sure, plenty of people have always abandoned open source for that reason. running a free software business isn't easy. fortunately, the nature of open source is that it doesn't depend on any one person or group, so it keeps working when people abandon it. it's worth noting that over the last 30 years this has worked so well that almost all software of consequence is open-source now, which is why we aren't having this discussion on msn in blackbird or on compuserve

i agree that open-core is little more than shareware. dual-licensing is a different model, one pioneered by peter deutsch in the early 90s

this is ground we explored extensively on the fsb mailing list in the late 90s. if you're interested in my current thinking on the relationship between markets and open-source knowledge sharing, i've just written a somewhat longer note at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41696527