Monetizing open source directly is a bit challenging because you end up stuck in the same service model as everyone else. Which is basically to sell various sup

Monetizing open source directly is a bit challenging because you end up stuck in the same service model as everyone else. Which is basically to sell various support contracts to the fortune 100-500. Forking a project into a enterprise (paid for) version and limiting those features in the original open source version, creates tension in the community, and usually isn't a model that leads to success. Converting an open source project directly into a paid for software or SaaS model is definitely the best route as it reduces head count and allows you to be a software company instead of a service company. Perhaps best captured by Github warpping git with an interface and community and then directly selling a SaaS subscription and eventually an enterprise hosted version that is still delivered on a subscription basis just behind the corporate firewall. Also of note is that Github didn't create git itself, and instead was done on the direct need that developers saw themselves, which means they thought what is the product I want, rather than, we built and maintain git, so let's do that and eventually monetize it.