They still have linked their OpenCollective account, where they have raised $10K and still have a balance of $5K. [0]

It's not a lot in the great scheme of things, but, have they been using a platform that's seemingly built for communities and open source to bootstrap their business?

Because this is not a 'open core' situation. They just closed the repo and ran away. If they had that idea all along, I feel like it hasn't be very, let's say, ethical.

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Wait, so a company shared their work with the public for however long, then decided to leave what was shared up ... but stop sharing ... and you're upset?!?

They did everything properly by the rules of OSS, decided it wasn't in their best interest to keep doing OSS, and left all their code available, as required by OSS. They were a textbook good participant.

Meanwhile, 99% of companies never open source anything: why aren't you complaining about how "unethical" they are?

How can people still not understand that OSS can be abused?

It doesn't matter that the previous code is still available. Nobody can technically delete it from the internet, so that's hardly something they did "right".

The original maintainers are gone, and users will have to rely on someone else to pick up the work, or maintain it themselves. All of this creates friction, and fragments the community.

And are you not familiar with the concept of OSS rugpulls? It's when a company uses OSS as a marketing tool, and when they deem it's not profitable enough, they start cutting corners, prioritizing their commercial product, or, as in this case, shut down the OSS project altogether. None of this is being a "textbook good participant".

> Meanwhile, 99% of companies never open source anything: why aren't you complaining about how "unethical" they are?

Frankly, there are many companies with proprietary products that behave more ethically and have more respect for their users than this. The fact that a project is released as OSS doesn't make it inherently better. Seeing OSS as a "free gift" is a terrible way of looking at it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

You might want to get your arguments in order. In one sentence you're calling OSS rugpulls a problem, and then in another you're claiming that proprietary products behave more ethically.

So which is it? Is it less-ethical to have provided software as open source, and then later become a proprietary product? Why? I see having source code, even for an old/unmaintained product be strictly superior to having never provided the source code no matter how much "respect" the company has for their users today.