I’ve seen companies who harvest their communities, perhaps providing money, machines, free or meeting space, but taking the product, commercializing it … and then giving back Absolutely. Nothing. At. All. This is a quick and certain way to the very deepest circle of the hacker inferno, in case anyone was looking for a short cut.

I’ve seen companies that sponsor a community (to some extent or other), including a lot of good citizenship with fixes and what-not, and then also add significant features only available to paying customers. This seems like a harder call: most people will acknowledge a company’s right to find some way or other to make a buck, that being not only the whole point of a company, but also the primary source of the “support” they’re giving the community. But if the reserved feature is too central to the product, like an unusual save format or a fancy print dialog, it’s still a bit unsavory.

And then, I’ve seen companies that sponsor a community with full and commendable citizenship, supporting in all the ways mentioned above, contributing back time and patches and even major features, building the strongest product the open-source community could wish, and also building related but independent larger, commercial products on top. Underlying licenses permitting, this all seems to me entirely reasonable.