Nope! The plan is still for the platform to be open source, likely under a GPLish license.
Going for YC is clearly a great starting point for building a scalable business, so I wonder what the business logic will look like. As in genuinely, positively interested to know. :-)
But making money from open source projects is hard enough, and varied enough, that it makes sense to spend a lot of time thinking about and experimenting with this one before committing to anything. It looks like that's what they're doing. So I don't think there will be a firm answer to this until they're much closer to launch -- or that it would be a good idea to offer one.
Mass adoption, patches, test cases, design, feedback and money comes only when it reaches crazy adoption and a lot of people hack on it.
That is why it is important for LightTable to release a minimal usable version ASAP and then improve it in further releases.
All this needs a open source set up. A Cathedral set up earlier but a bazaar set up later.
Alternatively, will you be releasing under a commercial license?
For a project like this, the GPL makes the most sense: an IDE needs people who use it and people who contribute to the core project much more than it needs people who use its code in proprietary projects of their own.
As soon as IDE provides extensibility one starts having problems with GPL and it's viral nature with linking.
GPL is forcing IDE into a "sandbox" where the whole distro must be GPL-compatible at the point of distribution. The workaround is often with the expense of user experience where one has to separately install extensions just because of licesnsing.
I don't get it... is your added value simply an illusion?
If they can see what you've changed the code, they should be able to see why and how you added value.
It will be harder to convince customers you've added value if they can see exactly what you've changed.
No one is taking it as one, but poe's law aside I'm convinced they are wrong.
Sprinkling the GPL on top of a project no one wants anyway does nothing (I say this from experience), and applying it to a popular program just holds it back (by keeping it from getting the cash that people would otherwise pay).
As an end-user, I want to see Light Table take off, and to continue innovating, not to continually engage in campaigns for donations.
If I were doing Light Table, I'd use GPL too - It also does not preclude someone from writing their own plugins and selling them as an add-on. I would assume there will be a way for easy/seamless plugin installation into the main program.