I run an open core software company. Incentives depends on the complexity of what the software does. In the "distro" oss companies like cloudera, red hat, us,.

I run an open core software company. Incentives depends on the complexity of what the software does. In the "distro" oss companies like cloudera, red hat, us,.. there is usually a lock in component somewhere (usually in the difficulty) but sometimes in a closed source component. We've had difficulty with "paid extensions" in real practice. The only thing that tends to work is "as a service" or "buy the proprietary part". I won't comment on the individual developer attempting to sell a JS library. I just want to note how hard it can be for customers to even be convinced of this in the first place. The likelihood of this being a real "revenue stream" for your typical freelance OSS developer building a node library is a stretch at best.