> Did you consider having an open beta? It might allow the ecosystem to develop while still enabling you to charge for the product later down the line.
I don't think being free for personal/non production limits the ecosystem at all. Additionally, I don't appreciate rug pulls from changing free to non-free down the road, and I doubt my customers would.
The pricing is what it is: ensure Etcha is sustainable and supported. Think of it as a forced OSS donation if you want. There's way more than $1,000 worth of value here.
>I don't think being free for personal/non production limits the ecosystem at all
There are two aspects. The first one being that charging a nonzero amount decreases adoption, so fewer companies will publish modules and tools around it. The other is that people will generally not want to send pull requests adding features to something they have no stake in. If we take HashiCorp Packer or Ansible as an example, they have flourished as engineers send PRs extending the tools for their own purposes.
Another thought that comes to mind is: what if your company disappears one day? Can you make some assurances that the source will be relicensed to allow users to maintain it?
I wish your product great success. If it feels nice I may even end up getting a license in a future job myself. But I have stated my concern of missing out on all that the Ansible/Puppet community already provides.
I don't think being free for personal/non production limits the ecosystem at all. Additionally, I don't appreciate rug pulls from changing free to non-free down the road, and I doubt my customers would.
The pricing is what it is: ensure Etcha is sustainable and supported. Think of it as a forced OSS donation if you want. There's way more than $1,000 worth of value here.