It's hard for me to believe your idea of a racket is pressuring a single business. You can't have it both ways.

Doesn't every protection racket start with a first victim/customer?

This argument is pretty tedious. If I have a chicken, I don't have a dozen chickens, even though maybe that chicken could (or even will) lay eggs and make more chickens.

But all that aside, it sounds like Mullenweg's basic argument is: WP Engine dilutes the WordPress trademark, offers a limited (I think he would be stronger about this characterization) implementation of WordPress, doesn't give back to the community, and that's bad. I can understand that, it sounds like it's the beginning of a race to the bottom where hosts compete to find exactly how many features they can shave off of WordPress--while still calling it WordPress--in order to maximize their profits, entirely at the expense of users and WordPress itself. It is completely his right for him to cut them off from the stuff he owns and runs for any reason, but in particular this seems to be a pretty good cause. I really don't understand why people are so against him here.

> If I have a chicken, I don't have a dozen chickens, even though maybe that chicken could (or even will) lay eggs and make more chickens.

It, at the very least, provides evidence you're into chickens.

Demanding 8% of a single competitor's revenue does a similar thing.

I don't dispute that, only the equivalence you and others are trying to make.