5 ms·
Kinda off topic but I'm curious, what's the proper strategy to adopt as a company when someone copies your product and distribute it legally for free? Do nothin
by ggregoire 5y ago
Kinda off topic but I'm curious, what's the proper strategy to adopt as a company when someone copies your product and distribute it legally for free? Do nothing (individuals & small companies that are going to self host the product were never your market anyway)? Offer a self-hosted plan too? Obviously it depends for each company. I wonder if there are companies who famously changed their offer following the release of a free/self-hosted/open-source competing product.
- forgotmysn 5y agoas crazy as it sounds, there are many large, enterprise clients that have to pay for vendors, they literally are not structured to implement free/O.S. software. i imagine that those large orgs are much more significant contributors to a software company's revenue than the small start-ups that might be more able to implement an O.S. alternative.
- kkirsche 5y agoIt’s also often used to mitigate risk as you have a vendor to call and offload work, costs, specialization, and other factors to during critical incidents.
- forgotmysn 5y agonot to mention custom feature requests
- smoldesu 5y agoJust market to the enterprise buyers. All they want to do is pay for someone to be liable when their system breaks, and many people make lots of money in that business of scapegoating.
- mch82 5y ago> when someone copies your product and distribute it legally for free This is society’s collective goal, as exemplified by patents. After ~15 years of legal monopoly, they’re public & anyone can use them. Copyrights take longer, but eventually do the same. Companies plan for this by continuing to introduce incremental product changes, extending the monopoly period in small ways. Take a look at Wordpress, Lego, and Disney who deal with this in different ways.