Re: bp-events update
I first of all want to say that I support Erwin all the way in what he is saying as I know that the effort involved in getting a piece of decent code out there is huge and doing it all for free is a big ask. This is especially so when such code could quite happily be used in commercial organisations who most definitely will charge for the services that they provide.
It seems to me that the eco-system surrounding a product like WP/BP is one that we are still coming to grips with but in essence it seems that there is a move to basic functionality/service for free and that additional usage/features will attract a fee. According to the Mashable review of the recent talk by WP Founder Matt Mullenweg this is how Automattic supports its operations.
So why should a plugin developer not expect the same? Perhaps the future of such development should be along the lines of groups of coders providing a freemium type service so that there is a basic level of functionality and you pay for the extras.