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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

#41

Post by tinglymintyfrsh »

It depends on the business model: freemium towards enterprise are, otherwise not so much.

Also, commercial open source != free. You can't use Docker Desktop commercially without a license and it's not 100% OSS. Many companies use open source-washing as a way to lure customers into yet another proprietary system that dresses itself up as FOSS.

Furthermore, most commercial open source community versions are crippleware hiding useful features behind closed-source, paid-subscription-only offers. And, the CE versions are usually out-of-date and are slow to receive security updates. SugarCRM comes to mind.

Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good

#42

Post by ignoramous »

sytse wrote: post #6

There 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…

The problem is, some think that these (and other) approaches are killing open source.

> If we normalize projects baiting developers with an open source license to gain traction and switching to a non-open source license to monopolize the returns on that traction, then the logical next step for investors will be skipping that first step entirely.

> And that, for the industry, is nothing but a dead end.

- redmonk.com/sogrady, https://archive.is/GN2Bd

Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good

#43

Post by OkayPhysicist »

pugio wrote: post #21

What 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…

I've played a few video games with this model: the source being available is a help to modders and the like, while still maintaining the game's commercial status. The best example I can think of is Barotrauma, where just a couple months ago there was a release that subtly broke networking on Macs. Quick code change fixed it so that my Apple-locked friends could play until the company got around to fixing it. Minecraft falls into the sorta-defacto version of this, where they distribute the necessary mappings to decompile the game for modding purposes.

Personally I think it should be the default distribution model for software. If I'm relying on a piece of software, especially one I paid for, doubly-especially if it's running on my machine, I should have the right to modify it and probably to distribute my modifications.

Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good

#44

Post by andrewstuart2 »

ignoramous wrote: post #42
sytse wrote: post #6

There 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…

The problem is, some think that these (and other) approaches are killing open source. > If we normalize projects baiting developers with an open source license to gain traction and switching to a non-open source license to monopolize the returns on that traction, then the logical next step for investors will be skipping that first step entirely. > And that, for the industry, is nothing but a dead end. - redmonk.com/s…

You can absolutely use GitLab to the highest levels of productivity and effectiveness without paying a cent. It just tends to require more input and effort and results in tool sprawl if you want to recreate the GitLab EE experience for free. It's possible for many of the important features, and where it's not possible, it's usually not critical.

GitLab is, imo, one of the best examples of how to do paid open source. Especially because they've gone about it without the relicensing switch that many companies have attempted in order to "protect their business/product."

Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good

#45

Post by sweaver »

aposm wrote: post #19

I got halfway through this before reading the line "Docker, Elastic, and MongoDB are great examples of succeeding with the hosted open-core SaaS" and realizing I have a fundamentally different idea of the meaning of "open-core" and perhaps also "success" from the author. I'm not sure I can agree with anything else stated in the article either...

would love if you could elaborate your definition for open core (and success) as curious to hear an alternative perspective :-)

Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good

#46

Post by mamcx »

pugio wrote: post #21

What 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…

That is how things are in the Delphi world.

Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good

#47

Post by debugnik »

ignoramous wrote: post #42
sytse wrote: post #6

There 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…

The problem is, some think that these (and other) approaches are killing open source. > If we normalize projects baiting developers with an open source license to gain traction and switching to a non-open source license to monopolize the returns on that traction, then the logical next step for investors will be skipping that first step entirely. > And that, for the industry, is nothing but a dead end. - redmonk.com/s…

> If we normalize projects baiting developers with an open source license to gain traction […], then the logical next step for investors will be skipping that [bait] step entirely.

But where would traction come from, then? Switching to a proprietary license works well because they're baiting devs, if investors skip that step there's not as much to monopolise. Or am I misreading that paragraph?

Re: Open core companies are not incentivized to make their projects good

#48

Post by cxr »

mperham wrote: post #37
tremon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not true. GPLv3 provides one exception, and that is that in conjunction the the provision in AGPLv3, you may combine code licensed under each, and the combination is subject to the terms of AGPLv3.

(Whether this has any significance to context that the other commenter's question was in response to is a different matter.)

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