McVoy may not claim to know the answer to this question, but he has some interesting ideas. The moment we sell proprietary software we limit our opportunities, because we will have given up on the bigger opportunities available to us. The real flaw in the whole open source model is there isn't any lock. A number of companies have already implemented hybrid open source strategies, or designed ways to compensate open source programmers who had been contributing code for free. The giant hardware and software vendors are all toying in one form or another with the hybrid model, selling products, services, or support for free operating systems or using them to funnel buyers to lucrative hardware sales.
Caldera is one such company.
The Utah-based company releases its distribution of Linux for free and under an open source license, but adds its proprietary Lizard installer to the package. Similarly, TurboLinux adds proprietary clustering technology to its distribution of Linux. Corel is likewise mixing proprietary and open software. It expects a strong for-profit business from its applications software for Linux. Corel's Office 2000 for Linux went into beta testing in late January and is slated to ship to customers in March.