When I was in Mambo and Joomla core team we had encouraged both GPL and proprietary components for our CMS. Our position has always been that the author has right to decide which license he/she wants to use for his own work, as long as the component does not have GPL code (parts of Joomla) in it. There are many that believe that this open position has greatly helped Joomla to achieve the popularity it has and this great number of components and support.
Situation changed after I left the core team and some new people began to assume radical position and wanted to change this (probably because of personal reasons). Based on false assumptions (like a statement that non-gpl components may not make Joomla API calls which is ridiculous) they managed to get rest of the team with them and to suddenly change Joomla policy. Repeatedly they refuse to answer on which legal advice they based this assumption while we presented several professional legal opinions on why components can have any license they want.
So they decided to take a first step and remove non-GPL components from JDE which is very unfortunate for Joomla. My own proprietary components will be removed from that directory. You have nothing to worry about as you will be still be able to come here and continue getting quality software and support for Joomla.
