Customers are the ones that continue to pay. If they continue to pay they will likely receive maintenance from the devs. If they don't, they are no longer or never have been customers.
It would be interesting to see if there could be a sustainable OSS model where customers are required to pay for the product, and that was the only way to get support for it as well.
Even if the source was always provided (and even if it were GPL), any bug reports/support requests etc. would be limited to paying customers.
I realize there is already a similar model where the product/source itself is always free and then they have a company behind it that charges for support... but in those cases they are almost always providing support/accepting bug reports for free as well. And maybe having the customer pay to receive the product itself in the first place, might motivate the developers to help more than if they were just paying for a support plan or something.
Well, I think this is what SchedMD do with Slurm? GPL code. You can sign up to the bug tracker & open an issue, but if you don't have a support contract they close the issue. And only those customers get advanced notice of CVEs etc. I'd expect nearly everyone who uses it in production has a support contract.
Some software providers sell software including support, no restriction on number of deployments as well as the possibility for private modifications, then publish under a permissive licence two-three years after a release. That seems to me like a good way of doing things.
> what do you prefer, the developers abandoning the project, or at least having the option of a paid-for version?
It's not a binary choice. I prefer the developers releasing the software under a permissive license. I agree that relying on freemium maintenance is naive. The community source lives on, perhaps the community should fork and run with it for the common good absorbing the real costs of maintenance.
> the software is under AGPL. Go forth and forkify.
No, what was minio is now aistor, a closed-source proprietary software. Tell me how to fork it and I will.
> they wanted to be the only commercial source of the software
The choice of AGPL tells me nothing more than what is stated in the license. And I definitely don't intend to close the source of any of my AGPL-licensed projects.
The fact that new versions aren't available does nothing to stop you from forking versions that are. Or were - they'll be available somewhere, especially if it got packaged for OS distribution.
aistor is proprietary software[1]. Having an old version of your software be open source does not make your software open-source. Why does this need an explanation?
You aren't entitled to the product of someone else's work even if they gave away older versions of that work... What is so hard for you to understand about that?
No, I no longer am, because aistor/minio decided they no longer respect their users' freedom. It's as simple as that -- aistor is unethical and borders on malware.
Air bearings run dry until they get some moisture. Then they fail. Old joke about making radio enclosures: make it as watertight as possible, then drill a small hole on the bottom to let the water escape.
Until they are replaced with dust, pollution, hair, animals, leaf litter, aggressive plants, seismic events, pollen, skin particles, birdshit, fallen logs, slime mold, etc.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. I'm not sure I want AI in my browser, whatever that may mean, but I don't think everyone shares my view. To think otherwise is IMHO delusional.
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