This commercialization of Open Source projects appears to be a pandemic.
Wordpress and Drupal getting millions has investors clamoring to buy the next big thing. More and more I'm seeing commercial entities buying up small projects, for better or worse. I can't understand why they just don't sponsor their favorite project and nudge it in the direction they want.
What happened here, in PunBB land, is that a commercial entity accustomed to closed source software, bought up the rights to the PHP code, that's all. They didn't lock up the programmers or long time support personnel, no they just saw value in the code.
What should of happened here was an embrace of the community by the current owners, we would of embraced them back, we would of welcomed our new overlords.