Obviously choices have to be made, I don't understand how you can begrudge the guy his living. It's certainly better than random hot developer tool startup that takes VC funding, grows like crazy, then either implodes, gets purchased, or changes their policies so you get screwed by depending on them. With Sidekiq I feel pretty good about relying on it compared to a lot of stuff out there.
I don't begrudge anyone. You can choose a commercial license and get paid. But people don't choose commercial licenses because they want adoption and free support of their tools. I have nothing against 'open-core' with 'expansion-packs' that actually target niches and require development effort - switching redis commands doesn't meet that requirement for me and thus is fails into the category of 'intentional gimping' which I think takes advantage of your community who isn't getting any of that 80k/mo.
That said, Sidekiq is, by no means, egregious here but it's a problem which deserves to be called out.
