Sounds like they got you by the balls.

So, probably not much you can do.

Wonder if they’ll pull and id software type thing where the code is GPL

There ain’t no trust in this game. If it isn’t open source then it’s pretty much dead in the water. You can’t compete with OSS with closed code in this space, really. There’s a few alternatives (and ones that are more mature and proven) that will always be first choices.