I’m not even claiming that the “abused” are correct to be upset.

The core of my claim is that it’s a shady business tactic because the purpose of it is to gain all the marketing benefits of open source on the front-end (fast user growth, unpaid contributions from users, “street cred” and positive goodwill), then change to source available/business license after the end of the growth phase when users are locked in.

This is not much different than Southwest Airlines spending decades bragging about “bags fly free” and no fees only to pull the rug and dump their customer goodwill in the toilet.

Totally legal to do so, but it’s also totally legal for me to think that they’re dishonest scumbags.

Except in this case, software companies, in my opinion, have this rug pull plan in place from day 1.