Oh for the love of tech, do chase them. This absolutely has to be in void of the terms of your trial take them to court. If not, then at the very least name and shame the company, so some dumb manager orchestrating this silly theft will get fired and someone more mature can be rotated in.
We’re not rushing into legal action — it’s not worth the energy for now — but publicly calling out the behavior felt necessary. It also sends a message to others in the ecosystem about the kind of nonsense OSS maintainers sometimes face.
And yes, while I’m still holding off on naming the company directly… I haven’t ruled it out.
So we reached out.
They vaguely apologized and claimed they’d switch to using the source version instead.
Which — fine. Not ideal, but technically within the rules. What stung more was their complete disinterest in any kind of professional support — even when we simply brought up the idea of a volume discount (!). They shut it down immediately. Apparently, sending satellites into orbit is easier than entertaining the thought of paying for open source support.
And did they actually switch to the source?
Of course not.
They just kept going — now using personal Outlook addresses and incrementing the email handles like they were running a script.