He gives "12 reasons why [he] think[]s that it would not have been possible to create the Wolfram technology stack using a free and open-source model".
I.e. his concern is not whether a project can be open sourced (and make money, or keep its vision, etc). Sure it can.
His concern is whether something like Wolfram can be built up the "bazaar" way, from a disparate open source community.
Consider the statement "I don't think I could have survived if I was forced to cycle to work every day!" While I'm not saying it outright, I'm making it clear that tomorrow I will not be cycling to work.
At the end, he almost does say it outright: "But our vision is a grand one—unify all of computation into a single coherent language, and for that, the FOSS development model is not well suited." In other words, don't hold your breath for it to happen in the future - it doesn't fit with our vision.
His emphasis is that Wolfram was not, and in his opinion will never be, a good fit for the "FOSS development model" (what I call "bazaar-style" in my comment above).
Considering that he thinks that Wolfram couldn't be developed in the "FOSS development model", and that he things that model is not suited for Wolfram, it's also unlikely that he will open source it either. Since there's no much purpose in open sourcing something that doesn't benefit from that model. You just give your product away for free (beer/freedom) with no benefit for either the product or you.
I think it does (equal "bazaar-style" development).
Else it's not a product with a "FOSS development model", but merely a product with a "FOSS license".
But he talks of "FOSS development model" (as opposed to "FOSS license" or "FOSS business model").
>Reusing my previous example, BSDs are shipped as operating systems, not a kernel and a hodge podge of packages.
For their core (kernel + userland) yes. But on top they are still as much "a hodge podge of packages", with uncoordinated development and releases as Linux (e.g. the desktop environments, applications, window managers, compilers, app servers, etc -- it's just the kernel and basic UNIX userland that's coherent in BSDs).
What about when business fails though? Open-source projects never die; see the forks and reused knowledge in projects such as ffmpeg, libav, iPodLinux, Rockbox. For archiving purposes, open-source is tremendous.
I wish another kind of license were available, where software remains commercial until the company closes down, but then becomes OSS rather than abandonware.
They do kind of die. Most of them, when the founder quits, the project just remains in github (etc) forever, not exactly dead but not alive either.
I am really in favor of companies that go out of business or products that quit open sourcing their software. I mean; all the popular Google products that were pulled, like Inbox, Rss reader and whatever more; why the hell didn't they open source those. I know ; probably something something legal, but that is a total waste.
I guess most companies, even after going out of business, will never do this.
As he mentions, there are lots of projects that counter his claims. Linux kernel. Every Open Source high-level language ever. Red hat.
Wolfram isn't open source because they don't want it to be open source. And you know what? They're allowed to do that! They don't need to justify that decision, it's their decision to make.
Without resorting to "they love money too much", I'll give them another, slightly more honest reason: It's certainly not impossible, but open sourcing an established project is hard. Managing a community of contributors AND a community of users is hard. Keeping a steady stream of revenue while you make the transition is haaaaarrrd. Maintaining all the values that he's mentioned while still keeping all your contributors and community happy: HARD.
And if the cost:value ratio is wrong, you don't do it. And if you have lots of other hard problems to solve, adding one more hard problem with fractional value is silly.
Yes, we would love it to be OSS. Maybe this was posted as a way of never having to answer the question again. Just sad that it isn't a little more honest an answer.