> I wonder how long time it'll take for them to end up trying to extract as much value from each user as possible...

As long as it'll take for the investment documents to be signed.

HTTPie founder here. These are valid concerns. There are two parts to this: 1/ What happens with HTTPie for Terminal, and 2/ how HTTPie for Web & Desktop and the overall platform will look like.

1/ HTTPie for Terminal will always be open-source and obviously free. The difference is that now we’re able to pay a talented developer to work on the project full-time (the recent 3.0 release is a result of that).

2/ We’re building a new platform with the same principles that made HTTPie for Terminal successful in mind: uncompromising simplicity, focus on productivity, and delightful user experience. We’re in the same space as Postman, but the idea is to be anything like. We’re striving to become what Linear is to Jira, Vercel to AWS, Figma to Adobe, etc. That is, to offer a much simpler and more focused product. Premium services for companies will be a natural extension of the single-player mode, and all incentives will be aligned in a way that doesn’t cannibalize the core experience.

A lot depends on the founders. There's plenty VC funded, OSS-originated businesses that don't suck. GitLab comes to mind. There's no reason to immediately assume httpie is going to be the Postman story repeated, although I agree that with VC funding it's more likely than without.

https://httpie.io/about says they've had a seed round already. Looked it up because that sounds… well it is what it is.