Tl;dr Wordpress.com has a sketchily-authorized copy of the Wordpress.org plugin directory that’s used as a funnel into signing up for a Wordpress.com hosting account. This was causing the author problems because it has better google rankings than the .org, and they were getting support requests from people who thought buying a plan on Wordpress.com meant they got the premium version of their plugin. So they C&D’d Automattic to remove them from the copied directory.
This is only related to the recent WP Engine drama insofar as the author says it made them lose trust in Matt.
This is only related to the recent WP Engine drama insofar as the author says it made them lose trust in Matt.