There are no open source companies. There are companies and there are open source projects.
Some companies work on open source projects, some parent open source projects, some don’t.
Some of those companies are good at fostering a community that contributes to these open source projects. Others are unwilling and some don’t yet understand the process. And again others have many open source projects being done by teams that do get it and have at the same time other projects being done by teams that don’t get it. Actually that last dual situation is the most common among the large companies. You know, the ones that often sponsor your community’s main conference and the ones that employ your heros.
If you do a quick reality-check then you’ll conclude there are no black / white companies. Actually, nothing in life nor in ethics is black / white. Nothing at all.
What you do have is a small group of amazingly disturbing purists who do zero coding themselves (that is, near zero) but do think black / white, and consequently write a lot of absurd nonsense in blog post-comments, on slashdot in particular, forums and mailing lists. These people are the reason numéro uno why many companies quit trying to understand open source.
It’s sad that the actual (open source) developers have to waste time explaining companies, for whom they do consultancy, that these people can be ignored. It’s also sad that these purists have turned so vocal, even violent, that they often can’t really be ignored anymore: people’s employers have been harassed.
“You have to fire somebody because he’s being unethical by disagreeing with my religious believe-system that Microsoft is evil!”. Maybe it’s just me who’s behind on ethics in this world? Well, those people can still get lost because I, in ethics, disagree with them.
Now, let’s get back to the projects and away from the open source vs. open core debates. We have a lot of work to do. And a lot of companies to convince opening their projects.
Open source developers succeeded in (for example) getting some software on phones. The people who did aren’t the religious black / white people. Maybe the media around open source should track down the people who did, and write quite a bit more about their work, ideas and passion?
Finally, the best companies are driven by the ideas and passions of their best employees. Those are the people who you should admire. Not their company’s open core PR.