Comment by jtrn

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.