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Handsontable drops open source for a non-commercial license

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Re: Handsontable drops open source for a non-commercial license

#71

Post by kelnage »

Reinmar wrote: post #68
kelnage wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I can see what you're getting at. I'm still not convinced that this move is the right way to go about it, as compared to simply keeping an FOSS license and setting up consultancy payments or similar (as they had previously) - as others point out, the commercial licenses can be a serious pain to navigate in many companies, that can significantly reduce the benefit your product offers.

Which FOSS license? Because if it's a permissive one, like MIT, BSD or MPL, then you get results like we did with CKEditor 4: > From these thousands of businesses and millions of downloads, a very small group (less than 0,5%) decides to enter into business relations with CKSource. Source: https://github.com/ckeditor/ckeditor5/issues/991 CKEditor (a rich-text editor) is this kind of really complex piece of software wh…

I agree completely - there are FOSS licenses that are easier to make money with than others. One of the most frustrating things I regularly encounter on HN is the “MIT/BSD is best, don’t use anything else” mentality. I think some of that is likely coming from the ease of use commercially (I worked for organisation who’s legal department literally said MIT/BSD = green, GPL2 = yellow, others = red).

But as you have yourself pointed out, it is (or at least may be) possible to make money as a commercial entity whilst still using a FOSS license, without entering the netherworld of “what is commercial use” arguments that these bespoke licenses create.

P.S. I know CKEditor very well, having used its predecessor FCKEditor on a small website for a local charity over 15 years ago! So thank you for continuing to support FOSS :)

Re: Handsontable drops open source for a non-commercial license

#72

Post by sqrt17 »

mrighele wrote: post #30
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This announcement is about Handsontable completely shutting down the open source offering and using the same distribution channels to pump proprietary software . Wheres a month ago https://github.com/handsontable/handsontable/ had open source code, now it is all proprietary. That's not something to celebrate. As pointed out in the github discussion, Elastic did the same thing with Elasticsearch, and that contributed…

> The maintainers of open source projects have the responsibility of keeping the source distribution open to everyone and not changing the rules midstream > we believe that maintainers of an open source project have a responsibility to ensure that the primary open source distribution remains open and free of proprietary code I disagree. Nobody has the responsibility to do anything for free. Amazon is free to take tha…

> Nobody has the responsibility to do anything for free.

In general, yes. If you call something an Open Source project, however you take on certain responsabilities that you wouldn't otherwise have, such as not playing bait-and-switch, and can hope for people sending in bug fixes and patches (and even signing copyright assignments if required for dual licensing).

If it were just "doing things for free" and not receiving anything in return, FOSS would not interest anyone and we'd get back to the shareware world of the 90s where (as a user) you got an evaluation license but no stake. Some developers prefer the shareware model to going full OSS, which is fine. Playing bait-and-switch by turning an Open Source project (with the community and the help and credibility that potentially come out of it) into a Shareware product will, like any bait-and-switch, irritate people.

Re: Handsontable drops open source for a non-commercial license

#76

Post by mikhailtatsky »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #37
eitland wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well: - as I mentioned before the fact that they were actual open source compared to some of their competitors heavily the decision of the team I was on at that time to go with their commercial package. That advantage is gone now. - I have spent a few hours voluntarily helping in debugging and following up a couple of issues because it was open source and I was helping us and everyone else. - They might have gotten o…

FWIW their "largest competitor" ag-grid still has an open source version available: https://github.com/ag-grid/ag-grid They neatly separated the proprietary parts in https://github.com/ag-grid/ag-grid-enterprise

About ag-Grid and Handsontable... I am founder of another JavaScript Grid product. FancyGrid - https://fancygrid.com I know much about this market and situation. ag-Grid is too popular and trampled all competitors over catching almost all possible commercial clients. It is unreal to compete with them, they killed this market and become monopolist. Handsontable has no way to do. Now ag-Grid also is going to kill JavaScript Chart Libraries market. Sorely ag-Grid is too successful and leaves no chance for competitors to survive.

Re: Handsontable drops open source for a non-commercial license

#77

Post by mholt »

eitland wrote: post #9

Understandable but a bit disappointing, just like Caddy. With Caddy I'm fairly certain I donated (as did others, including Mozilla). I guess my contribution didn't mean much but it still felt weird. With Handsontable we recommended it at a project and made sure to get commercial licenses - because it was open source . That said, when I recommend open source at work it is not because of the price but because of peace…

I'm surprised that open source gives you peace of mind when your business relies on it.
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