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When 'open core' projects reject contributions for competing with the EE

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Re: When 'open core' projects reject contributions for competing with the EE

#11

Post by madeofpalk »

One lesson from this is to not contribute a 'major feature' to an open source project without a signal that it would actually be accepted. Even if the feature doesn't conflict with enterprise/monetisation, the feature could just be against the goals of ideals of the maintainers, of whom the project is up to.

Open source is not a mandate that the maintainers must accept every contribution. The author should consider why they don't want to maintain a fork, and whether that's the same reason why this PR was rejected in favor of an enterprise feature.

Re: When 'open core' projects reject contributions for competing with the EE

#12

Post by byefruit »

I don't see the problem here? It's their project and they can choose what they want to maintain. If you disagree, it's perfectly fine to fork the project and implement this but then you bear the cost of maintenance.

These kinds of open source projects need to be sustainable, you can't expect the companies producing them to continue maintaining and investing in them without some sustainable way of doing it.

I don't see why project maintainers gets called out on this but AWS reselling open source projects whilst contributing very little to them isn't.

Re: When 'open core' projects reject contributions for competing with the EE

#13

Post by byefruit »

i80and wrote: post #5
nrabulinski wrote: post #2

Situations like this one make a company show whether they really are open source or only do so for marketability and to artificially appear more trustworthy. And sadly too often it comes out that it’s the latter

What's worse is it can change at the whims of executives. You can invest time and effort into improving an open core product because the leadership is very open and collaborative, then the CTO changes or a bad quarter comes around and OOPS they're done playing with the community now

But you've always got the right to fork it.

What you're saying is you want them to continue maintaining it at their cost because the community don't want to?

Re: When 'open core' projects reject contributions for competing with the EE

#14

Post by Sytten »

How dare them wanting to make money. Seriously this is fine, if you are not happy fork it and maintain it yourself. AFAIK this is the whole point of open core.

What you are asking here is that business to support code for free that reduces their revenue. Code is a liability most of the time not an asset.

Re: When 'open core' projects reject contributions for competing with the EE

#15

Post by byefruit »

prepend wrote: post #7

One of the many reasons why I think “open core” is not so hot and users should choose to avoid them and prefer OSI-conformant open source licenses that give them options when the company does lame stuff like this-fork and continue on.

[dead]

Re: When 'open core' projects reject contributions for competing with the EE

#17

Post by madeofpalk »

prepend wrote: post #7

One of the many reasons why I think “open core” is not so hot and users should choose to avoid them and prefer OSI-conformant open source licenses that give them options when the company does lame stuff like this-fork and continue on.

This project is MIT licensed. It is not source available, but is open source (if your definition of open source means OSI-conformant license).

The author/community is welcome to exercise those options that MIT affords them, such as forking and launching a competing product.

Re: When 'open core' projects reject contributions for competing with the EE

#18

Post by prabhatsharma »

They need to be able to differentiate core from Enterprise. If they can't make money in a sustainable way the open core company will die and so will the open source project. Those who fail to see this reality are only hurting themselves.

This is perfectly fine.

Re: When 'open core' projects reject contributions for competing with the EE

#19

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

byefruit wrote: post #12

I don't see the problem here? It's their project and they can choose what they want to maintain. If you disagree, it's perfectly fine to fork the project and implement this but then you bear the cost of maintenance. These kinds of open source projects need to be sustainable, you can't expect the companies producing them to continue maintaining and investing in them without some sustainable way of doing it. I don't se…

Yeah I understand the disappointment, but „open core“ implies that there are parts that are not part of the core, and therefore not open. Those parts will usually be something that enterprises value.

At the end of the day, maintainers for complex projects need to get paid.

Re: When 'open core' projects reject contributions for competing with the EE

#20

Post by [deleted] »

byefruit wrote: post #13
i80and wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's worse is it can change at the whims of executives. You can invest time and effort into improving an open core product because the leadership is very open and collaborative, then the CTO changes or a bad quarter comes around and OOPS they're done playing with the community now

But you've always got the right to fork it. What you're saying is you want them to continue maintaining it at their cost because the community don't want to?

[deleted]
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