I don't mind it. If a business is providing good software, and they have to make a license change to prevent someone from wholesale copying the work and selling it as a direct competitor, I'm for it! I'd rather have the sound business _in business_ and continuing to provide good software.
> Your project gets to have top tier programmers as maintainers, make all the nifty features, fix all bugs etc. for free or at minimum cost
In most case in these companies it's maintained and created at the expense of the company. I would expect that 90-99%% of the code, product development (talk to users, understand needs, etc), even devrel (marketing) (be on every conference to convince people to use it, that codification is good)- it's a lot of money, resources, and effort.
> New startup, cool idea, not much budget to hire engineers
In this case a few folks build it from the ground initially (most likely founders) I think. Please, let's not forget about this.
The important thing here is to discuss why did they do this (I meant relicensing it). Most likely- trying t create a moat from a lot of other VC-funded companies that play in this space? Not sure. It would be great to know their exact concern.
- New startup, cool idea, not much budget to hire engineers
- Make it open source, piggy back on the free exposure that will get you, no marketing is needed because everyone loves open source!
- Your project gets to have top tier programmers as maintainers, make all the nifty features, fix all bugs etc. for free or at minimum cost
- Few months later, change license and/or close source it.
- Rinse and repeat!
Sometimes you get the community to fork it and maintain it by themselves, unfortunately, that’s not always the case.