6 ms·

I was surprised to hear that RethinkDB was shutting down, since everyone that used it seemed to like it. I looked into their business model a bit more... and i

by mej10 10y ago

I was surprised to hear that RethinkDB was shutting down, since everyone that used it seemed to like it. I looked into their business model a bit more... and it was like, super difficult to figure out how to actually pay them for anything. Seems like having a push-button managed DB option on AWS/Google Cloud/Generic would've been awesome for them? The company just didn't seem like it was set up to make money even though people liked the product. I know, hindsight and everything... but without going to a page linked from a random github issue that I found via Google I couldn't even find a page talking about pricing. To build a business you have to not only make something people love... you also have to let them pay you for it.

jrpt 10y ago
Projects should reconsider the default decision of going open source. There's just too much burnout and abandonware. No pun intended, but I wrote a blog post about this a couple weeks ago called Funding Open Source by Rethinking the Assumption at https://supportedsource.org/blog/funding-open-source-by-rethinking-the-assumption https://supportedsource.org/blog/funding-open-source-by-reth... By rethinking the assumption (of a free price) we can keep a lot of the benefits of open source, but also have a model that just might solve the funding problem, by having end user companies pay. It's what I'm calling Supported Source. If you run a project and are interested, get in touch.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  I was promoting something similar along with a guy named (Quinn?). About three of us here before this thread haha. Anyway, proprietary software dominates in terms of longevity and profit. FOSS has extra benefits plus lacks specific risks. Seems obvious to me a hybrid is the answer. My first was where people pay for product with source + perpetual license (copyright and patent) for that release + GPL-like rights to fix or extend it for their own purposes. Even distribute those to community of paying users. The final possibility of lock-in or freezing that comes from lack of open distribution is the last straw for open-source people. That needs effective solution. The alternatives are two things: dual-licensing or just charging for the open-source software. These are fully open-source where they have no risks of proprietary software but risk loosing profit due to freeloaders or knockoffs. The latter option, charging for OSS stuff, threw me as I thought it wasn't allowed per some of the license but an OpenSUSE employee pointed out it's basically what they do. Some others do, too, including one person whose company does custom jobs for other firms plus GPL's anything they make. You basically make it available for people to grab but just keep charging corporations for it anyway. They don't know the difference as they're paying for specific benefits. What's your thoughts on these OSS options? EDIT: Wait, yeah it was Quinn with Fair Source. I've been too busy to get back to him but I see all of us having a more extended discussion on these things in future when things stabilize for me. :)
  - chipotle_coyote 10y ago
    My first was where people pay for product with source + perpetual license (copyright and patent) for that release + GPL-like rights to fix or extend it for their own purposes. Even distribute those to community of paying users. Interestingly enough, similar models seemed to be more common back in the dark ages of computing before terms like Open Source and Free Software were really a thing, particularly on minicomputers and mainframes. It made its way to the "microcomputer" world in more limited fashion, then sort of slowly died out. But I think there may still be something to the notion of a license that, while not remotely meeting the definition of "free software," still gives you access to the source. I'll be honest, though; I think FOSS advocates have a tendency to (perhaps unconsciously) downplay how important "free as in beer" has been for the adoption of a lot of major software projects. An internet in which Apache, MySQL, PHP, and other major free software projects were released with commercial "source included" licenses would probably look very different. I have my own thoughts about RethinkDB's failure as a commercial entity, but despite having actually been inside, I have pretty limited insider knowledge. Perhaps we should have been trying to push an "enterprise edition" with guaranteed support much earlier, following the "charging for OSS stuff" line you mentioned; as others have said, maybe we just didn't have enough avenues through which to give us money. (It's hard not to notice that MariaDB's .com site is essentially page after page of ways to give them money, for instance.)
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      The Burroughs MCP came with source with users allowed to submit updates to them for redistribution. So, the first, great mainframe for business operated under shared-source license. It became a multi-billion dollar company. They closed it off and pulled all kinds of schemes eventually. Now called Unisys. I think a combo of paid with source and closed-source extensions can still get lots of success. We're already seeing it with enterprise editions for features that basically only enterprises use. That keeps them from crippling the main, OSS product which costs less. I also envision giving free licenses to people that contribute lots of code, docs, testing, etc. One way is to simply not charge businesses below a certain revenue amount or only to charge a support fee tied to cost of delivering support. As they grow, so does the software house like in the royalty model.
- m_mueller 10y ago
  I keep saying that we need something like Creative Commons NC license for OSS with a payed commercial relicensing. No, I understand, it's not free software anymore, but it's still open source. AFAIK none of the common OSS licenses support this model - the only way to make money with them is to (a) not use any copyleft dependencies yourself, use something like AGPL and offer a payed relicense or (b) only sell services around your OSS. Correct me if I'm wrong on this. Now, (a) and (b) work for some use cases, but I'd argue that it's limited, especially usecase (a) because it still allows any 'customer' to use your software for commercial work without contributing anything back other than attribution. What would be nice is some kind of ecosystem around a license I mentioned above, where predefined percentages (that ideally can be set by each license owner) trickle upstream to support their project. Like an appstore for OSS libraries and software where you can register your software and the licenses you offer - if your app is free you don't need to pay anyone upstream, otherwise you keep (1 - x - y - z) if you used other OSS with this model that have predefined cuts x, y and z.
  - paxcoder 10y ago
    >"OSS"-NC would be proprietary software you don't have to reverse engineer >[AGPL + another] still allows any 'customer' to use your software for commercial work without contributing anything back other than attribution How so?
    - m_mueller 10y ago
      I don't get your distinction between proprietary and OSS. It wouldn't be proprietary if this were an established license. Proprietary to me means you're bound to a vendor - here you'd just have to chip in for development if you're selling derivative works. (and you can and are encouraged to do that) AGPL doesn't have any mention of commercialization - you can use it as an end user in any context for free, but you will have the same issues with selling derivative works due to copyleft. For software that's actually just software and not a service, say media production, it means that *GPL software will forever remain tools for hobbyists.
      - 10y ago
ci5er 10y ago
> I couldn't even find a page talking about pricing I continue to be amazed at the number of startups where I have to google around for pricing. (This is excepting those folks who want you to call for a quote, of course.)
amelius 10y ago
How are other small DB companies doing in this respect? For example, Datomic, or VoltDB? Do these businesses have good prospects?
- ericfrenkiel 10y ago
  MemSQL is commercially licensed to do our best to stay in business and keep innovating.

by mej10 10y ago

jrpt 10y ago

Projects should reconsider the default decision of going open source. There's just too much burnout and abandonware. No pun intended, but I wrote a blog post about this a couple weeks ago called Funding Open Source by Rethinking the Assumption at https://supportedsource.org/blog/funding-open-source-by-rethinking-the-assumption https://supportedsource.org/blog/funding-open-source-by-reth... By rethinking the assumption (of a free price) we can keep a lot of the benefits of open source, but also have a model that just might solve the funding problem, by having end user companies pay. It's what I'm calling Supported Source. If you run a project and are interested, get in touch.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
I was promoting something similar along with a guy named (Quinn?). About three of us here before this thread haha. Anyway, proprietary software dominates in terms of longevity and profit. FOSS has extra benefits plus lacks specific risks. Seems obvious to me a hybrid is the answer. My first was where people pay for product with source + perpetual license (copyright and patent) for that release + GPL-like rights to fix or extend it for their own purposes. Even distribute those to community of paying users. The final possibility of lock-in or freezing that comes from lack of open distribution is the last straw for open-source people. That needs effective solution. The alternatives are two things: dual-licensing or just charging for the open-source software. These are fully open-source where they have no risks of proprietary software but risk loosing profit due to freeloaders or knockoffs. The latter option, charging for OSS stuff, threw me as I thought it wasn't allowed per some of the license but an OpenSUSE employee pointed out it's basically what they do. Some others do, too, including one person whose company does custom jobs for other firms plus GPL's anything they make. You basically make it available for people to grab but just keep charging corporations for it anyway. They don't know the difference as they're paying for specific benefits. What's your thoughts on these OSS options? EDIT: Wait, yeah it was Quinn with Fair Source. I've been too busy to get back to him but I see all of us having a more extended discussion on these things in future when things stabilize for me. :)
- chipotle_coyote 10y ago
  My first was where people pay for product with source + perpetual license (copyright and patent) for that release + GPL-like rights to fix or extend it for their own purposes. Even distribute those to community of paying users. Interestingly enough, similar models seemed to be more common back in the dark ages of computing before terms like Open Source and Free Software were really a thing, particularly on minicomputers and mainframes. It made its way to the "microcomputer" world in more limited fashion, then sort of slowly died out. But I think there may still be something to the notion of a license that, while not remotely meeting the definition of "free software," still gives you access to the source. I'll be honest, though; I think FOSS advocates have a tendency to (perhaps unconsciously) downplay how important "free as in beer" has been for the adoption of a lot of major software projects. An internet in which Apache, MySQL, PHP, and other major free software projects were released with commercial "source included" licenses would probably look very different. I have my own thoughts about RethinkDB's failure as a commercial entity, but despite having actually been inside, I have pretty limited insider knowledge. Perhaps we should have been trying to push an "enterprise edition" with guaranteed support much earlier, following the "charging for OSS stuff" line you mentioned; as others have said, maybe we just didn't have enough avenues through which to give us money. (It's hard not to notice that MariaDB's .com site is essentially page after page of ways to give them money, for instance.)
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    The Burroughs MCP came with source with users allowed to submit updates to them for redistribution. So, the first, great mainframe for business operated under shared-source license. It became a multi-billion dollar company. They closed it off and pulled all kinds of schemes eventually. Now called Unisys. I think a combo of paid with source and closed-source extensions can still get lots of success. We're already seeing it with enterprise editions for features that basically only enterprises use. That keeps them from crippling the main, OSS product which costs less. I also envision giving free licenses to people that contribute lots of code, docs, testing, etc. One way is to simply not charge businesses below a certain revenue amount or only to charge a support fee tied to cost of delivering support. As they grow, so does the software house like in the royalty model.
m_mueller 10y ago
I keep saying that we need something like Creative Commons NC license for OSS with a payed commercial relicensing. No, I understand, it's not free software anymore, but it's still open source. AFAIK none of the common OSS licenses support this model - the only way to make money with them is to (a) not use any copyleft dependencies yourself, use something like AGPL and offer a payed relicense or (b) only sell services around your OSS. Correct me if I'm wrong on this. Now, (a) and (b) work for some use cases, but I'd argue that it's limited, especially usecase (a) because it still allows any 'customer' to use your software for commercial work without contributing anything back other than attribution. What would be nice is some kind of ecosystem around a license I mentioned above, where predefined percentages (that ideally can be set by each license owner) trickle upstream to support their project. Like an appstore for OSS libraries and software where you can register your software and the licenses you offer - if your app is free you don't need to pay anyone upstream, otherwise you keep (1 - x - y - z) if you used other OSS with this model that have predefined cuts x, y and z.
- paxcoder 10y ago
  >"OSS"-NC would be proprietary software you don't have to reverse engineer >[AGPL + another] still allows any 'customer' to use your software for commercial work without contributing anything back other than attribution How so?
  - m_mueller 10y ago
    I don't get your distinction between proprietary and OSS. It wouldn't be proprietary if this were an established license. Proprietary to me means you're bound to a vendor - here you'd just have to chip in for development if you're selling derivative works. (and you can and are encouraged to do that) AGPL doesn't have any mention of commercialization - you can use it as an end user in any context for free, but you will have the same issues with selling derivative works due to copyleft. For software that's actually just software and not a service, say media production, it means that *GPL software will forever remain tools for hobbyists.
    - 10y ago

ci5er 10y ago

> I couldn't even find a page talking about pricing I continue to be amazed at the number of startups where I have to google around for pricing. (This is excepting those folks who want you to call for a quote, of course.)

amelius 10y ago

How are other small DB companies doing in this respect? For example, Datomic, or VoltDB? Do these businesses have good prospects?

ericfrenkiel 10y ago
MemSQL is commercially licensed to do our best to stay in business and keep innovating.