Wow!!!! Hypocrisy at its best.
IMO these Devs have gotten out of control with the pricing.
If I can test drive and like a package I will pay for it. Cydia is like the App store now.
in my opinion, there'll always be people like this
no one likes to pay for stuff, everyone wants free stuff (to which I would agree with them too). but at the same time, no one would like to give away their work for free, they want some money from it
there are some packages in cydia that do give you a trial/free version (i do agree that it would be nice if more tweaks had free/trial versions though)
these are some that come to mind
biteSMS?
Lockinfo?
MultiIconMover+ vs MultiIconMover?
WiFiFoFum Pro vs WiFiFoFum?
Photo Organizer Pro vs Photo Organizer?
PassworldPilot Pro vs PasswordPilot?
not to mention there are
many free tweaks that are regularly maintained without any form of ad revenue, but depend on donations
and for the ones that don't have trial/free versions, there are usually free alternatives.
StatusModifier vs Cloaky? (albeit Cloaky has much more functionality)
BatteryLife vs iBatteryInfoPro?
all those itty bitty small tweaks spread apart vs Springtomize?
I think they do deserve it, especially when you consider their exposure is much more limited than do the developers in the app store and as a result, make less money
but everyone's entitled to their own opinion so i'm going to leave it here as is