Yeah I disagree. Let's get practical. Does it really bother you that the company is using the community's contributions in their commercial product? That's actually great. They make their product better, they sell more copies, they get more revenue, they can spend more on marketing, DNN gets more popular and they can pay their full time software developers who create more features and make DNN community or commercial a better product. So this makes a full circle which benefits EVERYONE at the end. You are using a free open source product which keeps getting better and you don't have to pay a penny for it. Isn't that Redhat's business model with Linux? I don't see people complaining over there.
I would rather have a commercial entity behind DNN which has a real vested interest in improving the product otherwise they can't exist. We are all benefiting from their work. I would rather have full time paid developers working on it than depend on some aspirations of some people who have some 'ideal' ideas. Contributors who will work on DNN when they feel like it or when they have some free time. I am sure these people have full time jobs and families to feed. I am thankful for their contributions but I would rather not put DNN's fate in their hands.
DNN is 12 years old and some people are still worried that DNN might not have the future. Let's worry about this when DNN becomes stale or taken away from us. Why worry all the time about a product which has been getting better all these years? The commercial version is a few years old now. What bad things happened from this and making anyone unhappy?
"While DNN Corp is now focusing on its commercial product". What is the negative aspect of this if their code is merged into the open source DNN which everyone is benefiting from for free?
I like facts and examples. Let's see what happened to some open source modules when "the community" is taking over. According to Codeplex, DotNetNuke Forums last release date was July 20, 2011. Nice. That's over 3 years old. Active Forum on Github has been quiet for a few months now. Several reported issues didn't get any answer. There are many other core modules that haven't been updated for several months. That tell me the developers are not working on them consistently.
So what happens is that we get excited at the beginning. We have big plans and ideas and we promise the world. Then over time, people start to drop off, get lazy, lose interest and things start to die off. Money is the best incentive and that's why I want the DNN corp to be the steward for DNN. I like the rate of progress that's going on and I would go with than that the promises of some volunteers who I believe can't sustain working on DNN all the time for years.. and rightfully and understandably so. It's not realistic to expect too much from them.