The models that pay
Open-core — the community edition free, enterprise features licensed; hosted — the software free, the managed service subscription-priced (billing runs the standard SaaS rails: that setup); support and certainty — SLAs, security response, long-term versions sold to companies that run the free code in production. Most durable businesses blend two of the three.
The licence architecture
The defensible pattern: contributors sign an agreement assigning or broadly licensing their contributions to the BV, the BV owns the trademark (the actual moat — anyone may fork the code, only you ship it under the name), and the public licence is chosen for the business model — permissive for adoption, copyleft or source-available where cloud competition threatens. Licence changes are strategy events; owning the contributions is what makes them possible: the licensing chapter.
The stack on the public code
Development of your own technology qualifies for the R&D machinery regardless of the licence on the output: the WBSO on the payroll (the credit) and the innovation box on the qualifying profit (the 9%) — inside the standard skeleton with the trademark and contributor agreements housed deliberately: the structure.