But that's because the non-trivial stuff, the real meat of the core product, is free right? Almost every dual (or more) priced (core) source available (at least) is enterprises with the money subsidising it for people/companies for whom the alternative is not to use it, not to pay for it.
If you have any emotional response like that it's 'ransom', then you're probably not the target audience for the enterprise tier.
(And I don't mean that you don't need/can't make use of features hidden in that tier, just that if there are many in the same boat, then the provider misjudged the contents of that tier.)
I get the feeling you are talking about Elastic here, and I 100% agree that core authentication and security features (and sane defaults) being "Enterprise" is a bonkers decision.
Core authentication and security features in Elasticsearch have been free and not Enterprise features since last May:
https://www.elastic.co/blog/security-for-elasticsearch-is-no...
Disclosure: I work for AWS
Free for some to use under certain restrictions. Therefore not Open Source (which is totally OK, I just want to make sure there's no confusion).
There is a considerable problem in enterprise software where trivial features are enormously expensive. If you hide all of the useful authentication features behind thousands (or tens, or hundreds of thousands) them don’t be surprised when somebody scoops you.
Value add needs to be more like added value than ransom.