I see your point about commit ratio, and that I admit is a correct view of the tangible contributions, but I also dont think those are what got Sentry its traction.

I will then ask, do you think Sentry would have been able to get enough of a mass of users to justify getting the VC funding it did if it weren't a MITish licensed product in its early years? How do you value the various libraries of user interaction, issue submission, and other market intangibles?

For a product developer, that is an external cost/value to you (the theoretical 'you', in this case), insomuch as there's no contractual obligations there and its not exactly clearly recorded in valuations and balance sheets, I believe. That openness and availability over time builds up a body of goodwill that I believe is critical to the success of a longterm opensource product.

As for Redis, enough people cared about the license change that valkey (https://valkey.io/blog/hello-world/) got stood up essentially immediately, which also got significant amount of developer traction. I notice that you dont mention them at all in your writing about Redis. Why is that?