In one week, the MySQL/Sun sponsored Meetup.com subscriptions expire officially. While it's good to see that plenty of offers are available for sponsorship, I am kind of surprised that Meetup.com hasn't received much bad press out of this.

To recap what happened:
- (some years ago) Meetup.com introduced a great service for organizing meetups, and it was free!
- Then they decided that they couldn't make money this way, so they switched to a paid-service-only model.
- Most meetups on other topics started using things like Upcoming and Facebook, but MySQL negotiated a deal to have all MySQL meetups sponsored.
- Meetup.com decided they could make more money out of MySQL by charging for the groups individually, so they canceled the sponsorship deal.

I'm not against Meetup.com charging, but the way they've essentially made a business is by Bait and Switch. I don't think we (as Open Source citizens) should encourage that, since one of the things we strive for is freedom from the vendor lock-in that makes this possible.