Does OSS always have to end up as an sass to make profit?
Not always there are some technical oriented products where the originators set up shop as a consultancy and offer expertise in the technology. The Dojo Toolkit is a good example of such an arrangement. Where you can hire Site-Pen to develop web applications with the technology the founders created. It is probably a less lucrative model but it is another way that revenue is generated around the OSS model.
As for the OP's question about success, I am pretty sure the founders of Pentaho are doing pretty well. Maybe not Google well, but I would assume that they are fairly wealthy individuals now. Granted they have played down their OSS roots on their site, but they still do offer the community edition.
Not always there are some technical oriented products where the originators set up shop as a consultancy and offer expertise in the technology. The Dojo Toolkit is a good example of such an arrangement. Where you can hire Site-Pen to develop web applications with the technology the founders created. It is probably a less lucrative model but it is another way that revenue is generated around the OSS model.
As for the OP's question about success, I am pretty sure the founders of Pentaho are doing pretty well. Maybe not Google well, but I would assume that they are fairly wealthy individuals now. Granted they have played down their OSS roots on their site, but they still do offer the community edition.