paywalls everywhere: when companies gatekeep hardware you already own

so you bought the hardware. you paid real money. it’s sitting in your rack, humming away, drawing power, doing its job. and then the company goes: “oh btw, you want that feature? yeah that’s extra.” welcome to modern enterprise tech. this isn’t even about piracy anymore, this is about companies being so aggressively greedy that they kneecap their own products unless you keep feeding them cash. the…