[slgeorge]

> I am so freaking sick of companies lying and exploiting open source. This is Embrace, Extend, Extinguish at it's finest.

I don't see how this is 'Embrace, Extend, Extinguish'? This license guarantees that the code becomes Free Software at a maximum of 4 years - and in this case they've specified a shorter time period.

I'll give you that there are lots of games played in open source, so I understand that feeling of cynicism. But, this actually seems like an attempt to add some nuance to the commercial<-->free divide.

The reality is that many 'commercial' OSS companies have to take the open core route because understandably investors expect a return on their money. There are exceptions to this, but they are pretty rare. In fact, there are probably a whole set of SaaS companies that could be open source, but don't do so out of the fear of someone taking their code and 'free riding' them.

Finding a way to prefer the entity that sponsors/incubates the code base, while also genuinely allowing a community of contribution around it (not free riding) would be very beneficial in lots of situations. Maybe a better critique would be that this has some similarities to the Trolltech QT approach - but that's a different argument.