I support their business model but not at the expense of those that contributed to their 'over xxx downloads, over xxx sites running dotnetnuke, over xxx users registered, etc."

What I really care is about losing my enterprise features because of this merger. I have paid premium $ for these features and I will be upset if I lose them.

 
The community is not the victim of this deal. If there are any victims, it's the customers of ActiveModules who are depending on the enterprise features that will end up as a part of the proprietary DNN PE product. DNN PE is not aimed at hobbyists. ActiveModules products have never been a community effort. Neither has the proprietary parts of DNN PE. Everything that the community has contributed is available for download from Codeplex. With this deal, the CE code base will expand. Hobbyist will gain a decent forum extension for their sites. And the most advanced features are kept outside the core and core extensions. Thats a good thing. Many see DNN as a development framework or a just a good CMS that runs on Windows. Sometimes less is more.   

Closing down the CE product and dumping the price on PE is not the right solultion. This ActiveModules deal have exposed the risks involved when depending on proprietary products. Your contract gives you security for 1-2 years. When it ends, you will need renew and agree to whatever additional terms or pricing model the vendor has decided to put forth since the last time. Or, as in this case, find a new solution for your needs. A low price closed source DNN will pose exactly the same risks. Another payment plan is not going to solve your problems in the long term.  

Hobbyists craving for enterprise features they can't afford is just one group within the much larger community. There are hundeds of thousands of stakeholders in this community, and maybe just as many reasons for being here. The most valuable asset for all of us is the open source license. It provides security for what ever investments you make, be it your own time or your money.

DNN is a complex and powerful beast. Selling it as a shrink wrapped product and keeping the customers happy is not an easy task. Disaster may be just one click away. The corporation have managed to pull it off with their current price tag. Trying to accomplish the same thing with a 1/10th of the price will be hard. And they would lose the community over night.