However, I think that most them are missing the elephant in the room: Open core is not sustainable in the long term because it represents the worst of both worlds. Open core tries to find a middle ground between proprietary software and free software, but it reaps the benefits of neither and inherits the problems of both.

Ultimately, “Open Core” is a glorified shareware situation. As a user, you get some subset of functionality, and may even get the four freedoms with regard to that subset. But, when you want the “good stuff”, you've got to take a proprietary license. And, this is true whether the Core is GPL'd or permissively licensed.

Simon Phipps is correct: Open Core is Bad for You, the "you" here being you and me, end users: The open core model exploits open source and is a game on software freedom. The fact the game is played does not invalidate software freedom, but it suggests we need to revisit definitions and make the game harder to play.

For the last decade, I've regularly seen complaints when we harder-core software freedom advocates spend some time criticizing proprietary software in addition to our normal work preserving, protecting and promoting software freedom.

If the recent debate about open core licensing has proven one thing, it is that the issue of combining proprietary and open source code continues to be a controversial one.

Last week, I wrote about the somewhat-vague definition of the open core business model, and how it compared to the dual-license business model. Open core, like dual licenses, are all part of the whole "ways-to-make-money-faster-with-open-source-software" genre of business, but they are not the same thing.

Despite the FSF's caution (arguing that giving people proprietary software would discourage freedom in the long term too) Canonical opens the door to non-Free software

"No matter how glib and sarcastic the proprietor, proprietary software denies users the freedoms to inspect, share, and modify the program. Users of Adobe’s proprietary Creative Suite software recently discovered that the program communicates over the network with a machine apparently owned by Omniture, a company that tracks web usage..."

Everyone seems to have an opinion on the open core debate, and a popular opinion seems to inflict some sort of excommunication to anyone having a less than pure open source monetization process. Therefore I thought that I would add some unsolicited input to this matter.