Mario here, libGDX author and part of the RoboVM team. We switched from Xamarin to RoboVM for libGDX because it worked better for our purposes and was free. It being OSS was a plus, but that wasn't really a factor in the decision. We've been happily using Xamarin for a year, even though it was closed. I constantly evaluated other options, including Avian and XMLVM, neither of which came close to either Xamarin or RoboVM in terms of functionality and performance. That is still true today.

The free indie licenses for libGDX and PlayN users will last. It's very easy on our end to prevent abuse automatically. We never considered not making it free for indie game devs. From RoboVM's standpoint, it makes zero sense to 1) try monetizing a community that can't be monetized and 2) alienate the community that helped RoboVM a lot over the past two years. If RoboVM stopped the free indie licenses, it would only hurt RoboVM's bottom line.

The close sourcing was badly communicated, no question about that. But contrary to popular believe, it was not the longest bait and switch in the history of evil plans (RoboVM's been out there for almost 4 years), it was a business decision. A direct competitor exploited the free OSS version, hurting our bottom line.