Microsoft seems doomed either way. Microsoft tried to drop their own implementations of OpenID/OAuth providers and they tried supporting IdentityServer and made it a part of some base templates and IdentityServer said that was the reason they "needed" to make it commercial and blamed Microsoft for directing too much traffic their way. If Microsoft builds their own library instead of pointing people to an open source offering it looks like favoritism and competition and "we need to go commercial to survive". If Microsoft points people to an open source offering it looks like "a flood of traffic and we need to go commercial to survive".

Microsoft even donates regularly to things like GitHub Sponsorships and the major open source foundations/conservatories, so even in the case of "too much traffic" it isn't like Microsoft is trying to shirk that bill, even though it is very easy to accuse them of that.

You are absolutely right, that is not a .NET specific issue, it was just very little time between these big libraries going commercial. I think that there is a deeper issue here. Maintaining an open source project is hard work and is rarely compensated, I can even understand the motivation of the mantainers that decided to put their projects under a commercial license.

Businesses and developers profit from foss software, but the chances that anything, be it money or support via contributions, is given back are low. I don't think that it is desirable to go closed source to solve that issue, but I also don't have a good solution at hand.

Redis, Akka, Hashicorp, CockroachDB, etc. Seems to be a common occurrence everywhere.

> How is it any different from bait-and-switch or rug pulls corporate is being shamed for?

Hard agree. If you want to turn a profit from your project, make it commercial from the beginning. I have no problems with commercial tools or products, but I do have a problem with starting something as open source, gaining adoption, then changing the license later on.

It's the same BS behavior from SaaS we love to call out, when companies make a generous free tier, get users locked in, then pull the rug.

Should the community help out and contribute back to FOSS projects they use? Absolutely, but at the same time, they are not obligated to either and if a dev has a problem with that, then don't release it as FOSS.

I've published a few small tools for sysadmins, and I never expected any kind of contribution back whether monetary or otherwise, and that's OK. I wrote them for myself, and will maintain them for myself as long as they are useful to me. Others are free to use them and I don't expect anything in return.

Not at all, FOSS licenses don't mean it is free of charge.

In fact, in the early days folks would get money out of distributions like Walnut Creek CDs.

Everyone talks about morality, what about the morality of feeling good getting that check at the end of the month in consulting services, without giving a dime to upstream?

Yes, the proposition is much weaker there to close the source (if that is even possible without a CLA!) and take it paid.

AutoMapper is something you only use sparingly because genius mappings take a genius mind to understand, at which you can rather map manually than type any comments.

And, as you say, MediatR is eassily replaced because it is intentionally a slim library.

Take a look at Rebus https://github.com/rebus-org/Rebus

HN is mostly formed by the UNIX culture that you get at many startups since the turn of century, hence why.

If anything is a good reflection of what I keep referring to you about the Microsoft image outside the traditional Microsoft shops, that posts from .NET team on social networks about how much performance is possible nowadays with .NET won't change.

Working on a polyglot agency with lots of such clients, I get to handle this problem on routinely basis.

And why another approach to market .NET is required instead of boasting about TechEmpower results.

HN has always hated anything out of Redmond, both justified and not. There's good reasons for it, the halloween documents and the EEE era are not easily forgotten so I sympathize somewhat, but not all corps are treated equally here. Google and Apple will regularly get a pass for doing the same stuff Microsoft did or does.

Outside of the SV bubble .NET will continue to be one of the most productive platforms to work within, and is continuing to grow in market share. Hardly a failure.

That being said, I do see the meaning behind where OP is coming from. There is a certain, shall we say, enterprise, culture around .NET (much like Java) that hasn't caught up yet, or hasn't fully embraced the new world of open source from Microsoft.