Self-hosting of software is what is changing. The open-core model is really built around maintaining installations of software on your own hardware (or virtual hardware). "Paying for pro" made sense in that world. With many things you would have installed and maintained on your own hardware moving to a SaaS model and PaaS model, there's really not much of an opportunity to "sell the pro version" outside large enterprises who are 10 years behind the curve. My latest startup owns zero servers. Costs scale on user count (for office stuff) or utilization. Licenses? I get calls from software vendors, and it's hard to even understand what they are selling because I don't buy licenses anymore.
Death of an open-source business model
31–40 of 223 posts
Re: Death of an open-source business model
#32I feel there's a few cases cited here to make a case that an entired business model is dying, but it doesn't look to me that this is an overall trend. You can't extrapolate from "5 projects didn't fare well with this, so it's not working". But there's more. I followed the MongoDB case a bit and it's not exactly how many make it sound like. MongoDB was doing fine as a company. It wasn't like they were unable to pay th…
I wrote it last night; I didn't have time to research every "open core" company I could think of to figure out a chronology of their licensing strategy. I decided to publish it based on a limited number of case studies to gin up discussion and hopefully learn from other people about counter-examples. Do you know of any?
Re: Death of an open-source business model
#33Self-hosting of software is what is changing. The open-core model is really built around maintaining installations of software on your own hardware (or virtual hardware). "Paying for pro" made sense in that world. With many things you would have installed and maintained on your own hardware moving to a SaaS model and PaaS model, there's really not much of an opportunity to "sell the pro version" outside large enterpr…
I like this article from 2014 that touches on some of the same great points you're making here: https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/13/please-dont-tell-me-you-wa...
Re: Death of an open-source business model
#34I wish there was a FOSS license with a clause along the lines of: - if your company makes >X revenue a year, give us some of it. Ofc, they (FSF/OSI/DFSG) would have to relax their FOSS definition(s), but with more projects dying in this way hopefully more FOSS organisations will take heed and think about this. Ofc, the wording of the license has to be precise enough to avoid something like fobbing off the servers to…
> " if your company makes >X revenue a year, give us some of it. " That would just be a proprietary license with source availability. It would also dry up any community contributions since contributors are generally not going to help a for-profit project without themselves getting paid.
The Mapbox people make the point that, at least in terms of their core functionality, there wasn't really a community outside of mapbox employees.
Re: Death of an open-source business model
#35Mapbox releases Mapbox GL JS v2 under a proprietary license whereas v1 (presumably) was under an "open core" business model. (Mapbox v1 and v2 are graphics card enhanced mapping libraries?). The author of the article's thesis is that this is "an end of an era" of Open Core business models (putting core technology under a free/libre licensing and charging for extra proprietary features). I'm very curious as to what ot…
I work at GitLab.
Our Open Core business model is part of our 3 year strategy [1] and something I consider one of our key strengths. As a member of the Community Relations team, I may be a bit biased. :)
We acknowledge the risk of "Fork and Commoditize" [2] on our list of biggest risks but believe that risk is reduced because we're application software instead of infrastructure software.
1 - https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/#2-build-on-our-op... 2 - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/biggest-risks/#....
Re: Death of an open-source business model
#36I feel there's a few cases cited here to make a case that an entired business model is dying, but it doesn't look to me that this is an overall trend. You can't extrapolate from "5 projects didn't fare well with this, so it's not working". But there's more. I followed the MongoDB case a bit and it's not exactly how many make it sound like. MongoDB was doing fine as a company. It wasn't like they were unable to pay th…
I wrote it last night; I didn't have time to research every "open core" company I could think of to figure out a chronology of their licensing strategy. I decided to publish it based on a limited number of case studies to gin up discussion and hopefully learn from other people about counter-examples. Do you know of any?
Of course by mentioning any name here I risk that they might be a future candidate of closing down and you say "gotcha" :-)
Not all of them are "open core" in the sense that they have a core product and proprietary extensions (some just opensource everything they make), but a number of relevant companies around FOSS products: Gitlab, MariaDB Corporation, Blindside Networks (Big Blue Button), Qt Company, Mattermost Inc.
Re: Death of an open-source business model
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wrote it last night; I didn't have time to research every "open core" company I could think of to figure out a chronology of their licensing strategy. I decided to publish it based on a limited number of case studies to gin up discussion and hopefully learn from other people about counter-examples. Do you know of any?
Of course by mentioning any name here I risk that they might be a future candidate of closing down and you say "gotcha" :-) Not all of them are "open core" in the sense that they have a core product and proprietary extensions (some just opensource everything they make), but a number of relevant companies around FOSS products: Gitlab, MariaDB Corporation, Blindside Networks (Big Blue Button), Qt Company, Mattermost In…
Thanks, those are great examples. I've considered writing about Mattermost before, as I think it's a fascinating pattern that I haven't seen much elsewhere. Attack an existing, high-profile app by cloning it in the open but then additionally build a for-profit company around the clone. Truly a galaxy brain strategy.
Re: Death of an open-source business model
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wrote it last night; I didn't have time to research every "open core" company I could think of to figure out a chronology of their licensing strategy. I decided to publish it based on a limited number of case studies to gin up discussion and hopefully learn from other people about counter-examples. Do you know of any?
Of course by mentioning any name here I risk that they might be a future candidate of closing down and you say "gotcha" :-) Not all of them are "open core" in the sense that they have a core product and proprietary extensions (some just opensource everything they make), but a number of relevant companies around FOSS products: Gitlab, MariaDB Corporation, Blindside Networks (Big Blue Button), Qt Company, Mattermost In…
Also--thanks for going on the record. You are right that you might be criticized in the future by nit-pickers, but it's much more satisfying to take public stances and find out what you're made of (in my opinion).
Re: Death of an open-source business model
#39Mapbox releases Mapbox GL JS v2 under a proprietary license whereas v1 (presumably) was under an "open core" business model. (Mapbox v1 and v2 are graphics card enhanced mapping libraries?). The author of the article's thesis is that this is "an end of an era" of Open Core business models (putting core technology under a free/libre licensing and charging for extra proprietary features). I'm very curious as to what ot…
I work at GitLab. Our Open Core business model is part of our 3 year strategy [1] and something I consider one of our key strengths. As a member of the Community Relations team, I may be a bit biased. :) We acknowledge the risk of "Fork and Commoditize" [2] on our list of biggest risks but believe that risk is reduced because we're application software instead of infrastructure software. 1 - https://about.gitlab.com/…
Hi John--thanks for sharing these links. I do wonder if there is a fundamental difference between applications and infrastructure. Maybe it's the fact that applications tend to involve a greater share of non-engineering users (and therefore a greater reliance on someone else to host and manage the service)? Food for thought. GitLab is a great company, and I've read a lot of your strategy documents; it's a wonder you publish so much in the open, and I'm grateful for it.
Re: Death of an open-source business model
#40> if you give your secret sauce away for free, and it gets popular enough, cloud providers will inevitably spin up competitive services using your very own code against you. For some reason, the author never mentioned AGPL. What's wrong with using this license if you want to defend your open-source business model?
I'm not super familiar with AGPL and how it might address this issue, but I would love to be enlightened.