Comment by vikramkr

I don't think your defensive stance is really helping here - it didn't blow up into anything big this time but next time you should just be transparent about what's going on to avoid having everyone else trying to fill in the gaps. Like just say - we paused our program, coincidentally (if that was the case) some people's sponsorships expired, we gave them 6 months to reapply, etc. You should probably run the copy of that email by PR/marketing next time. Since the copy pretty clearly indicates that the sponsorship program is over for them and there's no indication on what it would even look like to reapply, and clearly people didn't think their sponsorships had an expiry date. Also, how are they supposed to reapply if the program is paused lol. And how would anyone else reading the email know that 300/mo is enough to cover their spend? It's needlessly confusing and the general public isn't exactly in a "assume good faith" mood when it comes to tech companies at the moment, couldn't hurt to be a little bit more defensive and careful before the fact compared to after. Especially if it's the case (as it seems to be) that you really don't want anyone to know why you paused the program or even that you paused the program. That's totally fair, but like, that's an obvious opportunity for footgunning communication and triggering speculation about abandoning open source