Hmmmm. A forum ostensibly targeting people who want to be in the business of making money with software up in arms about a company trying to make money with software. Am I allowed to call this ironic?
While I understand Red Gate's need to make a return on their work, they've gone about it in an unpopular way, trying to force people to pay for an extra feature (debugging through code w/o source) that many people simply don't want.
I can't think of another program that violates user expectation quite so thoroughly.
Isn't that the way software businesses work? They build features that they hope will convince people to pay for upgrades or renewals. If people don't want the new feature, the company won't make any money.
It doesn't seem to be an evil or malicious route to me; it's just charging for something which was free before because they can no longer maintain it that way.