My 2 cents:
There are several business models and all of them have their own pros and cons. Bitwaise works, as far as I know, develops/ports open source software, collecting money in advance and during development to pay for the developer and of course to hopefully generate some profit. They also sell closed source software, like Injoy Firewall. Ecomstation.ru or ecosoft invests in developing software and then sells licenses, basically advancing the developments costs. There is nothing wrong with that. It's a complety valid way to produce and sell software. They also have done similar work as Bitwise, developing software paid by third parties. In this case the other parties most likely decided the software should be closed source.
It is true that open sourcing has several advantages for the community, like Martin has stated. It is not neccessarily true that there are advantages for the developer. In the case of the developer advancing the development costs, there is in fact a huge disadvantage in open sourcing, namely someone else using the code and selling it too, without having to invest. No sane person running a company would invite that.
Closed source abandonware, yes, that is a problem. The example Martin gave, the sad demise of the developer and the resultant loss of the code, can easily be corrected. It's just a matter of a decent will). And as Eugene stated, he seems to have made some provisions for that by licensing the code to his subcontractors.
Generally, I like open source better, but we have to remember that we all have to buy our bread and preferably some cheese to put on it. There are several ways to make money still in developing os/2 stuff, everybody is free to choose the way how to do that. 'a 90's model' still works today, to a lesser extent perhaps, but is does. Selling services and support can even be complementary to that. The one does not exclude the other.
Lastly, the ongoing 'war' between Eugene and some others, and between Sigurd and Eugene that keeps coming up here and on several other fora and news groups. Please guys, keep it civil. I do not like the way Eugene accuses others of piracy without giving any proof. In fact, I do not even see how the development of the OS/4 kernel, legally questionable as it is, can harm his business. On the contrary, if the developers of it only distribute the kernel, it might even be good for his business if it makes eCS run on more hardware. As for Sigurd, it is nonsense that all ecosoft sotware is 'bad'. I do use ecosoft software and am very happy with some of the software I bought from them. Especially the stuff developed by Glassman. On several occasions he has corrected minor bugs or added features, some major additions, on my request, usually very fast.
Lets discuss matters as adults, not as little children.