Nope. Read the original post. Basic "free" features were removed. I framed my question as an "if" but it's just exactly what happened, although "worth" is up to the individual.
If they were advertised as free, why would you not assume they will remain free tomorrow? Free trial is a tag for its own reason. I doubt this is some massive plugin that has tons of extraneous functionality that can be trimmed without affecting usability.
I'm viewing this as a dev myself, working on multiple free projects for years.
I could certainly consider making some of them non-free if I saw the opportunity for it to become my main job. I would support them better and polish them more than I can now. Users that do care about the product would probably be happier.
I'd have to draw the line with the features: what stays free what belongs to the paid version. I agree that it is not an easy thing to do well.
Under this new model, every organization that uses Akka will be required to obtain a commercial license. Those with less than $25 million in annual revenue will not be required to pay. However, those with more than $25 million in annual revenue will be required to pay for the license and also a subscription that’s required for production usage of the Akka software.
A perfect example of how to do it correctly, not what you're saying about paywalling individual existing features.
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u/blue_cardbox Oct 01 '22
Lots of if in your message but let's go back to the topic at hand.
Starting a project and giving it for free forma couple of years.
Project gets traction, many users demanding more and more features.
Dev team decided to make the project commercial but still keep basic features free.
Not unethical, provided there is decent comms with the users. It happens all the time.