4 ms·

In a business context, I'd definitely consider paid support for an Open Source product. But I'm not interested in a proprietary version that I can't modify or g

In a business context, I'd definitely consider paid support for an Open Source product. But I'm not interested in a proprietary version that I can't modify or get third-party support for or otherwise work with in a pinch; I'm certainly not going to make a business dependent on it. Push the proprietary version hard enough and I'll reconsider whether I even want to use the Open Source version, or if it might be on more tenuous ground that might get undermined in the future (pushing back on improvements to the Open Source version to maintain differentiation, or worse, deciding to switch to a non-FOSS license in the future).

nyanpasu64 6y ago
> Push the proprietary version hard enough and I'll reconsider whether I even want to use the Open Source version Qt is pushing hard for commercial licensing (which I heard prevents you from using the open-source version), putting L/GPL FUD on their websites, and trying to track users of their installers more.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  The model of "copyleft if your project is open, pay us if your project isn't open" is one where I have no problems or concerns, and will happily use the open version and recommend that people building something proprietary purchase a paid license. Nor will I typically worry about the motives or future of the project unless I have some other reason to. And the KDE Free Qt Foundation means I never have to worry about Qt going proprietary.
  - account42 6y ago
    Qt is more and more trying to get away with restricting the open source version as much as they can without triggering KDE's escape rights.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Does anyone know a good license for that? Maybe the Prosperity license? EDIT: I've just realized that I want a revenue-limited trial, rather than a time-limited one. I basically want the Prosperity license, but with the ability to say "you have to pay me if your company makes more than $100k in annual revenue". Is there a license like that? I've emailed the License Zero people, hopefully they'll do something for that.
    - pnutjam 6y ago
      Well, once I paid the fees to license our logo from subcompany A, and the rent on all my servers to subcompany B; we didn't make any money.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        Yes, this is an example of a company I wouldn't want to charge for my software, at least until you're into six figure revenues.
        nitrogen 6y ago
        Not sure but I think maybe they were mixing up profit vs. revenue and pointing out how a company can ensure it has zero profit. But I guess you'd also have to be careful about which entity or sub-entities are covered by a license and the revenue limits.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        Ah, I see, by "subcompany" they meant their own subsidiaries. Yes, that's why I said "revenue" in the original post, thank you for the clarification.
    - tlb 6y ago
      Unreal engine charges a 5% royalty on sales after the first $1M in revenue. And source is all on github, so it's basically zero friction until you get big. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq
    - RabbitmqGuy 6y ago
      Also have a look at polyform licenses https://polyformproject.org/licenses/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        Ahh, yes! I think I want a cross between the Prosperity and the Small Business license.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  And nowadays, most people use Electron instead of Qt.
  - jgalt212 6y ago
    which is deeply unfortunate due to how resource hungry Electron is.
  - tonyarkles 6y ago
    I’ve been using Qt/C++ for a few months here and I’m really really impressed. It’s really nicely done, and the performance is fantastic. Honestly, I’d have probably considered Electron, but the software runs in a somewhat resource constrained environment and has pretty significant soft real-time processing requirements (the C++ part)
boris 6y ago
What if it were a single source-available version (that also allowed you to, say, get third-party support/customizations)?
- pm90 6y ago
  If the licensing model asks for companies to pay for the "Enterprise" features which are still OSS, it would resolve this problem for me at least (not sure about the OP). In general, its been my experience that the closed source enterprise only crap that most companies push for is exactly that: crap. I suspect its because those features are treated as a business expense, and thus built to keep costs low. Almost every time those features are underwhelming and buggy. If its OSS, at least I can contribute a patch; if the thing is popular, likely someone else has already fixed it. Enterprise support is a fucking joke; they will delay delay and delay. If you push hard enough, they say "its on the roadmap" without giving any gurantee of when it will be fixed. The only time Enterprise support has really worked well is in my org that got the best support package for GCP. GCP's support for urgent issues and product feature requests has been somewhat reliable and predictable. Much more than literally any other enterprise (I'm looking at you Okta).
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    > GCP's support for urgent issues and product feature requests has been somewhat reliable and predictable. Can you give an example of a product feature request that succeeded via that support channel?
    - pm90 6y ago
      - we had requested some way of being able to remove IAM permissions that went stale. GCP introduced a “recommendations” feature that indicates which IAM roles have been unused for a long time and can safely be removed. - we requested a way to prohibit the provision of ILBs on shared VPC subnets without explicit grants; GCP introduced a role for that - we had issues with the number of compute instances being too high on our VPC and reaching limits because of the number of vpc peerings. In the past, every GKE cluster created a new peering. We have a bunch of GKE clusters, and as we added more the Max number of instances we could provision was reduced significantly. GCP introduced and fast tracked a feature that enabled all GKE clusters to use a single peering rather than create a peer per GKE cluster. There’s a bunch more. But on this front I have been a happy customer.

nyanpasu64 6y ago

> Push the proprietary version hard enough and I'll reconsider whether I even want to use the Open Source version Qt is pushing hard for commercial licensing (which I heard prevents you from using the open-source version), putting L/GPL FUD on their websites, and trying to track users of their installers more.

JoshTriplett 6y ago
The model of "copyleft if your project is open, pay us if your project isn't open" is one where I have no problems or concerns, and will happily use the open version and recommend that people building something proprietary purchase a paid license. Nor will I typically worry about the motives or future of the project unless I have some other reason to. And the KDE Free Qt Foundation means I never have to worry about Qt going proprietary.
- account42 6y ago
  Qt is more and more trying to get away with restricting the open source version as much as they can without triggering KDE's escape rights.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Does anyone know a good license for that? Maybe the Prosperity license? EDIT: I've just realized that I want a revenue-limited trial, rather than a time-limited one. I basically want the Prosperity license, but with the ability to say "you have to pay me if your company makes more than $100k in annual revenue". Is there a license like that? I've emailed the License Zero people, hopefully they'll do something for that.
  - pnutjam 6y ago
    Well, once I paid the fees to license our logo from subcompany A, and the rent on all my servers to subcompany B; we didn't make any money.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Yes, this is an example of a company I wouldn't want to charge for my software, at least until you're into six figure revenues.
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        Not sure but I think maybe they were mixing up profit vs. revenue and pointing out how a company can ensure it has zero profit. But I guess you'd also have to be careful about which entity or sub-entities are covered by a license and the revenue limits.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        Ah, I see, by "subcompany" they meant their own subsidiaries. Yes, that's why I said "revenue" in the original post, thank you for the clarification.
  - tlb 6y ago
    Unreal engine charges a 5% royalty on sales after the first $1M in revenue. And source is all on github, so it's basically zero friction until you get big. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq
  - RabbitmqGuy 6y ago
    Also have a look at polyform licenses https://polyformproject.org/licenses/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Ahh, yes! I think I want a cross between the Prosperity and the Small Business license.
speedgoose 6y ago
And nowadays, most people use Electron instead of Qt.
- jgalt212 6y ago
  which is deeply unfortunate due to how resource hungry Electron is.
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  I’ve been using Qt/C++ for a few months here and I’m really really impressed. It’s really nicely done, and the performance is fantastic. Honestly, I’d have probably considered Electron, but the software runs in a somewhat resource constrained environment and has pretty significant soft real-time processing requirements (the C++ part)

boris 6y ago

What if it were a single source-available version (that also allowed you to, say, get third-party support/customizations)?

pm90 6y ago
If the licensing model asks for companies to pay for the "Enterprise" features which are still OSS, it would resolve this problem for me at least (not sure about the OP). In general, its been my experience that the closed source enterprise only crap that most companies push for is exactly that: crap. I suspect its because those features are treated as a business expense, and thus built to keep costs low. Almost every time those features are underwhelming and buggy. If its OSS, at least I can contribute a patch; if the thing is popular, likely someone else has already fixed it. Enterprise support is a fucking joke; they will delay delay and delay. If you push hard enough, they say "its on the roadmap" without giving any gurantee of when it will be fixed. The only time Enterprise support has really worked well is in my org that got the best support package for GCP. GCP's support for urgent issues and product feature requests has been somewhat reliable and predictable. Much more than literally any other enterprise (I'm looking at you Okta).
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  > GCP's support for urgent issues and product feature requests has been somewhat reliable and predictable. Can you give an example of a product feature request that succeeded via that support channel?
  - pm90 6y ago
    - we had requested some way of being able to remove IAM permissions that went stale. GCP introduced a “recommendations” feature that indicates which IAM roles have been unused for a long time and can safely be removed. - we requested a way to prohibit the provision of ILBs on shared VPC subnets without explicit grants; GCP introduced a role for that - we had issues with the number of compute instances being too high on our VPC and reaching limits because of the number of vpc peerings. In the past, every GKE cluster created a new peering. We have a bunch of GKE clusters, and as we added more the Max number of instances we could provision was reduced significantly. GCP introduced and fast tracked a feature that enabled all GKE clusters to use a single peering rather than create a peer per GKE cluster. There’s a bunch more. But on this front I have been a happy customer.