With Lucee being such a strong contender why does Adobe think that open source is such a polar opposite to decent support contracts ? Perhaps because the CF team are resource poor and support isn't one of their strong suits. Opening CF would only be good for the platform right ?

I'm not sure Adobe has ever embraced that model just because it doesn't align with their business. They obviously make money on support already but they'd be giving up their main revenue stream to also open source the whole product. I haven't been an Adobe customer in 7 years but they know who their customers are and what they want. If you want open source you have both Lucee and Boxlang now.

The license model works because there is a market willing to pay for it. But why would anyone buy a license? One reason is you get a lot more features and tags. That alone can save development costs. Another reason is trust. Look at it this way... The primary reason someone purchases a license is not about available support. The primary reason is to acquire a solid and reliable system to run your business. Or at least hoping it will be. Open source is great, but it does not fit every use case. Adobe knows that fact very well. Just look at Magento. I like ACF, just as I do Lucee and Boxlang. They all serve different purposes. Hey Mark, please let me know if I'm wrong.

I work for a large U.S. defense contractor and I can most definitely say that having the product backed by Adobe gives the product a higher reputation with decision makers over open source.