Giving software away for free isn't a business model, was never meant to be, and the math just doesn't work. There are some very small niche projects where a f

Giving software away for free isn't a business model, was never meant to be, and the math just doesn't work. There are some very small niche projects where a few small core developers make a living doing contract development implementing features and fixing bugs, but it typically doesn't scale into a company. Most successful "open source" companies use an open core model, where they provide services and proprietary add-ons related to an open source project that they contribute to but may not actually own. Think GitHub or Docker.