It's easy to forget the value of being an important part of a community that makes decisions on millions of $$$ in software spending, but be sure that there are plenty of companies who would love to take your place.
Reverting this incredibly dumb decision is the right course of action but there is a long way ahead to restore trust.
Even so, my takeaway is folks shouldn't bet on any one service being free forever.
Also free plans can definitely last, best example being Github. If Github would cut off free open source repos it would be over, and I'm pretty sure they are very aware of that.
My point is, it's a mistake to assume people will pay for something that was free and it's a misunderstanding to think there is no symbiotic relationship. Hosting a giant community can be incredibly valuable, especially when it's tech people with big budgets in your sector.
It's imo a business mistake to monetize in a way that goes against that. The community will have no issue finding a new home that does appreciate them (e.g. Github).
First, lock creation of new free accounts. Then announce that:
- After a long time (at least a year), newer images won't be accepted on free plan and after even longer time, existing images would be deleted.
- After a long time (at least a year), free plan images would be deleted, starting with least used first.
- Downloads from free accounts are heavily throttled. Speed becomes even slower the more stuff that IP downloads. The full speed is restored if either account owner or downloader have paid accounts
- In a few months, accounts get a quota, and you only get 10 downloads/hour for free. Everyone else gets an error message and have to try again in an hour.
... see? So many way to wind it down without having everyone freak out. Docker has really flubbed that decision.
Regardless of how long they've done it, nothing can be free forever. People who build their own companies or products based on the assumption things can be free forever set themselves up for disappointment. And it's not the fault of the providers.