| I don't see the problem. First, SQLite's developers are not an open source company funded by VCs. I don't know what funding they had originally, but they've leveraged their success into a well-funded consortium. Does it matter if it could or could not work in combination with VC funding? No: what matters is that the developers got funding, end of story. Second, I don't see why a company (regardless of funding source) couldn't spin off a consortium to fund further development of some open source created by that company. Your goal seems to be "profit", which is a fine business goal. Open source is a fine business tool, but not so much a fine business _goal_. It can help you profit, but it can also hinder. Open source is a business tool to be applied on a case-by-case basis. Open source is not easy to use as a core business value. That's because the most important core value to any public corporation is profit, and open source does not intrinsically lead to profit. Building a for-profit business around open source projects with open source as a core business value is undoubtedly difficult. Indeed, the example I gave is of a non-for-profit organization that funds development of one project. Open source is a tool with following costs and benefits (and risks), some of which are: - cost: loss of confidentiality for "secret sauce"
embodied in open source
- cost: the cost of opening a code base and keeping it open
- cost: dealing with a community
- benefit: good will
- benefit: mind share (this is the big one)
- benefit: quality (hopefully) contributions from
the community
- benefit: credit (especially for developers, which
functions as a form of compensation and
recruitment incentives)
If for some project open source is a tool whose costs exceed the benefits, then don't open source that project. It's that simple. |