Here, they put forward an unreasonable demand. Later, once the trolling emerges, they roll it back to be only on new devs with old devs keeping the old system. They get to seem like they “listened to the community” and the community ignores their still predatory pricing.
Even if this is a just an effort to roll out some less oppressive changes with less backlash than doing so immediately would entail (because they can now frame this initially planned roll out as indeed 'listening to the community'), this really just has clueless MBA stamped all over it, because the brand/trust damage here is serious, and that for a ship that's already sinking.
You locked yourself into proprietary-licensed solution and invited this upon yourself.
Companies going back and trying to alter the deal is a complete no go.
- Software that is open source that you can keep around, tweak and modify forever
- If the above isn't possible, then software that does not require internet connectivity or updating and can be run in perpetuity in an offline sandbox
- Hardware that is not internet connected and will run so long as the hardware is still able
- Bonus points for the above if there are openly available schematics