Some areas do lend themselves to the two-tier system more than others, so I am not sure open-source will continue to gain significant market through tiered payment levels. It works for enterprise offerings but not all open-source projects lend themselves to enterprise.<p>I think its almost more significant that in a post-piracy age (maybe we're not quite there yet), people seem to be increasingly willing to pay for something when they don't have to. I think open source may start to gain traction on a pay-what-you-want payment model, in the way that some musicians have.
The author forgot a different model: a bunch of small/medium companies work together to build a larger project, with hundreds of other companies and individuals making smaller contributions.<p>Our business is completely based on OpenERP, which is an AGPLv3 licensed web ERP created by a Belgium company (OpenERP SA) and with modules built and contributed by dozens of partners.<p>It works for us, since we get a free ERP we can build upon; it works for them, since they get contributions and support contracts from our larger clients. Win-win.
There is always going to be money in hosting/support/continued development of both open source and proprietary software. Dual license or not, people will pay money for these things.
"Using a dual-license model, with commercial licensing supporting the development of both community and enterprise versions. It’s a model that companies such as Redhat and MySQL used very effectively in building billion dollar businesses and enterprise grade products."<p>The statement seems true for infrastructure oriented open source projects (MongoDB etc.). For software applications that business users use, does a dual-license model hold true? I personally doubt it.