I can relate to this article though I was even less smart than any of the people interviewed. I choose to give away BitKeeper because I wanted to help Linux.

I can relate to this article though I was even less smart than any of the people interviewed. I choose to give away BitKeeper because I wanted to help Linux. There was absolutely no business model, freemium or otherwise. We eventually stumbled upon the privacy costs money, out in the open is free model but it was always sort of so-so. In retrospect, what I should have done is make 2 differentiated products, free and paid. Free is basic, no guis, just enough to get the job done for the kernel and paid has all the bells and whistles. We actually thought of that at the time and I rejected it because at the time, before Linus was using BitKeeper, I felt like if he didn't get the good stuff he wouldn't use it. Pretty stupid from a business point of view, kinda makes sense if you look at it from a help Linux not fragment point of view. Kinda.