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Open Source, SaaS and Monetization

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Re: Open Source, SaaS and Monetization

#31

Post by matchy »

soumyadeb wrote: post #27

We have been thinking about this a lot for our open-source Segment project ( https://github.com/rudderlabs/rudder-server/ ). We launched things under mongo-SSPL (which is not a OSS approved license) but we now think AGPL is probably good enough for a product like ours. AGPL should kick in for anything (e.g. mobile app) that sends events to the our AGPL-backend so needs to be open-sourced too - that should be a strong…

AGPL hasn’t really been tested in court so it’s not clear whether it would be enough to stop someone from running your software as a service.

Re: Open Source, SaaS and Monetization

#32

Post by soumyadeb »

danenania wrote: post #30
soumyadeb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman keeps saying Free of OSS is "Freedom of Speech" not "Free Beer". However, the "Free Beer" part is also important - there won't be any startup if every software (open-code or not) required big license fees. Sure, the open-code part is very valuable for all the reasons you mention. However, people writing code altruistically has also been extremely valuable for getting us where we are today.

"Sure, the open-code part is very valuable for all the reasons you mention. However, people writing code altruistically has also been extremely valuable for getting us where we are today." Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. My problem is with the many folks who automatically discount anything that is not "Free Beer". This attitude seems to be quite pervasive, unfortunately.

Fair enough. Having a "OSS-compliant" license which supports "payment to run the sofrware" would help open-source startups like us but I guess "requiring payment" will hurt the "Freedom of Speech" part of OSS.

An analogy would be - you have "Freedom of Speech" in a democracy but it requires a 100$ payment. Maybe?

Re: Open Source, SaaS and Monetization

#33

Post by soumyadeb »

matchy wrote: post #31
soumyadeb wrote: post #27

We have been thinking about this a lot for our open-source Segment project ( https://github.com/rudderlabs/rudder-server/ ). We launched things under mongo-SSPL (which is not a OSS approved license) but we now think AGPL is probably good enough for a product like ours. AGPL should kick in for anything (e.g. mobile app) that sends events to the our AGPL-backend so needs to be open-sourced too - that should be a strong…

AGPL hasn’t really been tested in court so it’s not clear whether it would be enough to stop someone from running your software as a service.

Isn't that true for most OSS licenses (not being tested in court)?

Re: Open Source, SaaS and Monetization

#34

Post by teddyh »

ahnick wrote: post #15
teddyh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any modifications to that code would need to be released again publicly. Technically, that is incompatible with the AGPL (and the GPL, for that matter). Private modifications without distribution are permitted by the GPL/AGPL, and if you don’t allow them, you are violating the GPL/AGPL license by adding this additional restriction. Of course, this might not be a problem, for two reasons: Firstly, you might be the s…

> Technically, that is incompatible with the AGPL (and the GPL, for that matter). Private modifications without distribution are permitted, and if you don’t allow them, you are violating the license. Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant you make a modification AND offer a competing SaaS service. At that point under the AGPL that is considered distribution and would need to be open sourced. > Sure, but you wi…

> an AGPL with a CLA

You can’t require a CLA with AGPL. That would be an additional restriction, which AGPL does not allow. You can require a CLA for contributions to be accepted into your own distibution of the software (since you are not required to accept patches), but you can’t require anyone to sign or agree to a CLA if they recieved the software under AGPL.

It wouldn’t be fair either, I think, for you to sell the contributions of third parties as part of your software under a proprietary license. You can’t have your cake and eat it too; either you develop stuff yourself and get to sell it under whatever license you like, or you accept contributions from third parties all over the world under a free license, and you then sell the software to your customers under the AGPL, not a proprietary license.

You might be concerned about your customers then redistributing the AGPL software you sold them, but firstly, you might be able to fix this by requiring your customers to sign a contract with you (as part of the sale), where they agree not to do that, allowing you to sue them for breach of contract if they do. (I am not sure about the legal status of this scheme, however, and IIRC, the text of the GPL seems to want to at least discourage it.) Secondly, Red Hat allows CentOS to exist, and RH still makes a pretty penny selling RHE licenses. So this might not be a problem in practice.

EDIT: See also this post, linked by jboynyc elswhere in this discussion:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jan/06/copyleft-equality...

Re: Open Source, SaaS and Monetization

#35

Post by danenania »

soumyadeb wrote: post #32
danenania wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sure, the open-code part is very valuable for all the reasons you mention. However, people writing code altruistically has also been extremely valuable for getting us where we are today." Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. My problem is with the many folks who automatically discount anything that is not "Free Beer". This attitude seems to be quite pervasive, unfortunately.

Fair enough. Having a "OSS-compliant" license which supports "payment to run the sofrware" would help open-source startups like us but I guess "requiring payment" will hurt the "Freedom of Speech" part of OSS. An analogy would be - you have "Freedom of Speech" in a democracy but it requires a 100$ payment. Maybe?

I'd say the expectation that all software should be free is more similar to expecting all books to be free, and self-righteously declaring that you will only read free books, because any author who tries to make money by writing books is clearly a sell-out who can't be trusted.

Closed source is like saying you aren't allowed to skim the book at the store before buying or share your favorite passages with a friend. That does infringe free speech. An author selling a book does not.

But just as with written media, there's plenty of room for both paid and free options that are both Open in the sense that the code is available. In a healthy ecosystem we'd have a lot of both, and no widespread bias against paid options. If anything businesses should have the opposite bias.

Re: Open Source, SaaS and Monetization

#36

Post by kemitchell »

seanwilson wrote: post #24

I work on a paid Chrome extension that tests if your website follows SEO, speed and security best practices: https://www.checkbot.io/ I considered making it open source but couldn't see a way I could monetise it if I tried to charge for it mainly because someone could just upload a free version to the Chrome Web Store. Open sourcing a project also opens you up to taking on a lot more responsibilities as well (e.g. re…

I lead a project to develop a strong-copyleft license that makes development tools "free for open source":

https://paritylicense.com

The idea was that developers like you could make your tools available under Parity and charge folks who want to use their code to develop closed, rather than open, software. However, several projects and companies have also used the license simply to make sure their work stays open, without selling any permission to build closed projects.

Re: Open Source, SaaS and Monetization

#37

Post by thinkmassive »

soumyadeb wrote: post #29
danenania wrote: post #28

I don't believe we've been served well by defining the term "Open Source" to also necessarily mean "Free". This definition and the accompanying zealotry mainly serves big tech and the cloud providers. Everyone else would be better off if we as an industry also make room for software that is Open (in the sense that the code is freely available), but not Free (you must pay or obtain permission to run it yourself, re-di…

Stallman keeps saying Free of OSS is "Freedom of Speech" not "Free Beer". However, the "Free Beer" part is also important - there won't be any startup if every software (open-code or not) required big license fees. Sure, the open-code part is very valuable for all the reasons you mention. However, people writing code altruistically has also been extremely valuable for getting us where we are today.

I recently saw a quote that said "Enterprise software is free as in puppy" which sums it up pretty accurately.

Re: Open Source, SaaS and Monetization

#38

Post by belorn »

danenania wrote: post #35
soumyadeb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. Having a "OSS-compliant" license which supports "payment to run the sofrware" would help open-source startups like us but I guess "requiring payment" will hurt the "Freedom of Speech" part of OSS. An analogy would be - you have "Freedom of Speech" in a democracy but it requires a 100$ payment. Maybe?

I'd say the expectation that all software should be free is more similar to expecting all books to be free, and self-righteously declaring that you will only read free books, because any author who tries to make money by writing books is clearly a sell-out who can't be trusted. Closed source is like saying you aren't allowed to skim the book at the store before buying or share your favorite passages with a friend. Th…

Depending on what you compare it to you get different answers.

We don't have patents or copyright for math. It is not that we want mathematicians to not get paid, or that we don't value math, or that there is no room for both paid and free math. It is that math is such a fundamental building stone that allowing rent seeking in that space would cause significant harm to society, including the advancement of science.

Some software is like a book. You buy it and consume it. You don't buy a book and build a better book. You do have the problem with schools in that children would be harmed if they had to pay for it, so we have libraries and school that buy the books for them so they become "free" for the children. Some nations, like Sweden, also have laws that demands that book publishers send books to libraries and the money the copyright owner is set by the state.

If we treat software as math then it should be free. If we treat software as books it should be semi-free for those that needs it and can't afford it.

Re: Open Source, SaaS and Monetization

#39

Post by seanwilson »

kemitchell wrote: post #36
seanwilson wrote: post #24

I work on a paid Chrome extension that tests if your website follows SEO, speed and security best practices: https://www.checkbot.io/ I considered making it open source but couldn't see a way I could monetise it if I tried to charge for it mainly because someone could just upload a free version to the Chrome Web Store. Open sourcing a project also opens you up to taking on a lot more responsibilities as well (e.g. re…

I lead a project to develop a strong-copyleft license that makes development tools "free for open source": https://paritylicense.com The idea was that developers like you could make your tools available under Parity and charge folks who want to use their code to develop closed, rather than open, software. However, several projects and companies have also used the license simply to make sure their work stays open, wit…

I like the idea. How would it stop someone releasing a free version of a paid development tool though? It relies on people downloading the free tool to be honest enough not to use it on commercial projects?

Re: Open Source, SaaS and Monetization

#40

Post by amenod »

soumyadeb wrote: post #29
danenania wrote: post #28

I don't believe we've been served well by defining the term "Open Source" to also necessarily mean "Free". This definition and the accompanying zealotry mainly serves big tech and the cloud providers. Everyone else would be better off if we as an industry also make room for software that is Open (in the sense that the code is freely available), but not Free (you must pay or obtain permission to run it yourself, re-di…

Stallman keeps saying Free of OSS is "Freedom of Speech" not "Free Beer". However, the "Free Beer" part is also important - there won't be any startup if every software (open-code or not) required big license fees. Sure, the open-code part is very valuable for all the reasons you mention. However, people writing code altruistically has also been extremely valuable for getting us where we are today.

> Stallman keeps saying Free of OSS is "Freedom of Speech" not "Free Beer". However, the "Free Beer" part is also important - there won't be any startup if every software (open-code or not) required big license fees.

Just wanted to point out the problem with this reasoning - "big license fees" are not necessary when the software is not Open Source (TM). One counter-example is Commons Clause which is not Open Source (TM), but still allows users normal use freedoms (self hosting, inspecting code, repairing and improving it, sharing modifications), but doesn't allow re-selling the product to 3rd parties. The irony is that it got a lot of bad press. I think Richard Stallman / FSF called it "particularly nasty"? Unfortunately, with all the good that FOSS has done, the zealotry that comes with it makes finding an optimal solution very difficult.

I'm not suggesting that Commons Clause (or BSL, or Fair License, or any other hybrid licenses for that matter) should be used everywhere, but they do solve a real problem in a user-friendly way (as a user, I would actually prefer a hybrid license to open core).

Congratulations to Sentry for choosing the BSL, I hope it serves them well!

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