As I think you're aware, I'm a new plugin maintainer (June 2019 - Radio Station by Netmix at https://wordpress.org/plugins/radio-station). I took over the plugin from the prior developer and when we released our first update, we didn't announce the ownership change as an admin notification. We could have but frankly, I didn't think of it. Although we did improve the Read.me, which spelled out that we took it over from Nikki Slight, so that information would appear on the WordPress.org plugin page. I also quickly turned Netmix into the home page and mentioned Nikki as the original author. Now, we have an admin email newsletter registration, so anyone who joined in after the fact are now updated, but probably don't know the story.

I've been friends with Michael Torbert and Steve Mortiboy for ten years. Awesome Motive recently acquired AIOSEO and they recently released an incredible full rework of the entire plugin admin system, with new features and wholesale changes. But when the plugin was acquired, I didn't know until I saw the news in social media. Seeing some kind of update that an acquisition took place and a link to a roadmap or some information about whether things would change might have been helpful to me in my client's sites, so I could make everyone aware, since I held a developer license. Also, another recent issue is that Awesome Motive decided to sunset anyone with a lifetime developer license under the old crew and forced you to pay to upgrade. That wasn't explained at all. Maybe there was an email, I don't know. But it should have been displayed in the admin when upgrading that if you were a prior user with a deal with AIOSEO, that you no longer be honored.

Seeing all the new changes to AIOSEO, I'm happy to pay for it now as my relationship with AIOSEO has changed. But I think these types of notifications are surely important in some way, shape, or form.

Who knows if Radio Station is ever acquired. If so, I will face these same issues when the time comes in how to notify our users an acquisition took place. In one sense, you don't want to let people know until the deal is closed, but you also want to prepare your users for the eventuality a change of hands will be coming. Then, update them along the way.