Anybody who was deeply involved with Magento at the time can tell you, things went stale fast. Feedback from developers was largely ignored; major problems weren’t being fixed; the “openness” of the open-source platform was only skin-deep, which was acknowledge by Yoav when he left eBay in 20121:
eBay and the folks at X.commerce don’t really understand the meaning of open…
The X.commerce initiative has since been dissolved and Magento has changed hands a few more times, which we’ll talk more about later.
.. After the eBay buyout, there seemed to be a shift as all new releases catered more to non-devs, leaving us and other developers frustrated.
.. In 2012, the annual license for Magento EE was $10,000USD+ per server. Yes, that’s right, per server.
.. To justify the cost of the EE license, Magento had to increase the “gap” between its enterprise license and the Community Edition (CE). While from a business perspective, I completely understand why they did this, from a development perspective, it was a headache. The gap between the two editions included functionality we felt should’ve come standard — things like full-page caching, advanced tax rules, simpler customer management, etc. — ultimately making Magento CE and its users feel neglected.
.. In 2014, X.commerce fell victim to the breakup of eBay following Carl Icahn’s raid2 and Magento was spun out as an independent company. In November 2015, Magento was purchased by Permira, a UK-based private equity firm. This new ownership brought with it new freedom and new focus.