Perhaps WooCommerce should charge for use of the basic ecommerce plugin itself. It's a very robust plugin, and while most customers I have purchase some sort of premium extensions, I think most would be more than willing to pay a modest price for the basic use of the shopping cart. You can't sell on Etsy without paying them listing fees and fees per sale, and some other sites like Big Cartel charge based on number of products listed. You also don't get the range of options with some of the other ecommerce providers that many want in their shop... so if Woo were to charge, say, $30/year for use of their plugin, I wonder if this would help them bring in income and enhance their support. Also, because many people never purchase an official Woo plugin - they look to places like CodeCanyon - so Woo isn't making a cent off of them. And Woo devs need to be compensated somehow.

I was surprised just now as well, to read about this change in policy, as I didn't receive any direct email from Woo. Grandfather in the folks who are already customers and make the change for newcomers, perhaps. Many of my customers are very low budget, who use Woo but sell perhaps less than $1000/year on their sites. If they have 3-4 premium plugins, this could shut them down if those prices now double.