I just posted this in Woo's latest post, and hope this will give a flavour to the others why I was so vocal for the past few days, especially to the bystanders who might not be vested enough to appreciate the implications of Woo's actions:

Thanks for honouring your past contractual obligations, which is right thing to do legally and most importantly, ethically. Otherwise your business might not be sustainable, which is the very thing you started in the first post to want to save.

I did research before I purchased your products, based on the customer segment I am going after, and the overall price points (i.e. including updates for years to come), which I thought made WooCommerce a pretty ACCESSIBLE ecommerce platform to the small medium businesses in the country where I operate in.

However the announcement would have come across as more sincere and authentic if we do not have to explicitly opt in (we never opted out in the first place), and it will definitely generate a ton of support tickets (since the message of opt-in might be quite confusing) when you mass email to your base of 100,0000 customers mid-week (which you repeatedly state is the root cause of your unsustainable business) .

It would certainly be more efficient to run one-time query to opt-in all past purchase. I would not want to speculate your real intention of doing so (btw it sounded like emotional blackmail to me) but would offer a suggestion to you: You could provide a button for customers to opt out anytime instead. This would give a true metric of the number of customers who believe in your sustainable story and support you, which you have the next few months or years to earn it.

I have no issue with the new price increases and support/updates structure, I will continue to purchase if it make sense for my particular situation. But I do want to get back the terms which I made my original purchases, because those were the very terms and promises that shaped my decision at the point in time, and shaped my pricing at that point in time. Doing otherwise will ironically make my small business unsustainable, which I do not expect my customers to pay for my honest mistake for believing that my cost of business is a one-time fee. I have no problem of the price increases with new customers, but I do have problems with old customers..

I know I had stated before and I will state again, you gotta fix your support model. The early adopters are unlikely, based on my experience and anecdotal evidence, cost much to support. In fact, through their word of mouth and usage of your products, they strengthened your brand equity, which now enables you to charge a brand premium (which you did in your recent price increase, and quite substantial in fact as I calculated that my portfolio of extensions are now 50% higher).

In fact, I am willing to donate a license of the excellent XenForo forum to restart your community help forum again (which I thought its a proven model to scale support and possible fix to your support model), and offer to run it too at my own expenses. Let me know if you are keen to take it up.