[nyellin]

I'm CEO of an open source based startup (robusta.dev for Kubernetes monitoring and troubleshooting) and IMO those limitations are usually a bad idea.

In my experience, most contributors start by playing around with software, then properly using it (often in a commercial setting), and only later on contribute.

What are you trying to accomplish by restricting commercial usage? If you'd like to monetize there are a number of alternative options for that. If you're bitter because people are using your software without contributing, I would suggest just not making it open source then. The ability for anyone to take it and use it is fundamental to FOSS.

[freeloaderz]

It's a mix of all the above, I've written several OSS projects over the past 10 or so years. Recollecting on it, I typically get little value back by releasing it as OSS and license(s) pretty much guarantees this will happen.

If it's not shared at all few can benefit at all. So the goal is to strike a balance.

[nyellin]

Are you looking for strategies to monetize on a massive scale (e.g. VC funded, whole company) or a way to monetize small personal projects while keeping them small?