WordPress plugins and the removal of features

A recent discussion on Reddit was about shaming plugin developers who offer free features and then take them away (with the assumption being that they make them part of the paid-for version). Now, I don’t agree with shaming, but I don’t think it’s a great policy. As a site owner, if I’d spent some time looking for the best plugin, implementing it and integrating its features, only for the developer – out of nowhere – to put one of the features I use behind a pay-wall, I’d be less than happy. My choice now would be to go back and find another plugin, which may not even be possible if important data was not transferable between plugins, implementing it, etc., or to pay. It feels like blackmail in a way. But I understand why developers do it sometimes too. I see 2 reasons why this might happen… They implement a free version to get people interested in buying a premium version, but not enough people do because you gave them too much in the free model They intentionally give certain free…