When I see these startups making a business that is so heavily based on open-source software (like Tailscale on top of Wireguard), I have to wonder what these companies do to actually support the author(s) of the software that so much of their company is based on.
We have also given OSS authors advisor equity. A couple of folks wrote libraries that were important to keeping us going, and we've granted them shares the same way some startups would to MBA advisors.
That's a fantastic idea. In retrospect it's a really obvious idea but I've never heard of anyone doing it before. Is this a common thing that I'm just oblivious to?
That said SQLite has a business model of selling support and premium features like encryption: https://www.sqlite.org/prosupport.html
It's like when RedHat when public and offered pre-IPO stock to open source developers.