There's pretty broad license for for-profits to share IP with non-profits, e.g. Novartis + GNF, or generally speaking, any university and any spinoff (I refuse to call them startups) created by professors thereof. If you think what automattic is doing seems legally sketchy, you may want to recalibrate your expectation of what sketchy is and just how much the industrial complex of the US would simply not work (for better or worse -- i for one think it would be better, fwiw) if it adhered to your standards.