I’m not making any assumptions about how long you’ve been in the community, although it’s fantastic that you’ve been a contributor for a long time. My point was merely about the purity test. So it sounds like you’re not a latecomer with purity tests but it does seem like you might be an OG with purity tests.
I definitely see where you’re coming from about the idea that in an ideal world people would be told what they can expect in exchange for the labor they’re doing. And I absolutely think you have every right to step back if you feel like important things to you are not being committed to. I just hope that most people don’t agree with you because I think that would be a very bad sign for the viability of this project.
To be clear, if as you seem to suggest, the motivation behind switching from their previous stance was to make a ton of money vs to make a decent amount of money then I agree it would be morally wrong to go back on their world.
But I would be very pleasantly shocked if the alternative was them choosing between changing plans to become billionaires versus sticking to their word and having a perfectly viable project. I think there’s an infinitely greater chance that the options could become having to modify the initial plan in order for the project to survive versus sticking to their word and killing it. My point is that I think it’s very reasonable in such a tumultuous situation when they don’t have a clear funding model to leave options open for the case where it comes down to making that kind of change or abandoning the project due to funding issues.
I do agree with you that keeping the project open source is incredibly important, at least for the core functionality. And I think that barring unforeseeable circumstances that should absolutely be doable. In fact, I think that they should make a commitment to that if they haven’t already. I would think that the license actually would prevent them from closing any of the main functionality but if I’m wrong about that then I think they should make a commitment. Mainly because it would have significant benefits to the community but would not in my opinion have a cost to them. As I said, people are not going to take a ridiculous amount of effort to spin something up from source on their own when they can pay a few bucks to get it easily.
So in my mind, the most likely change would be them being forced to charge for features that they thought they can offer for free forever.
And to me, if their only option to survive is to charge for even the local version, I think it would be terrible for them to not do so and let the project die. Frankly, if it comes to that, I don’t even see why there’s any argument. In that scenario where they don’t charge for it and shut down, you basically have an abandoned project that maybe you can get enough open source contributors to continue, and you have your current version. Alternatively, if they do charge for it and that’s a dealbreaker for you, you can absolutely force the project. You’re right that I agree that’s not super likely to work, but you’re just in the exact same scenario as if they shut it down and you had to make it work anyway. And in that scenario, you also have your free version forever without upgrades, just like you would if they shut it down. So it really does seem like the two are identical unless they’re doing it to become wealthier as opposed to saving the project.
On that note, I do think that it’s perfectly fair for you to expect them to make a strong commitment and that they won’t charge for features unless it’s to save the project. That doesn’t seem unreasonable at all. But so far you’ve simply requested that commitment with no caveat. As far as I’ve seen.
But my strong opinion is that I would prefer this project to be in a position where they have a stable source of funding and are less likely to shut down versus making a commitment to absolutely under no circumstances ever charge for the local version. Because I think that it’s unlikely that enough people are going to pay for syncing frankly. I would be shocked if that worked out. So my biggest concern with this project is around long-term viability.
I don’t know maybe I’m crazy but it just really seems perfectly reasonable to me for them to end up charging, even for the local product, if that’s the only way for the project to continue, and as long as it’s not an obscene amount.
To that point, I guess I’m curious what your take is? Would you actually prefer it to be free even if that means shutting it down? If they are running out of money and don’t have any other ideas. In this scenario, the source code would be open (hypothetically) and you’d keep the current version for free forever. But you’d have to start paying 3/month for future updates. And it’s to keep it going.