Canonical and SUSE are still around and have millions in revenue.
Turns out that Linux is a good product that needs a lot of stewardship and support that's worth paying for. Support was the most compelling feature of Rackspace's product (vs their competitors) as well until the ease of use and rapid-iteration of cloud services crushed them.
There's also hundreds of thousands of software developers and consultancies offering their services that make use of GPL'd (and other OSS-licensed) code. Probably 90% of this board is selling their services/labor of GPL'd projects. It's been my whole career.
No, what it sounds like is we're talking about people who want to write OSS but also want ownership and exclusive rights to make money off of it. My argument there is pound sand.
Note Canonical was created by an already millionaire. He already managed a Venture Capital at that time, and I assume had other businesses around. fwiw Canonical might as well be all lost money (millions of revenue, but how about profits?).
No idea about Suse.
In any case, even if they are great success examples, these can be counted on the fingers of one hand... so I'd say the sample size is not precisely "enough", not at least to prove a point.
EDIT: (reply to an edited part of the comment)
> what it sounds like is we're talking about people who want to write OSS but also want ownership and exclusive rights to make money off of it
I agree. On the other hand, most of the OSS that exists is created by such people, and what do we prefer? Idealistic but non-existing OSS software? or compromised but existing and useful OSS software? That's the question that I feel is behind all the conversations about this topic.
Wealthy people invest in things that are successful, not piss their money away for no reason. Canonical's revenues are around 110 million a year, taking in about a 10% profit margin since 2018 (which tracks with about how long it takes big tech companies to be in the black). SUSE's around 300 million.
You miscategorize Canonical like it's some vanity project. Even vanity projects can be profitable enterprises! Look at Koenigsegg cars! They're literally a millionaire's vanity project that is a profitable enterprise employing hundreds of people.
> I agree. On the other hand, most of the OSS that exists is created by such people, and what do we prefer? Idealistic but non-existing OSS software? or compromised but existing and useful OSS software? That's the question that I feel is behind all the conversations about this topic.
Free software has been around since the 80s, at this point. With or without the GPL. It turns out that there are many, many successful products and businesses that use other OSS licenses. I don't think we're in any danger of people with our skillsets not being able to eat. We're basically all potential millionaires.
The GPL is _not_ the only option available. Heck, Apache is absurdly popular and the bedrock of many enterprises...
