I don't even know why I am bothering but I would add my 2p here. this is utterly unacceptable. As the Gold benefits have been gradually eroded over time such that you now need to think really hard about what benefits you get over and above F lounge access when travelling OW, this was a genuinely useful benefit which cost little and I would imagine few of us used regularly.
Whilst I only ever used to use Open Doors once or twice a year I valued my ability to use it to access a decent lounge rather than a crappy third party lounge and on occasion pick up a magazine when flying with a decent carrier with a poor LHR lounge (e.g. TG ex T3).
If hordes of "freeloaders" are pillaging the lounges then surely BA needs to look very carefully at a) the reasons why these people are not flying BA and b) If they had no choice of carrier because BA had abandoned their route to the even lower service carriers (and the distinction between BA and Easy is getting ever more marginal in Y) it is hardly the loyal passengers fault that BA left them no other options.
On my rare forays to the dark side of the lounge pavilion (AKA Galleries Club) I have hardly encountered a stampede of goody bag toting Golds and strongly suspect a mountain is being made of a molehill in order to make yet another small cost saving. It leaves no doubt as to who is in charge of BA, Marketing and Customer Services functions very obviously play second fiddle to the men in grey suits. And the insinuation in the email that somehow Golds have been clamouring for BA to end this occasionally useful perk would be funny if it wasn't so deeply sad and pathetic.
The data mining value of discovering who else a "highly loyal" passenger is flying with is worth a great deal to a forward thinking airline, but in BA's headlong rush to the bottom of the barrel this is clearly no longer of value.