Kern Sibbald recently wrote this:
| While I was consulting with the Free Software Foundation Europe | (FSFE) on the Bareos copyright violations, Bacula Systems and I | began discussions with the FSFE on how to guarantee the long term | survival of Bacula. These discussions, extremely positive on both | sides and all points, recently lead to a formal written agreement | between myself, Bacula Systems, and the FSFE. There are a number of | points in the agreement, but probably the most important of all is | that Bacula Systems has now put in writing that it is an Open Source | company (at its heart), as it has always proclaimed, and will | contribute all the Enterprise code it creates to the Bacula | Community code base within at most a 5 year period. One exception | is that Bacula Systems is legally unable to contribute certain code | encumbered by third party proprietary license. The 5 year delay | gives Bacula Systems the chance to develop Enterprise features that | differentiate it, but ensures the continual growth of the Bacula | Community code. This model can possibly be used across the industry | to ensure the future of open source software in an environment where | development costs, particularly for hardware to do testing, are | prohibitive to the standard models of today.
(It's currently available at http://bacula.org/en/?page=news, but this doesn't look like a stable URL.)
I find this quite surprising. Does FSF Europe really think that this model is a good way to fund free software development, absorbing the leftovers from proprietary software?