Exactly because he can't relicense retrospectively. Nothing has been taken away. The rug has not been pulled out from anyone; they just have one less guarantee

Exactly because he can't relicense retrospectively. Nothing has been taken away. The rug has not been pulled out from anyone; they just have one less guarantee about their future development. They still have the repo they cloned and the right to distribute it. He's shot himself in the foot, guaranteeing a competitive fork, and guaranteeing code mirrors will spring up everywhere. Given that he apparently never accepted PRs, I don't really see anything has changed; it might even be for the better if it essentially validates a fork. There is one point on which I would reach some agreement: he should consider returning any large donations made in the last few months if he's done no further development on V4, mind you, or convert those donations into lifetime licences. Those people might otherwise feel a little tug of the rug under their feet. Nobody else really has a right to, and they might benefit from a community-maintained fork. But it sounds like he might not have had any large donations anyway.