If you cheat the definition, you could say Apple has opened some code, therefore they are an open source company.<p>But, clearly that&#x27;s not what&#x27;s in play here.  It&#x27;s <i>difficult</i> to be an open source startup because it&#x27;s easy to get a big ego and start doing software wrong.  You don&#x27;t get people to use your software by saying &quot;LOOK!  We have VCs.  Trust us.  Buy our support contracts!&quot;<p>You get people to use your software by making good features, growing by word of mouth, then you&#x27;re entrenched and can start milking the support cow.  Your word-of-mouth features don&#x27;t even have to <i>work</i> (<i>cough</i>mongo<i>cough</i>), they just have to be easy to brag about so developers get ego boosts by telling others &quot;hey, look, i found this thing and you should think I&#x27;m cool because I&#x27;m telling you about it.&quot;<p>Another really important point: open source companies aren&#x27;t proven.  The current crop of open source startup VC funded happy towns are all experiments.  It&#x27;s very possible you <i>can&#x27;t</i> create sustainable open source software companies (support contracts aren&#x27;t zero margin software products, and nobody buys software anymore because lol &quot;it&#x27;s free!!!&quot;).  There&#x27;s no natural &quot;supernormal profit&quot; engine if you make a good, clean, understandable open source product.  In fact, it&#x27;s actually the opposite: open source companies get big when the product is garbage (or too complex) because then everybody <i>needs</i> support to CYA against higher management.<p>(I&#x27;ve been thinking about writing a few articles about all this in January.  Stay tuned.)