Probably it is very hard to create a company around an open source project without disrupting part of the open source ecosystem around it... on the other hand it is important to create some kind of structure to pay the developers to continue working on the project. I'm not sure what I would do without VMware helping Redis... but I guess that some decent compromise should exist, like creating a support company for the software but leaving the project itself as an open source effort with it's own separated site, mailing list, and so forth.

There is also an ethical problem IMHO. For instance is Redis mine? I guess it is not: VMware is funding the development so I can write code thanks to Vmware. Pieter is contributing a lot of code. The community is helping a lot the project: with talks spreading the word, helping on the mailing list, helping to fix bugs, and so forth.

My guess is that the developers really conceptually "own" a very small piece of the pie, and when they create business around an open source software, they should take this in mind otherwise it is simple to involuntarily use work/efforts that other people did in the past and turn it into your business.

It's not easy however... as: the end users should be happy and well served, and the software should not just be "open source" but an open process, with an open community, and so forth. At the same time the developers should pay their bills without issues and earn enough to avoid being tempted to joined company XYZ instead of working to their project. It's not trivial to have all this together I guess, and I feel very lucky that there is VMware making this simple for me, but not all the open source developers are equally fortunate so I guess it is crucial that the open source community keeps working on different ideas to find viable solutions.