I think there's plenty of room for people to object to the "had to change licenses" framing. They chose to change licenses, same as they chose the original license.
That original license probably helped them with goodwill and to gain a community; when those benefits no longer exceeded the downsides of using that license, they changed licenses to one that suited them better.
Naturally, this change costs them some amount of goodwill, a portion of the very goodwill that they harvested by choosing an open-source license in the first place.
I don't see this as an issue with the company. They were happy to release their code as OSS, as long as that allowed them to make enough money to develop the software. It was a win/win, and them AWS came and took advantage of that.
If you leave some apples at the side of the road, with a sign "$1 per apple" or whatever, and people largely pay enough for you to continue to pick apples, that's great. If someone starts coming every day and taking the entire crate, I don't blame you for discontinuing the convenient apple sales, I blame the thief.
Sure, but presumably you can engage with the spirit of the analogy?
Let's be pedantic, and say someone gave apples away in exchange for donations, and when everyone only got a few apples and donated, things are fine, but then someone decided they can just take all the apples and sell them elsewhere.
Is it the fault of the first guy for not offering free apples any more, or is the second guy why we can't have nice things?
> but presumably you can engage with the spirit of the analogy?
What you’re calling “the spirit of” the analogy, others are seeing as “the bias embedded in” the analogy and you seem annoyed that people aren’t accepting your proposed analogy as a valid analog to the topic under discussion.
You think they’re changing the subject; others, including me, experience you as the one doing that.
I think there's a massive difference between "paying what was required by the offer" and "paying less than was required by the offer" and only one of them makes you a thief.
I think there's a massive difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, and saying "but the letter of the law didn't say I couldn't!" doesn't make you any less of a thief.
That original license probably helped them with goodwill and to gain a community; when those benefits no longer exceeded the downsides of using that license, they changed licenses to one that suited them better.
Naturally, this change costs them some amount of goodwill, a portion of the very goodwill that they harvested by choosing an open-source license in the first place.