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I work for an OSS enterprise software vendor which competes with other OSS enterprise software vendors. The characterisation that license indemnity is the bulk

I work for an OSS enterprise software vendor which competes with other OSS enterprise software vendors. The characterisation that license indemnity is the bulk of our value added is, putting it mildly, an incomplete one.

kemitchell 8y ago
If I implied as much, could you mention where in the post? The table under scope specifically addresses differences in licensing expectations, rather than related services like maintenance, support, training, and integration. The string of questions under Scope mention the call for a broader, vendor relationship behind the code. I mention that Tidelift layers on maintenance assurances, aside from the license. This post is inside baseball, and I’m surprised to see it on the front page of HN. But I’d like to make it clearer if I can.
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  The string of questions under Scope are themselves scoped to a particular subset of what enterprises require from vendors. Compliance and legal assurance are part of the value. But they are not the whole of what enterprise vendors do. Big companies have needs that no casual OSS contributor would need to scratch.
- Terretta 8y ago
  Commenting unofficially as an open source fan inside a globally giant enterprise, your post (a) made sense, (b) was circulated to folks much less familiar with these concerns. The table was particularly helpful, and at least this global enterprise is well aware of all the other nonsense it didn’t cover. I would have found adding those to the table to lessen your focused point about license openness and pitfalls vs. need of the ecosystem to be sustainable.
  - kemitchell 8y ago
    I suppose I might have listed "form a company to commercialize" as one of the approaches, and tagged it as the one with greatest flexibility to add more offerings on top of license rights. I think License Zero, Tidelift, and other "sustainability as a service" offerings exist largely because the overhead of company-based commercialization is so high, and it doesn't scale well down to very small open source projects.
Terretta 8y ago
I work for a giant global enterprise that buys from your employer, specifically for (a) indemnity and (b) “train the trainer” jumpstart expertise. I would argue that to qualified engineering teams at a regulated buyer, license indemnity is the bulk of value of interest. Someone wants to use OOS, they have to go find a “liability sink”. The trick becomes finding one offering a purer upstream, and w/o vendor lock-in such as custom tooling devs have to learn to manage the system. Given the qualifiers in that comment, many customers, including some within this firm, will find your broader ‘enterprise’ offerings of interest as well.
- jacques_chester 8y ago
  I don't think I explained myself very well (edit: and I am typically oversensitive to suggestions that enterprise software isn't a genuinely difficult and important undertaking). My point was that there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make software usable in an enterprise environment that is orthogonal to the license. A lot of that work is simply not a problem for most individuals. It's demonstrable that these features are orthogonal to license, because they were expected before OSS became a norm. LDAP/SAML/OAuth/OIDC/whatever integrations, online backups, auditing, accounting and usage, multi-tenancy, credential management, file integrity, mandatory access control, etc etc. There are thousands -- literally thousands -- of things that enterprises collectively want that individuals and small teams don't even think about. A lot of OSS efforts acquire these capabilities because an enterprise vendor sponsored their development. Hence my point that "a single throat to choke" is only a slice of the value we and our competitors add.

kemitchell 8y ago

If I implied as much, could you mention where in the post? The table under scope specifically addresses differences in licensing expectations, rather than related services like maintenance, support, training, and integration. The string of questions under Scope mention the call for a broader, vendor relationship behind the code. I mention that Tidelift layers on maintenance assurances, aside from the license. This post is inside baseball, and I’m surprised to see it on the front page of HN. But I’d like to make it clearer if I can.

jacques_chester 8y ago
The string of questions under Scope are themselves scoped to a particular subset of what enterprises require from vendors. Compliance and legal assurance are part of the value. But they are not the whole of what enterprise vendors do. Big companies have needs that no casual OSS contributor would need to scratch.
Terretta 8y ago
Commenting unofficially as an open source fan inside a globally giant enterprise, your post (a) made sense, (b) was circulated to folks much less familiar with these concerns. The table was particularly helpful, and at least this global enterprise is well aware of all the other nonsense it didn’t cover. I would have found adding those to the table to lessen your focused point about license openness and pitfalls vs. need of the ecosystem to be sustainable.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  I suppose I might have listed "form a company to commercialize" as one of the approaches, and tagged it as the one with greatest flexibility to add more offerings on top of license rights. I think License Zero, Tidelift, and other "sustainability as a service" offerings exist largely because the overhead of company-based commercialization is so high, and it doesn't scale well down to very small open source projects.

Terretta 8y ago

I work for a giant global enterprise that buys from your employer, specifically for (a) indemnity and (b) “train the trainer” jumpstart expertise. I would argue that to qualified engineering teams at a regulated buyer, license indemnity is the bulk of value of interest. Someone wants to use OOS, they have to go find a “liability sink”. The trick becomes finding one offering a purer upstream, and w/o vendor lock-in such as custom tooling devs have to learn to manage the system. Given the qualifiers in that comment, many customers, including some within this firm, will find your broader ‘enterprise’ offerings of interest as well.

jacques_chester 8y ago
I don't think I explained myself very well (edit: and I am typically oversensitive to suggestions that enterprise software isn't a genuinely difficult and important undertaking). My point was that there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make software usable in an enterprise environment that is orthogonal to the license. A lot of that work is simply not a problem for most individuals. It's demonstrable that these features are orthogonal to license, because they were expected before OSS became a norm. LDAP/SAML/OAuth/OIDC/whatever integrations, online backups, auditing, accounting and usage, multi-tenancy, credential management, file integrity, mandatory access control, etc etc. There are thousands -- literally thousands -- of things that enterprises collectively want that individuals and small teams don't even think about. A lot of OSS efforts acquire these capabilities because an enterprise vendor sponsored their development. Hence my point that "a single throat to choke" is only a slice of the value we and our competitors add.