I swore to butt out of this conversation, but can’t help myself. Why not think outside the box:
Bronze
Silver
Gold
or as in web hosting:
Basic
Plus
Pro
You only need to explain what each means the once.
First, can we agree that end users understand the words “free”, “freemium”, and “premium” in the context of WordPress plugins?
If that’s the case, why are we putting a learning hurdle in their way?
I don’t much like the words either, but if that’s the common usage, to what end are we trying to be different? How does it help the end user? How does it help us?
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Exactly.
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My vote is for “free / freemium / premium” because it’s so widely used in the WP community that it ought to be fairly universally understood.
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I’ve added Freemium back along with definitions for the three to the rules above.
Obviously, this can be changed again should the situation change in future, but it seems the consensus (and vote) is for this.
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Thanks for keeping up, @azurecurve. I
I just want to clarify that the poll wasn’t intended to collect votes for a decision like a petition; it was just gauging the feeling in this thread as we discussed things. It did cause some confusion, though, so I’m dropping another link to the thread that was split off.
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To be honest, I’m going more by what different people said rather than the vote (plus bear in mind the fact I’m just a forum user trying to help out and have zero official standing).
I understand the various points of view and there is a difference between Premium (Paid) and premium (Quality), but the terminology used in rules and Directory need to be easily understood and it seems the majority think that Premium (paid) is likely the most understood based on historic usage in WordPress plugins…
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This describes every one of us, except committee members. Sorry, if it seemed I was criticizing…that wasn’t the intent. 
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I’ve just been thinking exactly the same thing. In fact, these are much broader questions and I came up with a simple test that I intend to use in future… “better vs familiar”. In other words: “Does the proposed change make it in some way better for the user; if not, we should keep it familiar for the user”.
So by that test, there’s no real gain in changing the names, so we should keep them the same.
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That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.
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This is what I love in this community, people helping and moving things forward. 
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A Freemium or Premium plugin wouldn’t be GPL would it? In that case they would not be able to change a Free one to either of those models as GPL code needs to remain so.
The conversation has been about the developer using their own GitHub repositories; I’d think limiting to GitHub for consistency is probably a good idea, but that is a question more for the developers who will write the CP plugin directory.
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A plugin is essentially GPL whether it’s free, freemium, premium, paid, pro, commercial, or whatever…this is required in order to comply with the GPL license of the overall system. That doesn’t mean you have to release the code, or release it in a non-encrypted format, but it’s still technically GPL.
The GPL doesn’t prevent you from changing a plugin’s business model and making it freemium or otherwise paid. You’re not changing the GPL license by selling it, you’re just changing the business model under which it’s being offered.
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I did some reading earlier and it seems you can change free to paid, GPL code must be available to buyers.
Yes, for the GPL, if the product that uses the code is distributed, then the code has to be made available in a usable (i.e. non-obfuscated) format to those to whom it is distributed. If the product is used only as part of a SaaS model, then the code does not have to be distributed because the product isn’t.
Whether the product is free or paid (both of which are permitted under the GPL) doesn’t make any difference to this.