[jeswin]

I was trying to respond to your pre-edit comment about fewer companies being started if we have such rules.

Most people start companies because they love what they are doing, want to make an impact, and to make a good living.

An interesting study would be whether open source startups are doing any better or worse than closed source companies. Do you have any links?

[jchonphoenix]

I don't have any links per say, but I have done extensive market research on this as it's a requirement in my job (I work at one of the aforementioned open source companies). A quick nitpick, regardless of what people publicly say to the press, I'm 100% positive that most companies are started with some financial motive.

It's not impossible to build a business around open source, but it's incredibly hard. Take MySQL for example. MySQL's initial pitch was this "We'll destroy 50% of the DB market, and then capture 25% of the remaining market." And MySQL the company never really made it. This is with arguably the largest pure technical market to ever exist (databases).