Along with building customer engagement it is important to build a brand. The brand becomes a gateway to other services like certification, training and consulting.
For an open source OEM, a brand is obvious, but for a community player, it is not so intuitive. The brand is built by focusing on contribution, good writing (blogs, articles etc) and showing visibility on the forum. Like the OP mentioned, you cannot be too invested in the IP as a non-core player.
That's been huge for me as well. Speaking at conferences and writing my book over the past year has been a great entrance in to getting business. It's really paying dividends.
For an open source OEM, a brand is obvious, but for a community player, it is not so intuitive. The brand is built by focusing on contribution, good writing (blogs, articles etc) and showing visibility on the forum. Like the OP mentioned, you cannot be too invested in the IP as a non-core player.