6 ms·

Dunno. Recently, I had good luck with AGPL dual-license models. Most competitors wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot-pole. At the same time, we could build a con

by blagie 5y ago

Dunno. Recently, I had good luck with AGPL dual-license models. Most competitors wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot-pole. At the same time, we could build a contributor community. It cut off some sales, but build far, far more. I've seen other organizations do well with cloud hosting or support models. There are plenty of open source unicorn companies doing those sorts of things. Highest-margin "price doesn't matter" contracts will generally go to the author of a tool. It really depends on the business plan. I've been pretty successful with both open and closed source models, and in retrospect, I think they wouldn't have worked swapped around. The logic you're giving doesn't really make sense: "We just don't have the luxury of VC money where we can open source and worry about making money later." or "Our compromise is that we are open sourcing anything that is not the core of the application for now. If we have enterprise / cloud features down the line, we will open source the core." Open source has significant business upsides. For example: - If I'm buying from a small startup, open source reduces the risk of what happens when the startup goes under, or if a business goes Oracle and decides to take advantage of me once they have lock-in. - It builds ecosystems, networks, traction, visibility, and distribution. For small companies, those are hard problems. - It allows external contributions. Conversely, on the customer side, if a vendor won't fix a bug, I can. - On the customer side, it gives me transparency into roadmaps and development. Right now, I'm now at a big company, and I generally tend to buy open source. The build-versus-buy decision is purely economic, and economics usually goes towards "buy." Open-source gives most of the advantages of "build." The relative cost/value of those is an analysis that depends on your specific business model. Making the decision otherwise -- pretending open-source is some kind of charity -- is bad business.

Sytten 5y ago
Good points, like I said we are still discussing it internally and I like some of the points you made. For now our target customers are individuals that happen to be very good with computers so we can't expect juicy support contracts. That is why we think that if we can pivot to that model (enterprise support) open source would make sense. We try to as transparent as possible in the meantime with public roadmap, open sourcing non critical parts, etc. At the moment we don't want external code contributions to the core so I think our model make sense.
phkahler 5y ago
>> Dunno. Recently, I had good luck with AGPL dual-license models. Most competitors wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot-pole. At the same time, we could build a contributor community. It cut off some sales, but build far, far more. Not sure about building a community around that. AFAICT most people don't want to make contributions under a CLA knowing that you can build the commercial version incorporating their work. Some will, but I look at things like QCad -> LibreCAD and it just didn't work - the "open" version of the commercial branch is ahead of the community one now.
- blagie 5y ago
  These are kind of case-by-case decisions. It depends on the contributor community. In the case referenced, we did have a CLA. Most of the potential (and actual) contributors were academics, supported by their universities or by research grants. AGPL allowed full scientific transparency, without any real downsides. There were other contributors who were turned away by the CLA, but it was not an unreasonable trade-off. We still had hundreds of contributors. And we did release a small piece of the system under Apache, because we wanted an industry standard for an API/format. Having that piece under Apache encouraged competitors to adopt it (which didn't really happen, unfortunately). On project I'm currently leading -- and I can't speak for success yet -- is AGPL without a CLA. Most of the business value comes from network effects. A good analogy would be if Facebook had started out AGPL (or Wikimedia, for that matter). The code has little value independently of the community and partnerships I'm building. AGPL allows for full transparency, which has a ton of value in the market we're targeting (at least for people who think through these things deeply). For people who don't think deeply, having an FSF/OSI-approved license gives name recognition and opens doors. I'm leading two major projects. The other is pursuing a closed model because it makes sense there. I can't speak for any specific case. All I'm trying to say is it's an in-depth case-by-case analysis. Businesses which pick closed because they "want to make money," open "to contribute," BSD to "be more open," or similar knee-jerk reactions are doing it wrong. It is a complex analysis, and my case is different from yours.
candiddevmike 5y ago
AGPL has a ton of problems even as an open source license. Just use a source available or creative commons license, AGPL isn't helping your case.
- bogwog 5y ago
  What kind of problems does AGPL have? Seems like a great choice for someone with commercial plans since it gives you a strong competitive advantage against anyone who thinks of just reselling your software/service.
  - candiddevmike 5y ago
    https://deavid.wordpress.com/2020/08/02/affero-gpl-is-toxic-avoid-it-like-the-plague/ https://deavid.wordpress.com/2020/08/02/affero-gpl-is-toxic-...
    - bogwog 5y ago
      That post actually supports my point. He made some bad arguments against AGPL, but this key part highlights the point I was making: > … as well of depriving them from having no competitive advantage for making any suitable profit from it. That’s exactly what I want if I’m planning to make money from my open source project. I can release it as open source so that users can study it, contribute, audit it, self host it, etc. while at the same time avoid worrying about an Elastic Search situation. Obviously, whoever wrote that is coming at it from a different perspective than I.

by blagie 5y ago

Sytten 5y ago

Good points, like I said we are still discussing it internally and I like some of the points you made. For now our target customers are individuals that happen to be very good with computers so we can't expect juicy support contracts. That is why we think that if we can pivot to that model (enterprise support) open source would make sense. We try to as transparent as possible in the meantime with public roadmap, open sourcing non critical parts, etc. At the moment we don't want external code contributions to the core so I think our model make sense.

phkahler 5y ago

>> Dunno. Recently, I had good luck with AGPL dual-license models. Most competitors wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot-pole. At the same time, we could build a contributor community. It cut off some sales, but build far, far more. Not sure about building a community around that. AFAICT most people don't want to make contributions under a CLA knowing that you can build the commercial version incorporating their work. Some will, but I look at things like QCad -> LibreCAD and it just didn't work - the "open" version of the commercial branch is ahead of the community one now.

blagie 5y ago
These are kind of case-by-case decisions. It depends on the contributor community. In the case referenced, we did have a CLA. Most of the potential (and actual) contributors were academics, supported by their universities or by research grants. AGPL allowed full scientific transparency, without any real downsides. There were other contributors who were turned away by the CLA, but it was not an unreasonable trade-off. We still had hundreds of contributors. And we did release a small piece of the system under Apache, because we wanted an industry standard for an API/format. Having that piece under Apache encouraged competitors to adopt it (which didn't really happen, unfortunately). On project I'm currently leading -- and I can't speak for success yet -- is AGPL without a CLA. Most of the business value comes from network effects. A good analogy would be if Facebook had started out AGPL (or Wikimedia, for that matter). The code has little value independently of the community and partnerships I'm building. AGPL allows for full transparency, which has a ton of value in the market we're targeting (at least for people who think through these things deeply). For people who don't think deeply, having an FSF/OSI-approved license gives name recognition and opens doors. I'm leading two major projects. The other is pursuing a closed model because it makes sense there. I can't speak for any specific case. All I'm trying to say is it's an in-depth case-by-case analysis. Businesses which pick closed because they "want to make money," open "to contribute," BSD to "be more open," or similar knee-jerk reactions are doing it wrong. It is a complex analysis, and my case is different from yours.

candiddevmike 5y ago

AGPL has a ton of problems even as an open source license. Just use a source available or creative commons license, AGPL isn't helping your case.

bogwog 5y ago
What kind of problems does AGPL have? Seems like a great choice for someone with commercial plans since it gives you a strong competitive advantage against anyone who thinks of just reselling your software/service.
- candiddevmike 5y ago
  https://deavid.wordpress.com/2020/08/02/affero-gpl-is-toxic-avoid-it-like-the-plague/ https://deavid.wordpress.com/2020/08/02/affero-gpl-is-toxic-...
  - bogwog 5y ago
    That post actually supports my point. He made some bad arguments against AGPL, but this key part highlights the point I was making: > … as well of depriving them from having no competitive advantage for making any suitable profit from it. That’s exactly what I want if I’m planning to make money from my open source project. I can release it as open source so that users can study it, contribute, audit it, self host it, etc. while at the same time avoid worrying about an Elastic Search situation. Obviously, whoever wrote that is coming at it from a different perspective than I.