alt Hacker NewsOnly as long as Matt deigns to allow your server to access his servers and deigns to allow the plugin authors who you depend on to log in to his servers.
WordPress has no governance, it just has Matt, and wo betide anyone who ticks him off (or who relies on any developers who tick him off).
Wordpress.com works fine for ordinary people. No updates to worry about. Not my cup of tea, but dead simple.