Free means free - but if versions 1.0 to X are free today and version X+1 is paid tomorrow, that is a bait-and-switch. There's no hate here, it's just that I (and any competent client company) have no way of knowing if they "won't alter the deal any further".
The problem is not with the open-source approach: in chasing growth, they commoditized both areas they could have monetized - the client and the service. If they had charged for either (or both) at first, they wouldn't have gained traction, and some other company would have ate their lunch.
So they commoditized and failed, or they could've been commercial from the start and someone else would've commoditized it and they still fail. So what? That's the point of a startup, they tried to build something and it didn't work out as a business model.
The community still benefited greatly from all the development and new projects that came from this. And what is this other company that would've ate their lunch? How would that company survive exactly?
The only objection seems to be the license change, which is still free for the vast majority. Only larger commercial users have to pay, but that seems commensurate with the value they gain from it. Should companies never try to alter terms as the market changes? I don't see why people are entitled to products and services forever, and then hate the company if they try to be sustainable but also hate them if they abandon it.
> I don't see why people are entitled to products and services forever, and then hate the company if they try to be sustainable but also hate them if they abandon it.
Nobody is entitled to anything. Users aren't entitled to free services/products in perpetuity, but the other side of the coin is that companies also aren't entitled to those users. Nor companies are entitled to being free of any criticism.
Let me distill my thinking: a tool does not have to be a company, or be backed by a single-product company.
IMO,the more successful tools tend to be backed by a maintainer & contributors who work on it in their free time, or by a consortium of companies that do not directly make money from the tool, but are willing to put money into it. Docker-like functionality can be replaced by such models, so we are not stuck in a perpetual cycle of ${ToolName}, LLC
The problem is not with the open-source approach: in chasing growth, they commoditized both areas they could have monetized - the client and the service. If they had charged for either (or both) at first, they wouldn't have gained traction, and some other company would have ate their lunch.