> I find it unreasonable to "demand" clarity "at the start" because there is no such thing.

Obviously you cannot "demand" stuff but you can do your due dilligence as the person who chooses a technical solution. Some projects have more clarity than others, for example the Linux foundation or CNCF are basically companies sharing costs for stuff they all benefit from like Linux or Prometheus monitoring and it is highly unlikely they'd do a rug pull.

On the other end of the spectrum there are companies with a "free" version of a paid product and the incentive to make the free product crappier so that people pay for the paid version. These should be avoided.