[OT] Collabnet's Open-Source business model

On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 02:32:38PM -0600, Ben Collins-Sussman wrote:
> I promise that ViewCVS's svn compatibility is well-maintained. The
> maintainer is sitting a meter away from me. It's a core component in
> Collabnet's commercial product, so we're not allowed to let ViewCVS
> *not* work with the latest released Subversion. :-)

The above comment made me wonder about Collabnets "unification" of Open
Source (Subversion and friends) and the commercial world. There's always
a lot of noise in the OSS (Open Source Software) community about ways to
make money when giving your software away. Which prompts the following
questions:

- How does Collabnet make money? What is your business model?

- In retrospect, would you expect to make more or less had you chosen
  not to make Subversion and friends OSS?

- What is your experiences in bringing OSS to the commercial world? Or
  bringing the commercial world to OSS?

- Have you encountered problems with the OSS community being a
  commercial entity? Or with the commercial world being an OSS shop?

- Did you choose the OSS way of doing things from an ideological or
  commercial perspective?

- Did you start out as an OSS shop or was it decided later on? If so,
  what steps/pains/surprises did you come across?

- Any other insights regarding the topic at hand?

Now, I may be sticking my nose into places it's not supposed to go. If
so, feel free to slap me or ignore me - or kick me hard for being off
topic ;-) I'm just being curious, as it seems that somehow Collabnet has
found a good way bring the two worlds together and make the best of
both. I've been through the Collabnet website, the Subversion FAQ and
mailing list archive without luck.

These questions are, of course, primarily aimed at the people at
Collabnet, but feel free to chime in if you have something to share.

-- 
Cheers,
- Jacob Atzen
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