<i>How do they know a freemium model will be possible without losing money?</i><p>They don&#x27;t, just like they also don&#x27;t know if a non-freemium pricing model will be possible. They presumably wrote a business model that it&#x27;ll be implemented and then reevaluated.<p><i>Why will they put out a beta rather than starting with a &quot;gold&quot; version of the software?</i><p>Probably because they want the benefits of having early feedback before investing too much work into it.