Dear Zrythm Community, I’m proud to announce the release of Zrythm v1.0.0. This is a significant milestone that marks the maturity of our GNU/Linux version, while development continues at full speed for v2. Current Release Status Zrythm v1.0.0 is now production-ready on GNU/Linux systems. Windows ...
Got to say I strongly disagree, I have used Ardour and other DAWs extensively. Ardour is a very good DAW but it's MIDI capabilities are still improving. Zrhythm and Ardour came from different angles and seems like they are both becoming more modern.
I think it is fair enough that they need to make money somehow but looks like they have only made £155 in November which is a shame. I have been a low-level donor for Ardour for 12 years now, and you can see they make something like £4000. I will check out Zrhythm properly as they obviously put a lot of effort in.
Their download page lists different payment tiers that include things like "Unlimited tracks" and "Z Series plugins". I presume you get those features for a limited time with the trial.
On the other hand, I presume all those features are available to you perpetually if you build it yourself from source instead of installing from a prebuilt binary.