Correct, sidekiq is open source by default. The pro portion of the code base is closed source. Sidekiq is one almost a must have for any Rails app. I'd imagine some people just want to support him and pay the licensing fee. It reminds me of how people were willing to pay for Pivotal Tracker when it was free.
I try to start similar dual-licensing model for my project. But I don't get this. The link page and "In order to unambiguously own and sell Sidekiq commercial products, I must have the copyright associated with the entire codebase. Any code you create which is merged must be owned by me. That's not me trying to be a jerk, that's just the way it works." - it has no legal value. I think all contributions are also LGPL unless contributor gives a consent to give up the change as commercial or public domain etc. In my opinion if Sidekiq Pro is forked from Sidekiq then Pro code should be released under LGPL or he should share part of $80k/monthly with all contributors. What about previous contributors' rights when the project switched to LGPL or dual? Can somebody explain this scheme?
Changes contributed to Sidekiq are LGPL. Changes contributed to Sidekiq Pro must also assign rights for those changes to me so I can sell them. I do have customers who have access to the Sidekiq Pro source code and send me pull requests when they find bugs or enhancements.
https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/wiki/Commercial-collabora...