> The proper way to handle this would've been to say "Hey! Your site license doesn't cover this. Please don't do it again, as we depend on that license revenue to pay our bills to write great software."
That's mostly the proper way to get people to not care and end up killing your business anyway.
As opposed to "Fuck these guys"? Even if their software isn't replaced with an open source alternative, this buys enough bad will to have someone patch their binaries to prevent them from calling home and distributing them via torrents. That seems far more likely to kill their business.
That's mostly the proper way to get people to not care and end up killing your business anyway.