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Death of an open-source business model

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Re: Death of an open-source business model

#141

Post by hansvm »

infinity0 wrote: post #67
hannob wrote: post #27

I 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 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…

Seems problematic. You've excluded subsidiaries, but what about companies which aren't controlled by the larger corp? They can buy hosting from whomever from companies they don't control in the slightest, and if there's a market for your software it seems likely those would spring up on their own. What do you do?

(1) Ignore the problem -- your license has no teeth.

(2) Hold the larger corp responsible for payment anyway -- pretty sure this can't be accomplished purely within copyright law, and if it can then it's still not great because implementation details of the hosting company now matter in terms of the larger company's liabilities.

(3) Hold the hosting company responsible -- fine enough, that can probably be a valid term in your license. Suppose another company inserts themselves in the middle though; does your license exclude them because they're transitively connected to megacorp, or do we again find that your license has no teeth? The first case is an issue because now you're exposed to risk from your customers' customers, over whom you have no control.

Not every piece of software can be meaningfully hosted and resold by a chain of corporate entities, but it's not exactly an uncommon behavior in the wild either.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#142

Post by ryukafalz »

Someone wrote: post #123
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #63

This seems to me more like another case of "death of a business model caused by revenue maximization strategy". "Open-core" does not have "non-viable" or even "must-be-bait-and-switch" stamped all over it. But if the organization using it decides that its primary goal is revenue maximization (and/or significant growth), then it becomes much more questionable how it will fare. But isn't that the goal of any business,…

So, you’re running a small restaurant, and are fine with it staying small, as long as you can make a living. You publish all your recipes under a permissive license. A restaurant chain starts selling your dishes, using your name, but, because of their scale, cheaper than you can afford to. If you still manage to make money, you may be fine with that, but that’s where the correspondence breaks. In real life, that rest…

>You publish all your recipes under a permissive license.

(Setting aside the fact that it's an analogy and recipes aren't covered by copyright...) Why does it have to be a permissive license?

>A restaurant chain starts selling your dishes, using your name, but, because of their scale, cheaper than you can afford to.

Why is it okay for them to use your name? You can release free software but not let just anyone use your trademark. (See: Firefox, Red Hat, etc.)

>I don’t see that smaller restaurant staying in business, unless it starts making new recipes it keeps for itself.

Well in the case of actual small restaurants, clearly publishing a recipe book isn't necessarily catastrophic; after all, many do. Stretching the analogy this far doesn't make the point very well.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#143

Post by chrisseaton »

qchris wrote: post #139
julianmarq wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd replace mongo with redis in your comment. Redis truly is open core, but mongo no longer is. Now it's source available, and has been removed from the repos of many distros. Calling mongo open source now just dilutes what "open source" actually means. The organization even removed the submission of its license for approval by the OSI. It's source available, and it's up to each person to decide whether that's good o…

I know that there's a formal definition of capitalized "Open Source" by the OSI, but I'm also not enchanted by that being the only definition for lower-case "open source". I think that the lower case open source is really more about a general approach to software (or intellectual property in general, really). Some people want to use terms like "libre" to refer to projects that have most of the practical characteristi…

People forget that the OSI and the people behind it neither own, nor invented, the term 'open source.' They want to give you the impression that they do and they did, but they don't and they didn't.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#144

Post by infinity0 »

lacker wrote: post #78

My interpretation is the opposite. MongoDB is clearly successful - they are a public company worth 16 billion dollars. And they proving the success of the open core business model. For 99% of use cases, MongoDB is open source. You can see the code, you can make modifications, you can use it for free in your business, you can share your changes with others, you can integrate it into your products and services. Yeah, y…

I 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 technically be controlled by subsidiaries with 0 revenue.

Ofc, the license would have to figure out how to share revenue with major contributors too.

Contributors already contribute to for-profit open source projects without themselves getting paid, so this license would make the situation strictly better for them.

Laws and definitions have to change with the changing times - the technological economy is different today than it was 20 years ago when tech companies weren't so big or able to throw their weight around. Staying true to the original spirit of FOSS and sharing, means that we have to find ways to support independent FOSS business.

The loudest arguments I hear at forcing the FOSS definition to remain static and blind to revenue, is from big tech companies or wealthy people being paid by big tech companies, because it benefits them. People working for a small FOSS companies understand the realities of competing in today's tech environment, and understand that revenue-sharing far from stifling FOSS, will allow it to flourish properly.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#145

Post by chrisseaton »

haihaibye wrote: post #132
_puk wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's more than one licence that's open source. Is there a reason that a new style of licence that prevents the "fork and suffocate" approach of these large companies can't be ratified as fitting with core open source values? Being dogmatic about the definition of open source, and not allowing that to evolve over time, feels like hard times ahead.

Open source is a trademarked term by OSI, and it doesn't allow licences that discriminate based on user (even cloud mega corps) to call themselves open source. The Businesses source licence https://mariadb.com/bsl11/ tries to make dual licencing easier, but isn't "open source", the term is "source available"

> Open source is a trademarked term by OSI

This is a lie. You're lying.

> "Open Source" is not and cannot become a trademark.

https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#146

Post by infinity0 »

hansvm wrote: post #141
infinity0 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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…

Seems problematic. You've excluded subsidiaries, but what about companies which aren't controlled by the larger corp? They can buy hosting from whomever from companies they don't control in the slightest, and if there's a market for your software it seems likely those would spring up on their own. What do you do? (1) Ignore the problem -- your license has no teeth. (2) Hold the larger corp responsible for payment any…

> what about companies which aren't controlled by the larger corp?

Include these companies in the definition?

> What do you do?

Generally, there will be situations that are hard to define in a license, as is the revenue sharing part of it - and that's probably why no such license exists yet. The easiest way around this is for a blanket catch-all clause such as "you have 1 year to start negotiations with us, after which this license automatically expires".

If you choose >X correctly, there are only a small number of companies with >X revenue in the world, so you only have to negotiate with that many companies. The idea is not supposed to extract money from small companies or individuals.

> pretty sure this can't be accomplished purely within copyright law,

AGPLv3 is enforceable by contract law, same as other EULAs that big tech companies frequently employ.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#147

Post by wmf »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #133
wmf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is debated. Some people say that AWS will never touch AGPL software which accomplishes the goal of not getting AWSed while remaining OSI certified.

AWS specifically might not, but I can say with some certainty that cloud providers can host AGPL software. It's not impossible that Compose (the now IBM-owned cloud database hosting company) pulled in more revenue from RethinkDB than RethinkDB, Inc., did.

Yeah, it's a matter of risk. Rightly or wrongly you could get hit with a lawsuit that says "we have infected your entire control plane; open-source it or die" and every cloud provider has to weigh that for themselves.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#148

Post by julianmarq »

warpech wrote: post #137
julianmarq wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ideology is still in our blood and we keep the open source circle of life running. I'm curious about what exactly you mean by these two sentences. Particularly the second one. Is this circle you speak of the one where a company announces an open source product and once the goodwill—that open source development gives it—ensures a number of contributors and early adopters, helping the project grow until the compa…

I hope this does not sound cynical. When we release a new open source project, we are not sure what the project will turn into. We put it out, hoping to get some reaction from the world. If there is no reaction, we will only invest a bare minimum for our own use. When there is some reaction, the community might find its sweet spot. When there is huge enthusiasm, which is the least likely, we might decide to seek ways…

So the answer to my question was "yes" then, thank you. I don't know what I would call that practice but it is not any kind of "open source circle of life".

> It's a part of the product's life cycle that's in any startup book.

There are many start-ups truly committed to open source development. Conversely, there are many who are not but are pretty upfront and honest about how they are not. I don't judge either one as I'd rather not be a zealot, and one ought to do what one ought to do.

However, there are also some companies (thankfully a minority, as far as I can tell) who are not really committed whatsoever to open source, but still pretend to be (often using marketing speak like "the ideology is in our blood") for the sake of good publicity. Those I don't like, but then again most of them are large corporations, so it's not like there's much one can do in that area.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#149

Post by rectang »

mapgrep wrote: post #124
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #63

This seems to me more like another case of "death of a business model caused by revenue maximization strategy". "Open-core" does not have "non-viable" or even "must-be-bait-and-switch" stamped all over it. But if the organization using it decides that its primary goal is revenue maximization (and/or significant growth), then it becomes much more questionable how it will fare. But isn't that the goal of any business,…

Very good point and I'd go a step further: There are lots of organizations that are not even businesses in the first place who can sustainably fund open source work. Postgres came out of UC Berkeley. GNU stuff like emacs and gcc came out of MIT. VLC came out of École Centrale Paris. SecureDrop is developed by the Free Software Foundation. Tor was originally funded by the Open Technology Fund (USG). Firefox is from a…

Furthermore, commercial involvement in open-source doesn't require an "open source business model" which will placate VC-level ambitions.

For instance, the extremely popular model of a company hiring core maintainers (or other experts) for an open source project which is critical to business success continues to be viable.

The business can make its money a different way; so long as the ROI justifies open source involvement, it will happen.

Re: Death of an open-source business model

#150

Post by lowdose »

chrisseaton wrote: post #143
qchris wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that there's a formal definition of capitalized "Open Source" by the OSI, but I'm also not enchanted by that being the only definition for lower-case "open source". I think that the lower case open source is really more about a general approach to software (or intellectual property in general, really). Some people want to use terms like "libre" to refer to projects that have most of the practical characteristi…

People forget that the OSI and the people behind it neither own, nor invented, the term 'open source.' They want to give you the impression that they do and they did, but they don't and they didn't.

Who did?
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