We have enough examples now where a company open sources its product and still makes money, Redhat, Mysql to name few. You can always open up the base product a

We have enough examples now where a company open sources its product and still makes money, Redhat, Mysql to name few. You can always open up the base product and charge for additional features (the freemium model). You have to create an ecosystem around the product it will be profitable. That ecosystem can be additional plugins or services around a free software product. Since free software is based on the concept of sharing the network effect will kick in, for good products. If the product is good you will make money immaterial of open source or closed source nature. In my opinion free software has more stability and performance but most free softwares are packaged badly (or not packaged at all). When Free software hackers learn the art of packaging a product and start realizing that there are others who are going to use the product too, we can should lot more usable products from open source world.