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Ask HN: Founders who offer free/OS and paid SaaS, how do you manage your code?

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Re: Ask HN: Founders who offer free/OS and paid SaaS, how do you manage your code?

#11

Post by mickael-kerjean »

simonw wrote: post #9

Plugins! My SaaS version of https://datasette.io is the open source version plus 76 plugins. Almost all of those plugins are themselves open source, with just a few that aren't for features that are unique to the SaaS product - things like showing how much disk space the user has used up already. Here's what that custom plugin looks like, it's pretty thin: https://gist.github.com/simonw/114131fd9c1826f3629cc3b3dcb84.…

Same idea for my Saas, pretty much every aspect of the software can be changed through plugins. A build is mostly about assembling the right lego blocks like this https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash/blob/master/ser... and a plugin is just a piece of code implementing an interface like this one https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash/blob/master/ser... which enables various build to switch the search engine to virtually any backend

Re: Ask HN: Founders who offer free/OS and paid SaaS, how do you manage your code?

#13

Post by w10-1 »

As another data point, IBM WebSphere had an open-source version and a paid version which used AspectJ (AOP) to deploy proprietary features. People could deploy something like that potentially even at runtime via remote libraries and load-time weaving. (The technique was called product-line engineering.) Obviously Spring still does something similar with its AspectJ-derived AOP. It works mainly for features applied as transaction/API filters like authentication, security, first-failure data capture, etc., and when OS is used as an training tier rather than a fallback if the company folds.

Re: Ask HN: Founders who offer free/OS and paid SaaS, how do you manage your code?

#14

Post by simonw »

jbarham wrote: post #10
simonw wrote: post #9

Plugins! My SaaS version of https://datasette.io is the open source version plus 76 plugins. Almost all of those plugins are themselves open source, with just a few that aren't for features that are unique to the SaaS product - things like showing how much disk space the user has used up already. Here's what that custom plugin looks like, it's pretty thin: https://gist.github.com/simonw/114131fd9c1826f3629cc3b3dcb84.…

I think that should be https://datasette.io/

Thanks, fixed

Re: Ask HN: Founders who offer free/OS and paid SaaS, how do you manage your code?

#15

Post by ezekg »

scottcha wrote: post #5
ezekg wrote: post #4

I have a single code base [0] for the self-hosted editions and for the SaaS. I split features up across two editions: community edition (CE) and enterprise edition (EE), and then also two modes: singleplayer and multiplayer (single- vs multi-tenant). The switching is done via environment variables, KEYGEN_EDITION and KEYGEN_MODE. The SaaS offering actually runs the EE edition in multiplayer mode, and is right now the…

Couple of questions: 1. You link to fair.io but it seems there isn't a latest license there only a legacy version. Do you know what the current status is on what seems like a pending version update? 2. Your project repro actually links to the elastic license. Is there some relation between the two? Do you prefer the fairsource license over the elastic license>

1. You can read more about the Fair Source initiative here: https://twitter.com/chadwhitacre_/status/1790101820364267902 (also [0] and [1] for previous discussions). It's not official yet, but it's an attempt to define a new term for Open Source vs Source Available. I figured I'd start using the term early and see what happens.

2. Yes, the ELv2 will be considered a Fair Source license, because it allows contributions, redistribution, forking, etc. You can visit https://faircode.io for an idea of what Fair Source will ultimately entail (Fair Source and Fair Code will be merged eventually AFAICT).

[0]: https://github.com/getsentry/fsl.software/issues/4

[1]: https://github.com/getsentry/fsl.software/issues/2

Re: Ask HN: Founders who offer free/OS and paid SaaS, how do you manage your code?

#17

Post by reaperman »

ezekg wrote: post #4

I have a single code base [0] for the self-hosted editions and for the SaaS. I split features up across two editions: community edition (CE) and enterprise edition (EE), and then also two modes: singleplayer and multiplayer (single- vs multi-tenant). The switching is done via environment variables, KEYGEN_EDITION and KEYGEN_MODE. The SaaS offering actually runs the EE edition in multiplayer mode, and is right now the…

Could an individual of ill-repute freely download the source containing the EE and edit it to turn off checks for KEYGEN_EDITION and KEYFEN_MODE? Obviously you have license protection against them redistributing the modified version but would anything practical prevent them from running it themselves?

Re: Ask HN: Founders who offer free/OS and paid SaaS, how do you manage your code?

#18

Post by ezekg »

reaperman wrote: post #17
ezekg wrote: post #4

I have a single code base [0] for the self-hosted editions and for the SaaS. I split features up across two editions: community edition (CE) and enterprise edition (EE), and then also two modes: singleplayer and multiplayer (single- vs multi-tenant). The switching is done via environment variables, KEYGEN_EDITION and KEYGEN_MODE. The SaaS offering actually runs the EE edition in multiplayer mode, and is right now the…

Could an individual of ill-repute freely download the source containing the EE and edit it to turn off checks for KEYGEN_EDITION and KEYFEN_MODE? Obviously you have license protection against them redistributing the modified version but would anything practical prevent them from running it themselves?

It'd be a violation of the license terms. Other than that, I may send Liam Neeson after them. :)

Re: Ask HN: Founders who offer free/OS and paid SaaS, how do you manage your code?

#19

Post by shireboy »

If I understand this is more of a coding question. I'd argue it would be best for most web based SaaS to have a single codebase, with a single branch that represents the production site. That code base would then be smart enough to enable the right features based on the current user and/or tenant and their subscription level and payment status. Pseudocode:

   public DoFoo(){
      if(CurrentUser.IsFreeSku && CurrentUser.FoosThisMonth >= 10) return Error('Free users are only allowed to do 10 foos each month);
      FooService.DoFoo();
      CurrentUser.FoosThisMonth ++ 
   }
Similar in the UI you may hide or show things based on the current user/tenant and their sub level.

Click here to get our paid service

You would still have server code enforce the subscription level rules because a malicious user could circumvent any client-based rules. How exactly you do both will depend on the framework your saas uses.

Re: Ask HN: Founders who offer free/OS and paid SaaS, how do you manage your code?

#20

Post by kevin_nisbet »

One company I worked for did the enterprise version through a git submodule. So main repo was the OSS version (with it's own main), and the git submodule was a different program entrypoint that contained / activated the enterprise code. So devs would have both the OSS/Enterprise module checked out and could work on both together.

In this example as I recall most of the enterprise code was just activation code, so a properly motivated individual could probably figure out how to turn on some of the enterprise features, but most people won't bother to figure out how to do their own builds, and it's more work then finding the secret env variables in an open repo.

It's a little bit painful at times because changes that cover both code bases need two commits, and it isn't uncommon for someone to forget or commit the wrong submodule pointer. But depending on the team, it can work.

Not for everyone, just including it as an option I haven't seen mentioned in other comments.

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