The issue is that the Open Source business model is not a super effective one. aD seems to be building an open source model without a Noosphere-- odd concept.It is. If you read the article by the CEO and Chairman of aD, you can see their perspective on the issue. Free software's primary benefit to business is business and technology risk reduction.
Free software reduces business risk by not chaining you to a vendor. If your collaboration-software vendor takes off in a different direction, you are not forced to go with them. You can keep the code, for it, select a different support vendor. You are not screwed.
It reduces technology risk simply because the code is available to you. I am living this right here, right now: I'm supposed to be installing and evaluating Sybase, Oracle, and PostgreSQL for a large client of my employer. Oracle has thrown me into DLL hell, since it's incompatible with recent releases of glibc which are used through Linux-land. It will only work with older versions of glibc (2.1; 2.2 is a big pain). Postgres can be rebuilt with no problem, and minimal risk. If there are problems, I have access to the source and can fix it myself. Again, a technology risk reduction.
aD is using the GPL to sell risk reduction; they aren't willing to open the software up to the community to the point that the community can change the direction of the software. The only choice is to fork the code.
enhydra.org where their is a strong community of both commercial and non-My first question would be: what are the best strategies to make the community grow?
Eric Raymond's list of preconditions seems right here.
