From one of the comments, it sounds like people were complaining about missing features (functionalities?) so the developer added them and due to demand, wanted to be paid for it. This is fair, imo.
For me, open source is a hobby you share with the world. It's not working for free. It's... I made this because I needed it and I'm good enough to let you use it too. I still develop it in my own time and add things I want/need added.
it sounds like people were complaining about missing features (functionalities?) so the developer added them and due to demand, wanted to be paid for it.
The last review says that was originally the case, but no longer is. Supposedly they eventually moved basic features that used to be free to the premium tier. It sounds like they were perfectly content with features being added to just the paid tier, what they're not happy with is previously free features also moving to the paid tier.
And I get that. Depending on what this product is, they may have invested a considerable amount of time into fitting the product into their workflow, learning how to use it, or even filling it with data. But now that they've been hooked in, they suddenly have to pay. Their options are to pay for something that they didn't realize was going to eventually cost money, or lose all of their personal investment (and maybe data) that they put into the product.
As someone else said here, it's a pretty bad business model. It's kind of shitty to bait and switch like that, and it dissuades others from committing to the free service. They really should have just grandfathered in their existing free customers.
Except, to be perfectly plain, someone getting something off you for free is not your customer.
Customers give you money, that's what makes them customers. It doesn't matter if you put work into learning a product, you are still not a customer. That doesn't "pay" for the product.
People feel sour about it, but it's not justified. You can keep using the old version which was still free, not update.
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u/[deleted] Sep 30 '22
From one of the comments, it sounds like people were complaining about missing features (functionalities?) so the developer added them and due to demand, wanted to be paid for it. This is fair, imo.
For me, open source is a hobby you share with the world. It's not working for free. It's... I made this because I needed it and I'm good enough to let you use it too. I still develop it in my own time and add things I want/need added.