That's exactly what I had thought at first. I think that there are too many brilliant engineers with great (and technically working) ideas out there who are jus

That's exactly what I had thought at first. I think that there are too many brilliant engineers with great (and technically working) ideas out there who are just too afraid (or lack business acumen) to enter the market a bit more boldly than through Open Source. Specifically in this case where the software is so niche but adding such tremendous value to end users, a very premium price tag wouldn't be too hard to sell. But it would have to be sold. A skill that the author didn't have and didn't want to acquire / hire. I'm the author of www.jooq.org, which has gone an independent dual-licensing route and I really wish more people did this rather than hoping for an OSS sponsor... (hello Groovy/Pivotal). And I can totally say that all fears are wrong. I am doing even more what I want in my company, both from a technical perspective as well as from a personal branding perspective. Comparing this with being driven by a corporation like Red Hat...