I think I agree with you. The author's concept of "true open source" software will never seriously be provided to end-users in any form besides a closed source

I think I agree with you. The author's concept of "true open source" software will never seriously be provided to end-users in any form besides a closed source binary. That's my interpretation of this statement several sentences in, where they essentially reject FOSS: >While free software licensing (e.g., GNU General Public License) attempts to force freedom on downstream developers, true open source basically says, "Take this software, use it and improve it (or not), and license the resulting product as you wish." It seems like the author's definition of successful software is closed source software. See their point of criticism of Fair Source: >Fair Source says, in essence, "You have all the rights of open source until your derivative work is actually popular. At that point you must pay." In other words, if your software stinks and no one wants to use it, hurray! It's open for usage, redistribution, and modification. The CentOS and source code access problem in post-acquisition Red Hat makes it a terrible example to cite for the author's conclusion: >There is no money in (selling) open source, as I've argued many times. There is, however, a mountain of cash waiting for those that monetize open source indirectly through support/software services like Red Hat, and even more for those that don't sell software-related services at all. The supporting arguments and overall take is low quality.