This is indeed interesting. The historically 'good' open source companies like Sun got bought but the ones that weren't like Oracle. The selling support model

This is indeed interesting. The historically 'good' open source companies like Sun got bought but the ones that weren't like Oracle. The selling support model alone does not seem evolutionarily fit for the market. Now we have these VC-backed 'open source' companies that have a playbook wherein they appear open source at first. But when you dig deeper, you find that the heart of the thing is a closed binary. The investors are going to want to be paid back somehow. And the business model of VC means that one of two things happens: 1. The company finds a way to 100x the return. Which, if you're a customer, might be a scary prospect. 2. The company makes an amount somewhat lower and, while it would be a good business for a non-VC company, they're considered a zombie by their investors. So, they are killed leaving you as a customer in a bad position. I therefore trust non-VC backed companies substantially more to keep alignment with their customers long-term. A workable model could be for instead companies that have legally-enforceable promise not to enshitify their closed sourced product. So that the product will always be aligned with the paying customer. The customer cannot be made the product at a future date.