I can answer some of this at least in part (I am not DNNCorp):

1) There are private core team forums.

2) Security issues are not often exposed, even to some members of the core team.

3) Some betas/RC's are internal.

4) Emails are considered private, so is instant messaging.

5) We don't have access to Charles Nurse's house, Shaun Walkers cupboards, or Scott's Whillhite's toilet (rest room) via webcam.

I'm very concerned about point 5, I demand these people wear webcams fitted to their heads
Maybe you will get a better answer later :).

 

Just for the record, here is what the licensing info currently states:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

__________

My understanding of the license, and of changes to the license if they should occur, is that: if DNN Corp starts to charge for the updates, the community will definitely suffer and DNN may become a slowly dying platform.  However, if there are enough community members who want to contribute to an open-source project, we could simply take all of the source code released under the BSD license and start a "fork" in the road with a new open-source project.

After all, I believe I read somewhere that DNN was started based off of a "community site" template made by microsoft to demonstrate ASP.NET capabilities.

Still, if it changed, I think my future sites would be made in something open source that uses linux servers... like Drupal.  While drupal scared me off because it was less intuitive to use, I recently started playing around with it more and find it's not that difficult and VERY extensible.

I would like to re-iterate Scott's previous comments that we are 100% committed to maintaining DotNetNuke as an Open Source product.  We did not get to where we are today by having a proprietary product.  I think any reasonably objective person can look at our history and decide for themselves how much we value our Open Source roots.  In fact you can look at our actions in the last 6 months to see this -

1. Our new CEO is from an Open Source services company.  Navin has a long track record in working with Alfresco and LifeRay and shares the founders' commitment to Open Source.
2. Both of the VCs which funded DNN Corp. and who sit on our Board have long ties to the Open Source community and have funded several other Open Source companies in the past.  They understand Open Source businesses and are equally commited to the Open Source vision presented by the founders.  If they weren't, they wouldn't have invested their money.
3. Our final Board member and long time business advisor, Larry Augustin, has a long record of commitment to Open Source.  Having founded VA Linux and SourceForge, as well has having been CEO and sat on the boards of a dozen or more Open Source companies like SugarCRM, I think speaks well of his background in Open Source.  In fact he was one of the individuals at the meeting where the term "Open Source" was created.
4. Our corporate Attorney, Mark Radcliffe, has long been the general counsel for the OSI board and has extensive background in Open Source.
5. Our VP of Sales was formerly the VP of sales at Hyperic - a venture-backed open source software systems management company.

At every step of the way we have chosen to surround ourselves with advisors and managment who have long track records in the Open Source community.  We would not have done this if we were planning to change to a proprietary model.  In fact, I think you would see our investors and management team screaming just as loudly as the founders and community if any suggested we do away with the Open Source nature of DotNetNuke.  It is who we are and what makes us special - why would anyone think either us or our board would want to get rid of it?

Over the coming months you will see an increased commitment to the Open Source ideals which we truly value.  The business model we have chosen allows us to grow our support of DotNetNuke Community Edtion rather than kill it off and you will see the proof of that in the coming months as we accelerate development of DotNetNuke Community Edition.