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To give commercial users an incentive to pay for the open source software they use. Can you name an open source project that does not offer extended features fo
by bauerd 9y ago
To give commercial users an incentive to pay for the open source software they use. Can you name an open source project that does not offer extended features for commercial versions and that sells? Because I can't
- StavrosK 9y agoAd headers isn't an extended feature, it's a nag screen.
- TAForObvReasons 9y agoThere's a difference between "extended features for commercial versions" and "adware". Usually the open source version includes core features that solve a basic set of problems, and the commercial versions add additional features to solve other and/or larger problems. At no point is there an explicit crippling of the open source. What's particularly frustrating is the burying of the lede here. The summary of the page intentionally omits the fact that you can build from source and use it in commercial contexts. And the section discussing the Apache license is factually incorrect: "Remember that building Caddy from source is still subject to the Apache 2.0 license which requires attribution and stating changes." -- that is only true if you are selling on-prem software that ships with the program. If you are using it in the normal course of your SaaS, no attribution is required.
- StavrosK 9y agoExactly. I would have no issue if paid usage was for things big companies are more likely to need, e.g. support, high-performance features, etc, like nginx does, but this is egregious.
- snark42 9y ago> Can you name an open source project that does not offer extended features for commercial versions and that sells? pfSense, Ceph (prior to RH purchase) and OpenNebula off the top of my head.
- tiernano 9y agoPfsense does have commercial offering though netgate...
- detaro 9y agoNetgate sells service, hardware and certification, not extra features.
- tiernano 9y agoDoesn’t gold membership include extra features?
- detaro 9y agoLooking at it again, it seems their cloud configuration backup service has special client code and could qualify as such. But the primary thing seems to be access to information, the devs and an officially certified VM for AWS.