Well said Mike... I am not sure how some people are coming to certain conclusions, but I can say with 100% certainty that:
1. DNN Corp does NOT want to interfere with the relationships between Customers and Service Providers ( Systems Integrators, Hosters, Consultants, VARs, etc.. )
For those customers who need to mitigate the business risk of adopting the DNN product as a central part of their business strategy, they can optionally choose to use Professional Edition - as it provides the assurance and formal business commitment that the product is solidly backed by a traditional product vendor who is committed to meeting the needs of its users now and in the future.
From a Service Provider perspective, this should not be viewed as competitive in any way - but rather as a means to enhance your offering to customers. Service Providers will continue to work directly with their customers and cultivate meaningful long term relationships; however, when an issue comes up with the core product in your customer installation, you will now have the ability to get immediate assistance and resolution - ultimately allowing you to provide a higher level of service to your customers. Professional Edition also provides you with additional marketing benefits which should improve your chances of success in larger scale customer engagements ( where peace of mind is critically important ).
A Partner program will be announced soon which also provides a new opportunity and financial benefit to those Service Providers who wish to offer Professional Edition to their customers.
2. DNN Corp is NOT going to neglect Community Edition.
Professional Edition is built on top of Community Edition - so Community Edition provides the solid foundation for all product editions. Therefore, just like in traditional construction, you can not neglect the foundation and expect to build a superior structure which stands the test of time. We are committed to driving value and innovation in the Community Edition just like we have always done. In addition, we will likely develop some extra functionality which is exclusive to Professional Edition; functionality that would not be applicable to the vast majority of deployments and therefore would not make sense for the standard use case to suffer from the extra overhead.