I have administered a number of Mattermost environments going back to 2019.

It absolutely is not a mistake. They’ve been slowly introducing limits to the Team Edition and screwing with the licensing in obtuse ways to drive revenue. It is something that has executive force behind it.

I have migrated everyone/everything to Zulip, which it turns out has a far better user experience and a much cleaner model. The admin tools are much more mature (and actually function reliably). I have not gotten any complaints.

And I also don’t have to deal with things like on-premise to managed cloud back to on-prem migrations due to ridiculous licensing and pricing instability.

aka "it's a good idea to turn our productivity software into ransomware" plan

The distinction isn’t non-discriminating, but if it is then, what it is, I believe.

That'd be even more reason for them to have a solid PR plan prepared, to grind down opposition and gaslight everyone into giving up. Leaving all messaging about the issue to upset users is the worst way to handle it. Even just closing the issue would've been less damaging at this point.