Funny, two of the three products (Elastic, and MongoDB) mentioned as successful open core aren't even open core anymore, but use a non-open source license. Does that mean they were so successful they didn't need to have an open source product anymore? I don't see it as anything to celebrate.
Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
31–40 of 49 posts
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
GitLab team member here. You can make suggestions to move features between tiers, i.e. moving a paid feature to the free tier, by opening an issue following https://about.gitlab.com/company/pricing/#changing-tiers-and...
While I appreciate one can do this, it doesn't mean it will happen, and doesn't really answer the OPs question head on. Which is, does GitLab intentionally evaluate certain features to be behind the paywall to boost sales?
Why wouldn't they? I guess I don't see why the question needs to be asked. There are more interesting questions to be asked about how GitLab makes such decisions.
If there's a feature that is mostly only valuable to pointy-haired bosses, then of course there will be people who want that feature to be available for free. But such a feature should be behind the paywall. It will end up funding features outside of the paywall, so the free users have a reason to be happy about it being behind the paywall.
Of course there will be lots of things in the middle, and people will disagree on every aspect of the evaluation. And people will argue that something should be free because it's good for the community when in fact they want it to be free because they don't want to pay for it. Such is the nature of the balancing act that GitLab signed up for, and I respect them for it.
It's a relatively new spin on the ancient balancing act of value creation vs value capture. TANSTAAFL
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#33A big attraction of open core is you can start fixing things that matter for you as the company on your schedule vs. asking your vendor and hoping they get to it one day.
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
GitLab team member here. You can make suggestions to move features between tiers, i.e. moving a paid feature to the free tier, by opening an issue following https://about.gitlab.com/company/pricing/#changing-tiers-and...
While I appreciate one can do this, it doesn't mean it will happen, and doesn't really answer the OPs question head on. Which is, does GitLab intentionally evaluate certain features to be behind the paywall to boost sales?
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Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I appreciate one can do this, it doesn't mean it will happen, and doesn't really answer the OPs question head on. Which is, does GitLab intentionally evaluate certain features to be behind the paywall to boost sales?
Why wouldn't they? I guess I don't see why the question needs to be asked. There are more interesting questions to be asked about how GitLab makes such decisions. If there's a feature that is mostly only valuable to pointy-haired bosses, then of course there will be people who want that feature to be available for free. But such a feature should be behind the paywall. It will end up funding features outside of the pa…
I think we're coming at it the same way, but I'm being more terse in my question line.
I am interested in how they arrive in those decisions and do revenue generation features / fixes get weighted differently than non, or are those types of tasks separate from their revenue potential or retention?
I think I'm just leaning on the OP for this context, but I should have added it.
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#36What about a commercial source but fully source-available product? I'm currently building an app I hope will appeal to the HN crowd, and I was planning on making the full source available to all customers - this would be billed as a feature of the product. I can't count the number of times I was happily using a closed source product only to find a bug or missing feature that I really wished I could just make a small…
It's one thing to be able to see what's going on under the hood. It's another being able to change what's going on under the hood. And it's a third thing not having that change you just made get stomped on, or interfere with the next great release of the product. Even potentially more difficult is getting your change accepted by the software vendor to where it's now incorporated in to the production product. I mean,…
What about making the basic product free but charging a fee for modifications?
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#37> One may suggest: “If things are running perfectly, won’t customers reduce their required engagement or remove the support plan?” Generally, no. The cost of keeping experts around is usually far lower than a SaaS bill and new features will always need to be built. I don't understand this assertion. One of the main perverse incentives affecting open core software quality is that the more help people need with the sof…
Make your competition share all of their work while you don't have to. Can't your competitor then just release their contributions as AGPL? Of course, you're free not to accept their contributions, but under the AGPL you can no longer merge their contributions back into your commercial product without having to share all of your work too. (Yes, usual caveats about the scope of "the work" apply. But that applies just…
Under the GPL, contributions have to use the same license: GPL.
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#38What about a commercial source but fully source-available product? I'm currently building an app I hope will appeal to the HN crowd, and I was planning on making the full source available to all customers - this would be billed as a feature of the product. I can't count the number of times I was happily using a closed source product only to find a bug or missing feature that I really wished I could just make a small…
Which is like the Unreal Engine Model. Unfortunately this "Share Source" model hasn't caught on and lacks a widely accepted license. I hope I am wrong and do wish you to succeed. But Not Strictly Open Source doesn't appeal much to HN crowd.
> But Not Strictly Open Source doesn't appeal much to HN crowd
I don't think this is true. "Open Source" But Not Really is what gets criticized here, such as Elasticsearch's new license.
Things that want to benefit from calling themselves open source while restricting user freedoms.
Source available on the other hand is exactly what it claims to be. It's more open than strictly closed source and less free than fully open source.
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#39Chief example: Neo4j
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Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#40I'm sure there are more counter examples but I've always liked drawio