Out of curiosity do you have some examples where customers paid for a library, and then the author of that library decided they disliked the terms of the arrangement and injected some code to make it non-functional demanding nebulous payment? Or worse?

I suspect not, because they would be sued into the dirt for breech of contract and shortly find themselves out of business. In fact I believe the customers could even sue for specific performance and force the seller to actually execute the contract as committed.

It's not that I hold free software to a higher standard, I hold folks to the standard they committed to. The author had big sellers remorse, upset that they had offered this software free of charge. I'm sorry, we all make decisions we regret. If they didn't want to maintain it anymore they could have found a new maintainer. Instead they decided to mess with the computers of people who accepted their representations.

Sure, How about Google borking a user's device with OTA updates and then telling users to go pound dirt with their silence?

https://9to5google.com/2015/04/10/nexus-5-nexus-7-bricked-an...

That appears to be (a) unintentional, which is a critical distinction (b) 7 years ago and (c) if the comments section is to be believed, resolved by calling Google up, explaining the situation and receiving a complementary warranty extension.

  To their credit they stood behind it. Mine was repaired, FREE (October 2015)

The delay was, more than likely, simply that big companies move slow. This is not the same thing.

Point A is a simplification. Point B is irrelevant. If you think it's bad it doesn't matter when it's done. Or will you say that in a few years what you think is bad that this developer has done is no longer bad? This is flawed reasoning. Point C you're sugar coating it. He initially was denied and given the run around and only after making a sufficient fuss was he deemed worthy of a warranty extension. How many others weren't? It's the same thing in american healthcare where insurance companies will "Accidentally" deny coverage a few times for certain things just to get the less persistent people to give in and not bother fighting for what they're owed.

But here's the real context on Point A since you don't want to actually look into it further and most outlets aren't going to bother doing it either. Once Google realized what was happening, well, it kept happening. They were pushing these OTA updates in some cases with 0 user intervention. Not to mention you're taking the comments out of order. That specific commenter had his device bricked multiple times. Why don't you quote that part of his dialogue?

Maybe you should ask why devices would be bricked in the same way multiple times?

I'm sorry but there's no comparison between mishandling a bug causing an issue for customers unintentionally, and intentionally nuking all your customers from orbit with a malicious commit because you threw a temper tantrum. There's a ton of good ways to handle this. Find a new owner, for instance.

What about this: https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/google-is-intentionally-makin...

It happens all the time.

Some anecdata: When Garmin bought Navionics they cancelled everyone's paid lifetime licenses, pushed updates demanding logins (worse in this case than others because 99% of the places you'd use their software have shitty internet, so an intermittent login wall is a bit crippling even if it were free) and monthly subscriptions, and hounded every negative review saying that they were doing it for the users' own good. Could a person sue for $19.99 and not have corporate lawyers juggle you between headquarters in Kansas and Italy? Maybe, but it's a pain in the ass for minimal gains.