[cycloptic]

>I would argue, and many companies are arguing, that the side effect causes more harm than good

I would not. Community development means just that: community development. Everyone contributes to a shared set of code that everyone gets an equal chance to profit from. If you know something the others don't then you can charge them to go do consulting/support/training/etc, but you can't stop them from building a separate business around that code and you can't sabotage the code or the license to go and try to steal their customers. That's part of the deal and no one gets to have their cake and eat it too, not even Amazon or whoever the villain of the day is. There is a middle ground away from this, which is to make parts of your product not open source anymore, which is what Sentry did.

>they tend to hire those that contribute.

That's not a problem in and of itself. It's when they're the only ones doing the hiring. That to me means a product-market mismatch where there are not enough companies to create a competitive ecosystem of other things around the open source project.

>you may not take the output and duplicate their business.

For me as an outsider of this company, this is a negative. I want their business to be easily duplicated. It means they have to work harder and make better products.

[jsmeaton]

There are other products in the same domain. That’s where the competition should be. Not ripping off work.