The other licensing shoe is going to drop. And when it does, it will be same as always. Important features will be cut of from “community” edition, like admin for minio, and pricing will be predatory for full product, like Taipy. Seriously, screw Taipy. Got quoted 200k for an open license if I wanted to self host it, with no limit on number users.
Rug-pull is a good description of how I feel also.
And the most annoying thing for me is that I, like you, actually WOULD be happy to pay a REASONABLE price. But all the patterns nowadays are bi-modal. Stripped-down community edition to get open-source and community credit (and hopefully free coding contributions) on one end.And on the other end; enterprise pricing, with per-user or other complex pricing rules and restrictions. And only after "Let's talk" and "Contact sales" waste of time.
What about a reasonable, low recurring fee with no limits on what I can do with it if I self-host? Or a modest one time price for one version of the software? It doesn't cost the creator any more whether I have 2 users or 200 if I self-host.
I used to disagree a lot with Richard Stallman, but now when I ask AI to help search for software alternatives, I always specify "Only TRUE FOSS alternatives, with no enterprise option or paywalled features." Not because I don't want to pay a fair price, but to avoid being flogged AND the unnecessary complexity of setting up a damn equation to figure out how much it will cost.
I got hit by the Minio admin change in the console when I upgraded my installation recently, and I found https://github.com/huncrys/minio-console which adds it all back in. It works as expected so far.
I find this kind of rug pull behavior so hostile I will be looking to replace Minio as soon as possible in my homelab. To be clear, I would pay for a license if the prices weren't impossible to afford as an invidual who uses Minio for non-business reasons.