alt Hacker News> You're missing the point that WP Engine forked WooCommerce.
That point is impossible to reconcile with this phrase:
"...has been swapping out WooCommerce’s Stripe Connect Account information for its own when a user installs WooCommerce."
The verb tense "has been swapping" implies continuous repetition of the swap, not a one time fork, then "when a user installs WooCommerce" doubles down, implying it's the original code, with user install action being the time of the stealth edit.
The article's sentence is constructed incompatibly with the point you're making. Note I'm not saying your point is incorrect.
Not sure if you're a developer or not.
But it's extremely common to fork a project and keep it up to date with the latest commits from the original repository. Pretty much the standard in fact since most people just want to make a few small changes.