kubok

Core developer of an open source software suite here. We make money by doing the following things:

• We offer a free and open source community package that has the basics. However, we offer a number of professional packages that we offer yearly subscriptions for.
• We host our software. We charge by the number of active users.
• Custom development.
• Paid support like migrations or troubleshooting. Also helping external developers develop custom modules.

This allows us enough income to develop the community part of the software.

If you were ever here, how did you solve this?

Simple. Just stay friends. I left a job 15 years ago because the CEO was an asshole. However, our team was great and I still visit some of my old colleagues regularly.