I'm really glad you brought this up! This topic is actually very relevant to what we're trying to do with Docker. Think of it this way: we (the creators of an

I'm really glad you brought this up! This topic is actually very relevant to what we're trying to do with Docker. Think of it this way: we (the creators of an open-source project) have built for our project an infrastructure capable of supporting its long-term development and success without falling victim to the "openbsd effect". We hijacked for ourselves a venture-backed company and are experimenting with a symbiotic relationship where both the project and the business win without corrupting each other. We get financial, legal and marketing "artillery" in the form of a corporate structure which is dedicated to the success of the project without distorting it. We have large stakeholder (me) who is also the maintainer of the open-source project. We have a CEO (Ben Golub) with a track record of incredible success in general, of successfully managing an open-source company in particular and with a reputation of doing business in an honest and trustworthy way. We have investors with a track record of being patient, seeing the big picture and backing open-source companies and their creators in a sincere way. These guys could have fired me at any point of our transition to this model, and didn't. So, sure, we got money "casually" (I'll leave that battle for another day), and OpenBSD struggled to get basic funding. And obviously, OpenBSD and Docker are not in the same league as open-source projects (although I hope one day they will be). But, respectfully, I think this is more than "another startup gets $XXM". We are experimenting with a new model for the funding of open-source. One where the original innovators get to capture some of the value they created, fueling even more innovation in a virtuous circle of "innovation -> better product -> more money -> more innovation". To me personally, were we to succeed, that would be a welcome change from the current situation, where the initial inventors are trampled by savvier entrepreneurs, who race to the local maximum of the most profitable derivative business model with the highest barriers to entry, and proceed to not reinvest their profits in the original invention, thwarting the virtuous circle. For example, Xensource produced the open-source hypervisor and we got Amazon EC2. Linus produced Git and we got Github. I think these products are great and useful - but they are a local maximum. With the raw material of git, hypervisors and a commodity open-source operating system, we could have produced so much more aggregate wealth! At Docker we want to be both git and github. We're open-source people first, but we know how to sell a saas product and run it at scale. We know how to raise money and build a profitable business with that money. And that profit gets directly reinvested in the original innovation - Docker. And I think that's the future of open-source: if we as a community want to see less "OpenBSD episodes", we're going to have to roll up our sleeves and go about building real business value on top of our inventions. Otherwise others will, and we'll only have ourselves to blame.