@jeffro - I understand Bill's frustration with Chris Lema and other developers. Industry people were quick to defend Woo from a very black and white point of view on pricing. If pricing was the only controversy, it wouldn't spark a 492-comments discussion. Woo raised the price before and it went well. The real problem is multifaceted.

I don't need to rehash the entire story here do I?

Furthermore, we don't need to fully understand Woo internal workings to voice concerns, offer suggestions/alternatives, and defend those being screwed. That's how a community works. The way Woo presented the problem is very black and white, doom and gloom. Yet, it took them only several days to back track with a revised announcement. It proves they haven't considered all options otherwise they would simply suck it up, deal with the criticism, and move on with the original plan as they would have no other choice.

Bill is pissed because some of our peers are patting Woo on the back for transparency and making sound business moves when it's clearly not the case. That's not transparency. That's getting caught red handed. I refrained from commenting on the issue until several days later to see what was really going on so I gave them the benefit of the doubt to begin with.

I personally feel disrespected as well by the Woo supporters. I'm not a "dumb side-seat driver" who knows nothing. While I might not have experience scaling my business to 100,000 active customers. I have experience handling support, know that when selling products not all of your customers will need support, and I know people like Justin Tadlock -- a one man team handling a community one-tenth the size of Woo on his own -- exists.