Ex-Magento CTO And Co-Founder: EBay Doesn't Understand The Meaning Of Open

April 13, 2012

Last year, eBay (EBAY) acquired Magento, developer of an open-source e-commerce platform for around $180 million. Magento became part of X.commerce, a combined open platform business from eBay and PayPal. A year after the acquisition was announced, Magento co-founder and CTO Yoav Kutner has left eBay. While fellow Magento co-founder Roy Rubin sent Kutner off with a warm farewell, Kutner doesnt have such nice things to say about eBay and X.commerce, according to this post on Quora.

In response to the question of why he left eBay, Kutner responded (Kutner confirmed to us that he posted this response): I will answer and give much more information over the next few weeks as to the reasons I had to leave Magento. As for now I can say that (very) short term I would not be worried about the open part of Magento, but as I have learned eBay and the folks at X.commerce dont really understand the meaning of open and have a hard time explaining and defining it to them selves and to others. As such, long term, it would be very interesting to see if Magento will continue to stay open in the manor the people behind Magento and I meant it to be.

read the rest, comments open