To be frank, most companies trying to make money from open source software have (IMHO) very poor business plans. You need to understand where your value is. Non-foss organisations tend to think that their value is in the accumulated bits that is their software. The artificial scarcity that is their "intellectual property", their monopoly on copying the software, is what creates the value. If you relax your exclusive rights (as you do with FOSS), then this no longer holds value.

Some companies, having relaxed their exclusive rights decide that they will provide autonomous services on top of their software. This is basically SaaS. But again, if you relax your exclusive rights to the software, then anyone can offer the same services. If, because they are able to scale better than you can, they can offer it cheaper (and/or better) then you will not be able to compete.

These things are so obvious to me that I find it absolutely incredible that it is a surprise to anyone. And yet, I see companies building business plans on top of nothing.

If you want to make a business doing FOSS, then you need to understand where your value lies. It is not in the exclusivity of the software. It almost certainly is not in the SaaS because unless you have a really compelling story for executing your service, more established companies will eat your lunch. So what is your value?

Your value is that you wrote the software. You are the expert. You drive the direction of the project. You own a trademark that you don't share with your competitors (unless you are insane).

But what that means is that you can't just write some software and sit on your laurels as the money rolls in. You can't write some software and stick it up on some server somewhere and watch the money roll in. You actually have to do something to make more money. Everything in your organisation has to be oriented towards, "What's next?" What are you going to do that someone will pay for? Training? Services? Custom development? A promise for the next version? A tie in with hardware? It doesn't matter, but the key is that it has to be of the category: you do something to get paid. It can't be: I already did the thing and now I'm going to sell it.

And yes. I think it's a good thing.

For me it's public infrastructure, like roads. It's better if basic software is in the public domain. Then I have nothing against specialized domain software being commercial and closed.