4 ms·

My experience running a project/company like you describe: 1) Not the geeks, but the big multinational companies with disposable developer time end up using yo

by dkyc 10y ago

My experience running a project/company like you describe: 1) Not the geeks, but the big multinational companies with disposable developer time end up using your open-source solution. Exactly the types of users I don't feel sorry for and would rather extract money from. 2) The "payback" in the form of bug reports and patches is negligible, because nobody likes to do work if they're not being compensated (either through money, or, more commonly in the open-source world, fame) 3) The users of the hosted version don't want to pay anything because "it's open-source, after all". 4) People that do not have the necessary technical capabilities to host your software, but also don't like to pay, harass you on GitHub and other support channels because "your software doesn't work", and it "throws error messages". The key advantage is that some people (journalists, bloggers) tend to present you in a more positive light if you describe yourself as an "open-source solution" rather than yet another commercial app.

oblio 10y ago
Open Core for the win. You want to use the base functionalities? Be my guest. You want Single Sign On through LDAP, AD, etc.? Commercial edition. You want advanced user management and permissions, etc.? Commercial edition. You want the product to work behind a NTLM proxy? Commercial edition. You want to use your own domain name (if hosted)? Commercial edition. There's a handful of requests that are sure-sign markers that someone is using the product in a corporate environment. Of course, if the people asking for those features also provide a pull request that complies with the project's pull request guidelines, then in that case, things might change. Though it's quite rare that such a huge feature as AD integration is actually provided by a project outsider (especially one that also comes with good code coverage, respects project coding conventions, etc.).
- user5994461 10y ago
  Or open demo for the win. Everything is paid. Except there is a free edition for up to N users, or non-production use. This lets people try the product, demo and experiment.
- eloisant 10y ago
  There are 2 issues with that: - People who only need basic functionalities don't bring any money - People who need paid functionalities don't get to try them in the free version So as much I as like free tiers as a user, for a business I think "free trial" is the way to go.
  - majkinetor 10y ago
    People who only need basic funcs provide you testing, i.e. product stability i.e. money.
nerdponx 10y ago
Can #1 be mitigated with a provision in the software license? "Free for personal use only" kind of thing.
- slgeorge 10y ago
  Yes, but that would not be an FSF or OSI compatible license. It would be more like Microsofts "shared source", or GitLabs enterprise edition https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE where you're giving access to the source code under certain conditions/limitations.
slgeorge 10y ago
I can't see why any free software user would consider it unreasonable to charge for delivery of a service as long as the source code for the service is freely available. There's nothing in the FSF / OSI that says anyone is entitled to free operation of software! There are consumer orientated services like Newsblur (http://newsblur.com http://newsblur.com) that do this. There are business orientated services such as SugarCRM (https://www.sugarcrm.com/ https://www.sugarcrm.com/) that do this. SaaS is the likely saviour of "commercial" open source. That said - yes users are unreasonable! All users, all the time. Whether it's open source or otherwise. Unfortunately, lots of open source users think the giving up of their time to report a problem means it should be solved, and they can't do it. The only thing I can offer is that it tells you how important what you created has become to them - think of it as a reverse compliment!
- icebraining 10y ago
  There's a common belief among regular people (not actual knowledgeable of the philosophies behind the concepts) that "open source" means everything is free. As a company which sells hosting and development based on an open source project, we see this all the time. That's why we generally avoid mentioning "open source" at all in our marketing (as does Newsblur and SugarCRM, from what I can see).
hedora 10y ago
I think the Busines Source License has cleanly solved this dilemma: http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2016/08/applying-business-source-licensing-bsl.html?m=1 http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2016/08/applying-business-sou... Free as in Freedom but not free as in beer. You get to use the software for free subect to limitations (can't have more than N users, can't resell hosted access, etc), until N years from now, when the license reverts to GPL. Point releases restart the clock (so you have to fork the N year old version if Oracle acquired the company). I'd be interested in a variant that reverts to BSD, but maybe that can't work for some reason. I haven't thought too hard about it.
- mrob 10y ago
  The Business Source License is not Free as in Freedom. The FSF states the first requirement for software to qualify as Free (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) is: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose." Any limitations on use make the software non-Free.
  - hedora 10y ago
    The FSF doesn't say you can run it when you wish. Seriously though, you download it now, and there is a contractual obligation that the software will be GPL later. Stallman used to charge people for improvements to emacs. This is the same, but with an extended delivery timeline that (hopefully) leads to better Free software. Also, note that once you pay, you get all the benefits / protections of the GPL, including redistribution of modifications after the timer expires. I'm not sure if you can redistribute modifications immediately or not. I would certainly hope so! (Any money for modified versions would go to the author of the original version, and there is no "we're missing feature X" like there would be with open core / demoware so why should they block such things?)
    - mrob 10y ago
      >The FSF doesn't say you can run it when you wish. Yes it does. "As you wish" means no limitations. It's a superset of "when you wish". By your argument all software is Free software, because eventually the copyright will expire. Being GPL later is better than being proprietary for as long as possible, but until it happens it's still non-Free.
timthorn 10y ago
> Not the geeks, but the big multinational companies with disposable developer time end up using your open-source solution. Exactly the types of users I don't feel sorry for and would rather extract money from. These companies much prefer to pay for support, even for open-source projects.
- Spivak 10y ago
  Companies don't really want to pay for the software because every IT manager can go on long rants about idiotic and broken licensing but they will be quick to pony up for a support contract, white labeling, and hosted services.

by dkyc 10y ago

oblio 10y ago

Open Core for the win. You want to use the base functionalities? Be my guest. You want Single Sign On through LDAP, AD, etc.? Commercial edition. You want advanced user management and permissions, etc.? Commercial edition. You want the product to work behind a NTLM proxy? Commercial edition. You want to use your own domain name (if hosted)? Commercial edition. There's a handful of requests that are sure-sign markers that someone is using the product in a corporate environment. Of course, if the people asking for those features also provide a pull request that complies with the project's pull request guidelines, then in that case, things might change. Though it's quite rare that such a huge feature as AD integration is actually provided by a project outsider (especially one that also comes with good code coverage, respects project coding conventions, etc.).

user5994461 10y ago
Or open demo for the win. Everything is paid. Except there is a free edition for up to N users, or non-production use. This lets people try the product, demo and experiment.
eloisant 10y ago
There are 2 issues with that: - People who only need basic functionalities don't bring any money - People who need paid functionalities don't get to try them in the free version So as much I as like free tiers as a user, for a business I think "free trial" is the way to go.
- majkinetor 10y ago
  People who only need basic funcs provide you testing, i.e. product stability i.e. money.

nerdponx 10y ago

Can #1 be mitigated with a provision in the software license? "Free for personal use only" kind of thing.

slgeorge 10y ago
Yes, but that would not be an FSF or OSI compatible license. It would be more like Microsofts "shared source", or GitLabs enterprise edition https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE where you're giving access to the source code under certain conditions/limitations.

slgeorge 10y ago

I can't see why any free software user would consider it unreasonable to charge for delivery of a service as long as the source code for the service is freely available. There's nothing in the FSF / OSI that says anyone is entitled to free operation of software! There are consumer orientated services like Newsblur (http://newsblur.com http://newsblur.com) that do this. There are business orientated services such as SugarCRM (https://www.sugarcrm.com/ https://www.sugarcrm.com/) that do this. SaaS is the likely saviour of "commercial" open source. That said - yes users are unreasonable! All users, all the time. Whether it's open source or otherwise. Unfortunately, lots of open source users think the giving up of their time to report a problem means it should be solved, and they can't do it. The only thing I can offer is that it tells you how important what you created has become to them - think of it as a reverse compliment!

icebraining 10y ago
There's a common belief among regular people (not actual knowledgeable of the philosophies behind the concepts) that "open source" means everything is free. As a company which sells hosting and development based on an open source project, we see this all the time. That's why we generally avoid mentioning "open source" at all in our marketing (as does Newsblur and SugarCRM, from what I can see).

hedora 10y ago

I think the Busines Source License has cleanly solved this dilemma: http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2016/08/applying-business-source-licensing-bsl.html?m=1 http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2016/08/applying-business-sou... Free as in Freedom but not free as in beer. You get to use the software for free subect to limitations (can't have more than N users, can't resell hosted access, etc), until N years from now, when the license reverts to GPL. Point releases restart the clock (so you have to fork the N year old version if Oracle acquired the company). I'd be interested in a variant that reverts to BSD, but maybe that can't work for some reason. I haven't thought too hard about it.

mrob 10y ago
The Business Source License is not Free as in Freedom. The FSF states the first requirement for software to qualify as Free (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) is: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose." Any limitations on use make the software non-Free.
- hedora 10y ago
  The FSF doesn't say you can run it when you wish. Seriously though, you download it now, and there is a contractual obligation that the software will be GPL later. Stallman used to charge people for improvements to emacs. This is the same, but with an extended delivery timeline that (hopefully) leads to better Free software. Also, note that once you pay, you get all the benefits / protections of the GPL, including redistribution of modifications after the timer expires. I'm not sure if you can redistribute modifications immediately or not. I would certainly hope so! (Any money for modified versions would go to the author of the original version, and there is no "we're missing feature X" like there would be with open core / demoware so why should they block such things?)
  - mrob 10y ago
    >The FSF doesn't say you can run it when you wish. Yes it does. "As you wish" means no limitations. It's a superset of "when you wish". By your argument all software is Free software, because eventually the copyright will expire. Being GPL later is better than being proprietary for as long as possible, but until it happens it's still non-Free.

timthorn 10y ago

> Not the geeks, but the big multinational companies with disposable developer time end up using your open-source solution. Exactly the types of users I don't feel sorry for and would rather extract money from. These companies much prefer to pay for support, even for open-source projects.

Spivak 10y ago
Companies don't really want to pay for the software because every IT manager can go on long rants about idiotic and broken licensing but they will be quick to pony up for a support contract, white labeling, and hosted services.