My guess is they’re doing this since maybe Caddy’s growth may have slowed down since they did that confusing commercial use licensing?
I went from “I’m going to use this everywhere” to “I’ll switch back to nginx the next time I have time to transition back” Because it was too expensive to host little sites on. I’m relieved that I procrastinated. Now i can continue to use it in many places since Caddy is awesome.
My guess is you are incorrect and this has more to do with the Ardan Labs partnership[1][2]. This release also came shortly after Bill (founder of Ardan Labs) went to visit Matt and discuss Caddy[3], which helps support that claim.
Prior to the partnership I believe the real issue was that Matt & co didn't have a sustainable way to maintain the project and they were trying to figure that out. I don't know the details of the partnership with Ardan Labs, but my guess is it is structured in a way that allows Caddy to focus solely on building out a great product without worrying about monetizing it so they dropped all the proprietary licensing.
I went from “I’m going to use this everywhere” to “I’ll switch back to nginx the next time I have time to transition back” Because it was too expensive to host little sites on. I’m relieved that I procrastinated. Now i can continue to use it in many places since Caddy is awesome.