I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one
The author makes a good case against open source businesses, but he indulges himself in a false dichotomy between a traditional proprietary model and open source.<p>Increasingly often, <i>there is no market</i> for your proprietary software.  It is then not a choice between open source and proprietary models, but rather between doing open source or doing nothing.<p>A lot of markets are just <i>gone</i>, and they're not coming back.  Odds are, you're never going to sell another proprietary UNIX clone, or a proprietary database, or a proprietary application server.  There are no punters.  Those niches have been extinguished.