Well, the author was happily using that distribution mechanism and built a community of users whose production systems are now locked into it. Then they rules changed unilaterally, effectively holding access to that community hostage. They most certainly are forcing the author to do something!
Sure the author had a choice to not use PyPi when they initially published a package. But doing so NOW, yanking the project and publishing elsewhere, would directly cause massive amounts of problems that would need to be solved. Who's going to do that labor? The author. There's no reasonable interpretation of this situation that doesn't involve the author being forced to do something.
Well, the author was happily using that distribution mechanism and built a community of users whose production systems are now locked into it. Then they rules changed unilaterally, effectively holding access to that community hostage. They most certainly are forcing the author to do something!
Sure the author had a choice to not use PyPi when they initially published a package. But doing so NOW, yanking the project and publishing elsewhere, would directly cause massive amounts of problems that would need to be solved. Who's going to do that labor? The author. There's no reasonable interpretation of this situation that doesn't involve the author being forced to do something.