We're on the same page.
I do understand that 1Password abandoned some people. Some feel that they were dishonest in some way when that happened. I would need to study it quite a bit to draw a conclusion about that either way. But, a company has the right to change their business model.
If one were to spend time on their forums they would experience a first-class company that cares about its product and users. It does rile me up a bit that someone would call them evil.
And, yeah, companies have every right to charge for their work. I do.
That's the funny thing; they were already charging for their work. Every download of their application was either free for a trial period, or was an actual purchase. Changing that to a subscription model isn't what some people are upset at; the abandonment of those people who had purchased their application for focusing only on those who purchase a subscription is what they are upset at. Even if they didn't offer any support for those applications, still being given the ability to purchase that application would have helped to save that part of their user base.
Additionally, We get that they could change their business model. Initially, one of their slogans was "not only are we Mac exclusive, we're Mac ONLY." 1Password used to only be for MacOS and iPhone, and required Tiger at the earliest. They wanted a broader base, so they brought in Windows, Linux, and Android. Fine, no problem. But taking away functionality for the sake of their business model is the issue, and that is what has caused a lot of people to migrate away from 1Password. It could easily be said that one won't hear about any problems or issues people have with the company or their business model on their site or their forums, because a company doesn't want to deal with that cutting into the image they have to hold on their forums.
But what they did was wrong. Does that make them evil? no, but they do deserve the ire they have received due to their changing of their business model, which they themselves stated that would not change. Keep in mind that they were the ones that put the narrative out that they would not change any part of their model or functionality in their application, and yet they did. That is on them, and as such, are deserving of any flack headed their way because of that backtrack.
BL.