That fact that you don't like it and it's a bit of a jerk move doesn't in and of itself make it unethical. It's not unethical to switch mediacoder to a pay version or to hold it hostage like this, zoobie. See VCDEasy for an example of this very scenario. The program that people donated for will continue to work as it is but it may not work any more in future versions of Windows. He might abandon the program permanently in anger over this. Some people do respond to this sort of thing by paying, so he will get some more donations, but it will also piss off as many or more people than it gets money from, so his expectations won't be met in terms of number of donations and amount. One of the problems of this is that it starts a vicious circle where the author is now in pissed off mode all the time because "nobody is donating". We've also seen the first disturbing signs that ImgBurn is moving in this direction, although it hasn't gone this far - yet. Probably almost nobody donates anything and the author is unwilling to continue his work for free.
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