All of these things are running Linux under virtualization and faking it to the Mac user and they naturally have all the same limitations as running a VM. They are effectively like WSL.
P.S. I believe that specific company did some level of rug-pull early on already and started charging people who already relied on it for free because they left Docker which started charging earlier, so I would be vary of relying on them.
You can argue all day whether it’s ok to do this, and I’d absolutely say it’s fine, even laudable that they’re trying to make a real business where you have to pay for a product. Great for them!
But “rug pull” is absolutely still a correct description of what’s happening, because it was free, and now it’s not. Here’s a nice rug, but you have to get off of it by $DATE because we’re going to pull it. It’s a rug pull.
If it wasn’t a rug pull, I’d be able to keep standing on the rug (the free version.)
Very strange logic. If we follow your example, going to the dealership and taking a car for a test drive is a rug pull because eventually the car dealer will ask you to pay for the car?
No, because that would be absurd. You're not "following my example", you're using reductio ad absurdum. Any phrase can sound stupid if you take it out of context like that.
To make a non-fallacious analogy: If a ride sharing service gave car rides for free for a month, and a friend said "I'm going to use this instead of buying a car", you would very rightly say "they're going to pull the rug on the free rides, you may want to rethink that". And that would be a perfectly valid thing to say, even if the company told everyone the free rides were only for a month. Because the purpose of the discussion is whether it's a good idea to depend on the free service or not.
You seem hung up on this, like it's a judgement call or something. Maybe just free yourself of negative connotations with the term. It's fine to do this. I don't think it's a problem whatsoever.
The phrase is useful for what the metaphor implies: Likening using the product to sitting on a rug. If you start getting used to your place on the rug (putting your stuff on it, eating dinner on the rug, etc), you have to be aware that they're going to pull it, so you have to have a plan for when that happens (either pay or switch to a competitor.) Being aware of this is important: If you start developing a workflow that depends on this kind of software, you have to understand that it won't be free in the future and that you should either not depend on it, or be willing to pay. This is all fine.
The fact that you don't like the negative connotation doesn't mean the phrase isn't applicable.
There's a way to do that. Don't call it free beta with no pricing attached. Call it "free trial for X period" and ideally advertise the price ahead of time as it was always done in the past. Not calling it a "trial" is not an accident. It is deliberate and that's what makes it a rug pull.
NT was designed to have different subsystems[1]. Win32 subsystem was a layer on top of NT, and was a peer to the POSIX subsystem, and IIRC even OS/2. WSL1 ideas was certainly not new in the context of NT. FreeBSD also has a Linux subsystem.
I agree - we could already run Linux VM's on windows anyways. The change in architecture from native Linux on native Windows to just another VM on windows was very disappointing. Sure, they improved FS performance but broke a lot of magical stuff that could be done earlier. FS performance for WSL-1 should have been improved by enhancing the Windows API.
Technically WSL1 is superior, sure, but is that what users want? Seems like users are happily using VMs to run Docker on Mac and many don't even know it is VM underneath. I suppose max compatibility with Linux kernel is more of a desirable behavior, plus the engineering cost of WSL2 is minuscule compared to WSL1, especially once it is done. WSL1 would require continuous reimplementation of complex Linux kernel features as Windows syscalls.
P.S. I believe that specific company did some level of rug-pull early on already and started charging people who already relied on it for free because they left Docker which started charging earlier, so I would be vary of relying on them.