> If you think VMware makes "most of its income" from supporting Spring, then I think I'd encourage you to spend some time at the investor relations site[0] reading any of the annual or quarterly reports.
VMware is a huge company with its fingers in many pies, but I suspect if you rewrite the sentence as "most of their income attributable to that open-source project" then it would be true of such companies. Presumably VMware sees a return on investment for its sponsorship of Spring (otherwise why do it?); if that's not coming via support or non-free tools that build on Spring then where is it coming from?
I can't speak for folks moving in VMware's most exalted circles, but from my personal perspective the aura and reflected glamour are valuable in itself. Spring's reach and influence in enterprise programming is enormous.
Put another way: I don't think Spring makes money. It makes making money easier.
VMware is a huge company with its fingers in many pies, but I suspect if you rewrite the sentence as "most of their income attributable to that open-source project" then it would be true of such companies. Presumably VMware sees a return on investment for its sponsorship of Spring (otherwise why do it?); if that's not coming via support or non-free tools that build on Spring then where is it coming from?