> In the case of industrial control, database tech, and other high cost fields it would be dubious to pitch an open source product and then abandon it.

Why? Open source projects are released with "NO WARRANTY", which includes the possibility of dropping maintenance at any time. If you want continued support you either fork the project and DIY, or pay someone to support you.

And that is not something the companies using the software are interested in.

This isn’t like a software company taking over some abandonware tool that they rely on. Building and maintaining software is not in the wheelhouse of these companies. They’d rather spend more or have fewer features in exchange for lowering risk.

It is the ethical problem of those companies, not of the people writing the original code.

So Google liberated kubernetes under the Apache License 2.0. Many companies are now relying on it for their workload and we see contribution from other big companies as well.

Are you saying that it would be unethical if Google find out they'd now rather work on something newer/better, and stop having engineers contributing to it?

The guy has been working on this almost 25 years. That's not pitching and abandoning.