Of course, there's other 'grey-pattern' techniques that open-core systems use (eg. the notorious https://sso.tax) that can also help build companies around but it's important to note that a small 10-100 person company has very different "app visibility/reporting/analytics" needs than a 1000 person corporate with multi-level hierarchies, and it's very much possible to build out a profitable company that builds a community with the 10-100 person startup via open source offerings that work perfectly for their use-cases while charging the companies that want something that "just works" for them for a lot of the advanced non-core stuff (and services).
Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
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Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#12I haven't investigated how true this is, but I've long suspected the reason that PostgreSQL remains relatively difficult to install, configure, replicate, and cluster is that most of the development is done by companies who sell paid solutions that make it easy to install, configure, replicate, and/or cluster.
Clustering and replication isn't the easiest but that's mostly because it just hasn't been a focus of the postgres machine -- they're making changes that are a bit more fundamental and in my opinion pressing.
Most startups just need to scale a postgres server vertically, not horizontally.
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#13Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#14I haven't investigated how true this is, but I've long suspected the reason that PostgreSQL remains relatively difficult to install, configure, replicate, and cluster is that most of the development is done by companies who sell paid solutions that make it easy to install, configure, replicate, and/or cluster.
Cany anybody help me out and mention some setup details a blissful idiot like myself might be neglecting in their postgres cluster-ups?
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#15In order to make any use of the project, users also have to be trustees. This model allows restrictions on what they use it for, what they disclose, &c, because users must agree to certain terms as part of becoming trustees.
Because the development company is a trustee, their incentives are different from those of software companies that own IP: trustees have a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of beneficiaries (even though trust management companies can have their own shares and shareholders, they nevertheless have a fiduciary duty to the beneficiaries).
One of the benefits of open source is that it's possible to arrange for succession if a company stalls out. No one is breaking the law by continuing to develop on the basis of the old IP. Organizing the software as a trust with users as beneficiaries makes it relatively easy to manage succession, as well, since the beneficiaries are the ultimate owners of the property contained in the trust and have a power to appoint new trustees as well as remove old ones.
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#16Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#17There are different types of features you can monetize with open core. The article talks about monetizing features that allow you to run it as a SaaS and the problems with that. At GitLab we opted to make those open: "The open source codebase will have all the features that are essential to running a large 'forge' with public and private repositories" https://about.gitlab.com/company/stewardship/#promises Instead we…
There a lots of features in gitlab that are closed source that I, as small, one man shop, would like to have. I do think gitlab does a much better job of balancing proprietary versus open source features than most open core products, but the incentive still seems to be there to keep useful features back.
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#18I haven't investigated how true this is, but I've long suspected the reason that PostgreSQL remains relatively difficult to install, configure, replicate, and cluster is that most of the development is done by companies who sell paid solutions that make it easy to install, configure, replicate, and/or cluster.
Either I'm the guy setting up all the vulnerable Postgres installs or I'm just some kind of unknown Postgres savant. Cany anybody help me out and mention some setup details a blissful idiot like myself might be neglecting in their postgres cluster-ups?
The cluster of 3+ servers must remain consistent, available, and not lose committed transactions when a minority of servers (including the former master) fails.
Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#19Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
There a lots of features in gitlab that are closed source that I, as small, one man shop, would like to have. I do think gitlab does a much better job of balancing proprietary versus open source features than most open core products, but the incentive still seems to be there to keep useful features back.
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...
Which is, does GitLab intentionally evaluate certain features to be behind the paywall to boost sales?