Like many other, suddenly unable to restore a backup

Like many others on here, I found myself in the position to need to restore from a backup, and finding that I would either have to pay, or download an extension from an outside, un-trusted source. I have chosen to post this here, rather than as a review, to because I would prefer to get some answers before cementing my opinion of the developer and the plugin. I sometimes have the tendency to be a little wordy, so I apologize if this is a bit long winded me trying to get all my thoughts out and straight.

We all get and use backup software, for the same reason I imagine…in case something bad happens. We don’t get them with the intention of backing up and restoring every day, or week, or month. We get them in the hopes we never need them, but keep them just in case we do. That’s where this plugin up till now was amazing, easy to do backups, automatic server-side file saved, and we knew if needed to, restoring was just as easy.
Now while I know you probably had a very good business reason for making the changes you have (at least I hope so, and at the moment will give the benefit of the doubt in assuming so) there should have been an announcement to all current users of the impending change, rather than only finding out after it was too late. that aside, here is what I do not understand, and from what I have been able to find, has not been clearly explained…

Why is the import extension to compensate for this placed outside the repo? I know you have mentioned that the plugin develper(programmer, designer, i’m not sure, sorry, we’ll just go with whoever is in charge of it) didn’t want it on the repo…which you have to admit, not only sounds odd, but can come across as very suspicious to the average person. The whole reason people submit to the repository is that WordPress can check it, say it’s clean and good, and put it out in front of hundreds of thousands of people. Now if this was a paid extension, then yes, I could understand, as they are not allowed on the repository, but this plugin extension, as you have stated on various occasions, is free.
Ok, so maybe the code is proprietary for whatever reason, hence not eligible to be on the repo…but you have mentioned in other answers that it’s open source….so again..why an outside source? Submitting a free plugin to the repo can only improve ones reputation and brand as long as the plugin is good (which the original was, it was amazing, as thousands of people and good reviews should show you). People know that if it is on the repo, they can at least trust that it wont directly harm their setup, or compromise their installation in some way. I have nothing against developers changing or adding to plugins things that are a paid service, you have to make money to keep working, and it’s just good business. But this isn’t..you have subtracted features, crippling the product, and then asking people to “trust you” over the WordPress repo, that your extension is safe. Really only two things can be derived from this…one, you are banking on people being leary of the extension, thus they buy the full version (most people in the situation we find ourselves in having relied on the earlier version and thus, have no other backups available, so having to stick with the product in some form), or two…whoever was in charge of making the decision to do things this way, has very little sense of good business decisions, and sadly everyone else involved just went along with it instead of saying “whoah..this is going to bad for us, and make us look really bad and shady”…which it what an action like this so clearly would, and unfortunately does.

I would have probably ignored all this, except that of course I encountered the same issue as others. Had my site crash, needed to restore and whoops…can’t. I prefer not to download plugins from un-trusted sources, so I wasn’t going to get the extension, and certainly was not going to pay, after reading not just the issues others were having, but the way some of them were being responded to in either vaguely hidden patronizing ways, or condescendingly or arrogantly. I decided to do what I knew I could, which is go and download a previous version from the repo…something that as developer you should know is always accessable and available..the repo always keeps previous versions just in case people are running older versions of wordpress. I bring this up as in a few of the reviews and support tickets I read, the individual answering the questions kept saying that the older version was not available when asked about it. Only then to warn about using older versions when someone posted a link or informed others where it could be found. I get that there would be some bugs, and some fixes missing…but these were ones that people were already either aware of or had worked around or found a way to deal with before this update came out, so to be honest, the warning of missing bug fixes is kind of irrelevant.

Again, so sorry for being wordy, as you can tell I had a lot to get out, but basically it boils down to asking you to give clear concise answers to the questions everyone is asking…why was this change made? Why is the only free option to counter it placed outside the trusted source of plugins?

Thanks for your time, and letting me rant a bit..