alt Hacker NewsIt's because you misunderstood the reason - they OSS part got them some free advertising and users that gave it a try and got on the subscription.
Now VC's want their money so gotta make people that can't be bothered to get off it to migrate to paid plan
… by adding a check to builds that anyone, using the source code, can easily patch out?
FOSS never came with any guarantee of “builds must arrive in format most convenient for users.” That’s not in the license. Also not in the license, “FOSS companies can’t charge money for their builds.” Also not in the license, “FOSS companies must provide builds at all.”
If anything, it’s quite a bit of entitlement that “FOSS companies must provide free code, and free builds, forever, or they are evil.” Especially when they are getting VC money to presumably add features that otherwise would not exist and would have no code available at all.