> if the users would like to see it maintained for a long time, they would donate $$$.

That's a bad-faith dilemma, you know it. The users can want to see it maintained without necessarily having the money, userbase or motivation to sponsor the lead dev. It's not criminal to have a tight pocketbook, and that's why free devtools succeed while paid ones rot. There will be always be a FOSS version of Herdr, and thanks to vibe coding it will probably retain feature parity with the paid version.

Everyone is happier with this arrangement, you're one of the only ones fulminating at the outcome.

> Seems like you would want him to work for free

Clearly he's content releasing the software for free. Let me guess, you're going to complain that the free market "forced" him to work without pay?