There's a difference between "extended features for commercial versions" and "adware". Usually the open source version includes core features that solve a basic set of problems, and the commercial versions add additional features to solve other and/or larger problems. At no point is there an explicit crippling of the open source.

What's particularly frustrating is the burying of the lede here. The summary of the page intentionally omits the fact that you can build from source and use it in commercial contexts. And the section discussing the Apache license is factually incorrect: "Remember that building Caddy from source is still subject to the Apache 2.0 license which requires attribution and stating changes." -- that is only true if you are selling on-prem software that ships with the program. If you are using it in the normal course of your SaaS, no attribution is required.

Exactly. I would have no issue if paid usage was for things big companies are more likely to need, e.g. support, high-performance features, etc, like nginx does, but this is egregious.

> Can you name an open source project that does not offer extended features for commercial versions and that sells?

pfSense, Ceph (prior to RH purchase) and OpenNebula off the top of my head.

Pfsense does have commercial offering though netgate...

Netgate sells service, hardware and certification, not extra features.

Doesn’t gold membership include extra features?

Looking at it again, it seems their cloud configuration backup service has special client code and could qualify as such. But the primary thing seems to be access to information, the devs and an officially certified VM for AWS.

Ad headers isn't an extended feature, it's a nag screen.

Removal of ad headers surely counts as a feature then?

No, it counts as a bugfix.