To use your metaphor, let's say you baked a batch of cookies and put them on the street with "free to take", and then later when you noticed they were all gone and went to your local coffee shop, in their case it had "fresh baked cookies $5 each" and you saw that it was the same cookies you had put out earlier.
That’s not exactly what’s happening though, because they aren’t selling Wordpress, they are selling Wordpress hosting.
To align the analogy more closely to the Wordpress situation:
I put out leaflets with cake recipes which I give everyone for free. And then BakingCorp comes along, takes my recipe and sells the actual cookies they baked with my recipe in their store.
The difference is that they aren’t just selling what I made and gave out for free, they are providing an actual service based on my contribution.
And also, Wordpress copies don’t run out, so even selling the cookies for $5 wouldn’t exactly be immoral, because I would still give out infinite free cookies. If Wordpress engine just sold copies of Wordpress, people would just get it for free.
The cookie example has implied social expectations with the intent of doing nice for individuals of the community.
A similar example: someone is moving out and puts a huge pile of furniture and assorted stuff on their front lawn with a sign that says "free to take", and some thrift store notices it and scoops it all, quickly. The giver is delighted, because he didn't want it to be slowly picked at piecemeal -- he just wanted it all gone. He doesn't care if the thrift store profited $10,000 off of sales.
Free software is something that benefits individual developers (like individual neighbors) and big businesses alike. Unlike cookies, if a company slurps it all up, it doesn't mean the kid next door doesn't get a cookie. It's digital, so you just make copies. Everyone om noms. Nobody has to feel guilty for taking a cookie, or a thousand cookies.
So I urge OSS developers: if you have some expectation of an ethos of giving back, either embed it into the license as a requirement, or a non-requirement footnote, or be up front of it in the project charter. Don't make assumptions that everyone interprets things the way you do, because it will inevitably be wrong as these OSS stories show time and time again.
I'm still just getting familiar with this WordPress situation and haven't watched the video yet, but in general for cases like these, it just makes the OSS author appear immature, maladjusted, like they're throwing a tantrum because somebody took them up on their offer of generosity, and now they have some sort of envy/jealousy over someone not living up to their end of the bargain that they never agreed to. It often seems backwards, dumb, reactionary, flailing, vindictive and so on, in ways that jeopardize the tantrum-maker's reputation. I don't know all the particulars of this case yet and while I have used WordPress.org (self-hosted and 3rd party host), I'm not deep into the ecosystem or a fanboy of anybody, so I'm reserving judgment but so far I am leaning towards this being yet another over emotional tantrum that was not well thought out or executed, that misses its target and is probably a PR problem.
So enough about how bad it looks. What should the target be?
OSS should be about generosity, voluntarism, and constructiveness, IMO. So the target should be about establishing societal norms about how much companies should be contributing, (to the extent it even makes sense). But you can't do what appears to be borderline extortion (according to people here) for $40 million dollars annually, with abuse of position (RSS feed), and then expect to be taken seriously as a good faith actor in what is a high-minded plea about having a more generous ethical society. It may be a way to draw attention to the topic and rekindle discussion, but it also starts the discussion on a sour note. There has got to be a better way to do this than for OSS authors to expend themselves like a grenade.
Does that feel like theft to you?