You're saying anything that makes under $4k a year isn't a business, but you're using it to justify that anything that makes under $8k a year isn't a business. Because you're earmarking those profits to go to a vendor, which then are not profits.
Are people not entitled to make $300 a month because they owe Nginx for a bot throttling feature? Can you run a small website without throttling these days?
> Are people not entitled to make $300 a month because they owe Nginx for a bot throttling feature?
Where is this attitude of entitlement coming from? Are people entitled to use Nginx's code for free? Yes, free software is a wonderful thing, and I do believe that most software should be free. But the reality, in this world, is that software developers need to eat, and relying solely on donations only works for a handful of projects (as does relying on selling support). Open-core is a reasonable middle ground.
If somebody wants to reimplement that feature on top of Nginx and release it under a free license, there's absolutely nothing stopping them. If you want to use an already written and well-integrated version from Nginx themselves, then you can pay up.
Are people not entitled to make $300 a month because they owe Nginx for a bot throttling feature? Can you run a small website without throttling these days?