For others looking for ways to monetize open source, we’ve learned at Ionic that many enterprises aren’t just looking to buy a premium version of your OSS project, they want your help solving (with software) a ton of related challenges around the technology/space, too. The big money is in doing those things too and not just being one small piece of the puzzle. So, for us, that means helping teams be successful with a…
that model just doesn't work for me because while it may work financially (and i have seen companies being successful with it), it prevents the product from being fully immersed into the Free Software ecosystem.
to sell commercial licenses i need to own 100% of the code, which means i can't easily accept outside contributions, nor can i use GPLd libraries which would conflict a commercial license. i do not want to be limited in my choice of tools to suit a commercial license. that's not what i think a good Free Software project should be like.
your comment therefore feels like a relief. my question is though, how to get the companies interested when the product is not yet proven? how to start, find the first customers? those who will pay enough for support to allow me to finish building the product?