If you aren't paying money, you aren't the user, you are a product.
Freemium models often suck because of stuff like this[1]. But if the "users" would just consider it normal to pay money then we wouldn't have crazy things going on where people providing critical infrastructure services need to figure out how to "convert" their "users." Instead, say, every professional Java shop would pay $100 a year or so for managed access. Projects that want to use it like a CDN so their users could download would pay a fee to host it.
They have bills to pay. They'll cover them one way or the other. If we pay directly at least we know what the game is.
[1] They could be inserting advertising into the jars. Hey, at least it would still be a "free" service, right?
That's a little paranoid. Let's see, we'll completely ruin our rep and our core business activity just so you're forced to donate--not to us, but to this open source group over here. Dude, put down the pipe.
Isn't it exactly what they are doing, though? The only reason you would want HTTPS is to prevent MITM attacks. By making it a premium feature, they are making MITM attack mitigation a premium feature.
