Didn't see that coming
Might have been reported before, but I missed it.
I suppose in many - if not all important - respects, CM is mature and stable enough these days where it can be said to be truly 'out of beta' - when I've used it, it's typically been as solid (if not more so) than the OEM builds, even if it has lacked full acceleration on some hardware from a few years ago, etc.
I expect there would be free community editions and 'pro' editions, community editions having less features but still being a nice, nexus-y sort of clean build for with useful features added (governers, SMB mounting etc) with pro builds being fully fledged, fully accelerated, maxed out geekfests.
And much as though people malign the humble geek (or, for a less weildy and less arsey phrase, the actively interested technologist - what can I say, I am one as are most readers on here), if you want to sell them something that suits their needs at a price they like, there's money there - look at the funding the Ubuntu Edge got. Alright, not as much as it needed, but eight figure donations is real proof of a hardcore geek market who were happy to throw money at it. RasPi is also the same sort of thing. Right price for the featureset.
Best of luck to them, I say - they've done a sweet job of making CM a proper platform, if they can get some money out of it without messing it up, all power to 'em and I look forward to seeing what they can do.
Steven R