I don't agree that the free software business models are failures. Many large companies need actual enterprise support and licensing to fulfill their business requirements. Just because most start-ups (which is clearly the author's circle of friends) aren't big enough to need such support doesn't mean that it's "failed". Support is a real value add, because it means that you have developers on call that can maintain the system you based your stack on. The fact that the code is free software doesn't make a practical difference to you (aside from moral differences I won't go into here).