What's wrong is the bait and switch, as these projects end up being popular because of their FOSS nature.
https://opencollective.com/material-theme
that's pretty good, especially for a vscode theme.
The issue is not someone wanting to be financially rewarded for work, however small. That's completely different from saying you need money to "maintain" what is essentially configuration for colors. That's a deceptive use of that word.
Let's call this what it is: a grifter asked people to pay him for the privilege of hacking them.
Morally wrong, legally not so much. If it is under a permissive license (and it was MIT originally as others have pointed out) you can always cut a proprietary version.
That doesn't take away the right to use the permissively licensed code of course.
It sounds like they went out of the way to remove that copyright notice. Am I misinterpreting that part?
Genuinely curious since this stuff affects me....
https://github.com/Dramaga11/vsc-material-theme/blob/main/LI...
Of course, but then, the legality of it is irrelevant.
Free markets work because consumers can exercise their freedom to choose, and in such instances it's easy, given that the reason for why many such projects see wide adoption is their FOSS nature.
That only works if the consumer is fully informed.
In the case of bait & switch sometimes the switch happens without them being informed and/or without giving them chance to cancel/uninstall/whatever.
If he edited the repo history to edit the licence that is.