Or seen from the other side, these projects chose initial licenses that didn't fit with their wants for how others should use their project, in this mind.
If you use a license that gives people the freedom to host your project as a service and make money that way, without paying you, and your goal was to make money that specific way, it kind of feels like you chose the wrong license here.
What was unsustainable (considering this perspective) was less that outside actors did what they were allowed to do, and more that they chose a license that was incompatible with their actual goals.
Thats a really big deal, how did they legally managed to do the license change? I was under the impression that only works if the original owner is the doing most work
Copyleft protects against that as a general rule. However some projects that rely on copyleft require contributors to sign license agreements granting the project owners a more permissive license.
Almost all of these license changes just change the terms under which _new_ work is contributed - which is why many of them have forks from the last OSI-licensed commit.
Since they're a for profit entity, they'll do whatever they think offers the best cost/benefit.
But it’s ok to be voluntarily grateful for hard work.
You don't become a billionaire using that approach though.
I can't just translate Harry Potter to Spanish and sell it.