[PeterZaitsev]

The devil in such case is in details. Is Open Source version actually useful or is it really there just for marketing purpose ? I think this is where how large portion of users are running free vs paid version is a good indication.

[j45]

It's probably worth first thinking about your first year of interaction with Open Source, and if the world might have been different before you first experienced it.

Of course there's projects in open source where it's only free if your time is worthless. This means lots of manual figuring it out as some sort of badge of accomplishment, intentional, or not.

Then you move towards more user friendly software, and more and more towards easy to install.

There is a type of open source that is a funded startup, where open source is used as a way to attract paying customers, and not really be originating as open source. There's been lots about this out there.

The devil is pretty simple to see. if a new project reaches the point of adoption and quickly moves or puts core features into a paid tier, it was meant to use free community attention and labour and not give back more labour. At this point a lot of meaningful forks can occur.

Free vs paid open source is the major difference that I'm speaking from. There was a time, not too long ago where this wasn't the norm. I agree large corporations should pay for and support open source, because with out it much of what we have and use today wouldn't be as possible, as quickly.