When your product entered mainstream with integration that would yield millions when virtually obliged to get a license is typically what happens.
When backed by a company there is an ethical obligation to keep, at least maintenance. Of course legally they can do what they wish. It isn't unfair to call it bad practice.
If offering a tie in thing supposedly free of charge without warning that would end once it serves a party less profit purpose then yes.
Ethics are not obligations, they are moral principles. Not having principles doesn't send you to prison that is why it isn't law. It makes you lose moral credit though.
That is ridiculous. If you buy a sandwich for a homeless person, you do not need to warn them that you won't give them another one tomorrow. If you think generosity is an obligation of slavery, you have your morals backwards.
However, almost every open source license actually DOES warn that support may end. See the warranty clause.
The parallel is what's ridiculous..because of the social understanding. Even if you face a sandwich every day, the offer could end anytime..a one off surely doesn't set expectations.
With open source it does. If an indie open sources and get a baby or lose interest, it is understood as fair to suddenly stop maintenance.
When a company surfs on the open source wave to get contributions, grow penetration, then smoothly slows maintenance and announces to get a license, that's gaming the open source community.
See the numerous cases of popular open source repo where the parent or new parent company took over to gain the user base without any respect for the maintenance if not development aspect: community fork and take over the community.
Mariadb, a more recent illustrative example of that is the hashicorp drama that occured when investors decided it was time to gear towards profit at the detriment of the community that largely contributed to the tools.
> If offering a tie in thing supposedly free of charge without warning that would end once it serves a party less profit purpose then yes
Claiming that you’re entitled to free R&D forever because someone once gave you something of value seems like a great way to ensure that nobody does that again. You got over a decade of development by a skilled team, it’s not exactly beyond the pale that the business climate has changed since then.
Those might be your moral principles, but others reject this nonsense of an obligation to perpetual free labor you think you're entitled to, and don't grant you this moral high ground you assume you have.
> When backed by a company there is an ethical obligation to keep, at least maintenance.
You're saying that a commercial company has an ethical obligation to do work for you in future, for free? That doesn't follow from any workable ethical system.
When backed by a company there is an ethical obligation to keep, at least maintenance. Of course legally they can do what they wish. It isn't unfair to call it bad practice.