Link Details

Dual licensing usually doesn't work. The companies successfully using DL are the exception, not the rule. Qt comes to mind. But only because of KDE. It seems that the "community" is not as dumb as some clever people may think.

There are two things that must be in place in order for a Dual License company to work. One is that your users must create derived products with a significant amount of investment behind which founds the basis of your users income and revenue model. Two is that they must distribute that derived product to their customers again which must be outside of the Unit (person, company or organization) he belongs to. If those two premises are in place and you have a team of great developers in addition to a great problem to solve which a lot of people wants to have solved then you have a sure winner. To say Dual Licensing "doesn't work" is the stupidest combination of two phrases of words I've heard...
Trolltech was sold for 200 millions dollars to Nokia. MySQL was sold for even MORE a couple of months ago, And regarding "the community isn't as dumb" blah, blah, blah. You are right that they are not as dumb, but not because of not embracing Dual Licensed Companies. Quite the contrary in fact. Most users sees a great product and if there's a company giving guarantees behind that product then that's *GREAT* and supplies them with even MORE arguments for using the product.
BTW, KDE is BY FAR THE largest Community Project on the planet as of today with more than 5000 checkins *per week* so your "community isn't as dumb" is actually right, but not for the reasons you are thinking of!
DZoneLurker; grow up! Money is not dirty! People have the right to be able to earn their own income, not everyone can work on projects sponsored by huge massive corporations like IBM and SUN. Or maybe you just want your "free beer"...?
If so I'd like to point you in the direction of North Korea which is the last country on the planet where communism from a financial perspective is still kickin'...

Yay. A communist reference. I don't often agree with dzonelurker but this is unnecessary as is the "grow up" comment. Voted down.

"KDE is BY FAR THE largest Community Project on the planet as of today"

So, why is KDE not the default desktop on Ubuntu? (Hint: Qt, ... dual license, ...)
OTOH, is Apache doomed because it is not owned by a VC founded company and the Apache libraries are not 'dual-licensed'?

"People have the right to be able to earn their own income"

Torvalds must be a poor beggar. He failed to 'dual-license' Linux.

Apache developers (most of the core at least) have their salaries from others like IBM, SUN etc. And if they don't then they work for some company supplying patches to Apache or they work on it for free in their "spare time". Do you disagree on people's right to start their own businesses and doing FOSS at the same time...?
Should we all be employees for IBM, SUN, Google or some other "massively huge corporation"...?
If they start their own business and they want to work on Free Software then according to you they are basically doomed to getting their salaries as consultancies working on the "grace" of IBM and SUN or some other company who wants his fix for the next version of "whatever-project-they're-heavily-invested-in-at-the-moment"...
Regarding Torvalds;
Torvalds is first of all THE Rock Star and to take him as an example is first of all unfair, beside the exact same argument applies to him as the "rest of the developers" getting paid to do non-Dual Licensed SW. He's basically sponsored by some big corporation to continue development on Linux...
So according to your rhetoric we should all a) either do all FOSS in weekends while getting paid daytime for something completely different or b) start working for IBM or some other company that's willing to pay people to work on some FOSS project or c) work as consultancies selling our work to the highest bidder which wants to get some specific task done on some specific FOSS SW system...?
So starting an actual business on FOSS is not an option...?
Is it the "business part" you think are evil...?
What are we left with then those of us who don't fit any of a, b and c...?
Becoming Microserfs...?
Is that what you want...?
The Open Source community is basically divided in the "free beer" guys and the "Quid Pro Quo" guys. I think that's an incredibly stupid distinction, it all started (for real) back in the late 90s, in fact the coincidence of Steve Jobs being "back in office" and in "need of an OS" was hugely interesting for those up to date on History. I think that's a shame since basically we all want the same. Free Software. In fact every CEOs of Dual License companies are extremely aware of that it's just a matter of time before EVERYONE discovers the real beauty of delivering only FOSS. And when they do our entire business model goes down the drains, and we're all in fact ENCOURAGING this future. Like for instance Gaiaware (us) with our Gaia Programming Contest giving away 10,000 EURO to Jackson Harper winning with a purely idealistic system helping the world recognize environmental activities one can perform to help save the planet...?
Why is that when we definitely have a FINANCIAL incentive to STOP that future...?
Might it be because we actually WANT Free Software do you think...?
@WhiskeyJack
Sorry for the "commi" remark, the lurker have constantly been submitting FUD about GPL, Dual License companies, Quid Pro Quo and Freedom Software now for so long I just "tilt" sometimes when I see his remarks... :S

Ohh yeah regarding KDE and Ubuntu, KDE has 70% of all Windows Managers installations (roughly) in the world while "the rest" including Gnome shares the 30% "leftovers"...
EVEN when considering Ubuntu being distributed with Gnome and only late coming into the ballgame with Kubuntu...