I tried Datastar and it was great, then I saw this kind of move and it turned me down immediately.

I don't believe it is the right way to play. A Pro support would have been better. Plus the fact that the licensing prevent to use the Datastar Pro in any kind of open-source project. Very strange move.

So if Mozilla had offered to monetize by asking $299 to use the <blink> and <marquee> tags that would turn you off the rest of the browser? Or do you think you could make text blink another way?

Here's how you replace the URL without a page refresh:

  function processAjaxData(response, urlPath){
      document.getElementById("content").innerHTML = response.html;
      document.title = response.pageTitle;
       window.history.pushState({"html":response.html,"pageTitle":response.pageTitle},"", urlPath);
  }
Similar snippets for the other few and you have successfully avoided helping fund the framework!

> So if Mozilla had offered to monetize by asking $299 to use the <blink> and <marquee> tags that would turn you off the rest of the browser?

I hadn’t thought about it, but yes. I say this as someone who paid for Netscape Navigator.

Then don't buy it, you probably need it