Here is Tim O'Reilly's [link|http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/06/28/vendor.html|latest column].

Note how he emphasizes that the entire open source dynamic is driving off of the grass-roots. We neither need nor in many cases do we want vendors to be driving most of development. Depending on the project or platform there may or may not be a profitable role for vendors. Where there is, the fact that they can externalize a lot of their development costs will be key to profitability.

The flip side of that is that if you take development out of end user's hands, the dynamic is ruined, and there won't be any successful vendor models.

Cheers,
Ben

And agreed that Tim doesn't really understand the licensing issue. People argue about licensing because licensing says something important to them. You have to listen to see that underneath the rhetoric, but it is there.

Also different licenses mean different business models. It is easy to see that the BSD/MIT style licenses allow business models that the GPL does not. However the converse is also true. One need look no farther than Aladdin and Red Hat to find examples of companies which release under the GPL licenses because they want to avoid having semi-proprietary competitors who are leveraging on their work.

But I disagree that the BSD/MIT licenses benefit from the GPL. I think that they would have succeeded on their own terms. Succeeded differently perhaps, but succeeded nonetheless. (Albeit possibly more on a Larry Wall like attitude of, "It is OK with me if you haven't yet realized why it is to your benefit to contribute back. I am sure you will get it eventually.")

Cheers,
Ben