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Free for individuals, but not free for companies should be the motto of Open Source. I've been on tons of sales calls and architecture calls with companies and

Free for individuals, but not free for companies should be the motto of Open Source. I've been on tons of sales calls and architecture calls with companies and they always exclaim "Open Source" like it is a feature or selling point. Nope, unless your company if contributing back with money or time, you should not use Open Source.

rileymat2 5y ago
Why? As a customer it is nice to know that if the company goes under you could maintain and use it going forward.
- phillipcarter 5y ago
  Yeah, OSS is fantastic for business precisely because you're not dependent on a vendor to solve a problem you're having.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Companies that go under don't take their products down with them though, that's a common misunderstanding. If there are paying customers, someone will buy the company's assets and support contracts.
  - humanrebar 5y ago
    But if it's licensed freely, anyone can step in similarly on an open source project, not just whoever bought the IP.
  - detaro 5y ago
    That's far from guaranteed. + it might easily be a competitor that's now going to migrate everyone on their solution that "of course does everything $oldProduct did... on paper... on days with a full moon... if you pay us to develop it..."
jeroenhd 5y ago
The ability for you or another company to fork and continue a product can be sold to other businesses. Even some closed source companies do this through source code escrow; if the company goes bankrupt, customers get the source code. For proprietary software, this involves a significant fee, of course, but when a product is essential for business continuity, such a system can be considered crucial. Products like SaaS company back offices are given the escrow treatment, for example.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bobthechef 5y ago
Are you claiming companies cannot use open source software unless they contribute? If so, that's preposterous. If the author of the product has released it under a license that doesn't make that stipulation, then where does this strange constraint come from? Don't moralize. If you want something, put it in the license.
- rs999gti 5y ago
  > Are you claiming companies cannot use open source software unless they contribute? No they can use, but the moment they want a change or patch, please pay up.
throwawayboise 5y ago
"Free for noncommercial use" is a legitimate point of view and you can license your software that way if you want, but other projects chose "free to do whatever you want" and that's just as legitimate.
- that_guy_iain 5y ago
  There is Ployform Project[1] that provides licenses that include free for noncommercial use. I'm currently having a custom license created so I can release my project for free for non-commercial and commercial orgs with under than $50,000 a year revenue. I want to only charge companies that can afford to pay and help people get off the ground. [1] https://polyformproject.org/ https://polyformproject.org/
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    50 000 of revenue sounds way too low to me. In many countries your average sole-proprietor makes more than that. That is anyone seriously full time should have more revenue...
    - that_guy_iain 5y ago
      50,000 revenue just means you can easily afford paying me some money. Also, it all depends on what country you're in and what model you're in. Bootstrappers for example, 60k is a major milestone - 5K MRR. It's not that they're making lots of money, it's that they're making enough to pay me. A bit of context, my software is what I call a product framework, it provides the user system, payment system, admin system, etc that can be used for SaaS by Bootstrappers. Others may say it's a SaaS bootstrap, but I feel like it's more than that.
freedomben 5y ago
You're presenting a false dichotomy. There are plenty of open source products that also have paid support options. That's becoming quite the norm in fact. But even still, I've had to use plenty of paid/closed source proprietary solutions that sucked up a ton of our time. At one point the company was paying more than $10,000 per month for IBM Rational Clear Case and it was a hunk of shit that routinely lost source code. We had to hire a small team just to "administer" it (aka try to help us work around bugs and become experts in the CLI options and recovery logs so they could help others). There are "open source" options that are half baked and buggy, but there are plenty more that are great polished products. The goodness of software is often not dependent on source availability. Any software you adopt has a risk of requiring work/effort to use. At least with open source you have options. I strongly advocate for open source in the company. I only consider proprietary when there isn't a suitable open source option.

rileymat2 5y ago

Why? As a customer it is nice to know that if the company goes under you could maintain and use it going forward.

phillipcarter 5y ago
Yeah, OSS is fantastic for business precisely because you're not dependent on a vendor to solve a problem you're having.
phendrenad2 5y ago
Companies that go under don't take their products down with them though, that's a common misunderstanding. If there are paying customers, someone will buy the company's assets and support contracts.
- humanrebar 5y ago
  But if it's licensed freely, anyone can step in similarly on an open source project, not just whoever bought the IP.
- detaro 5y ago
  That's far from guaranteed. + it might easily be a competitor that's now going to migrate everyone on their solution that "of course does everything $oldProduct did... on paper... on days with a full moon... if you pay us to develop it..."

jeroenhd 5y ago

The ability for you or another company to fork and continue a product can be sold to other businesses. Even some closed source companies do this through source code escrow; if the company goes bankrupt, customers get the source code. For proprietary software, this involves a significant fee, of course, but when a product is essential for business continuity, such a system can be considered crucial. Products like SaaS company back offices are given the escrow treatment, for example.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bobthechef 5y ago

Are you claiming companies cannot use open source software unless they contribute? If so, that's preposterous. If the author of the product has released it under a license that doesn't make that stipulation, then where does this strange constraint come from? Don't moralize. If you want something, put it in the license.

rs999gti 5y ago
> Are you claiming companies cannot use open source software unless they contribute? No they can use, but the moment they want a change or patch, please pay up.

throwawayboise 5y ago

"Free for noncommercial use" is a legitimate point of view and you can license your software that way if you want, but other projects chose "free to do whatever you want" and that's just as legitimate.

that_guy_iain 5y ago
There is Ployform Project[1] that provides licenses that include free for noncommercial use. I'm currently having a custom license created so I can release my project for free for non-commercial and commercial orgs with under than $50,000 a year revenue. I want to only charge companies that can afford to pay and help people get off the ground. [1] https://polyformproject.org/ https://polyformproject.org/
- Ekaros 5y ago
  50 000 of revenue sounds way too low to me. In many countries your average sole-proprietor makes more than that. That is anyone seriously full time should have more revenue...
  - that_guy_iain 5y ago
    50,000 revenue just means you can easily afford paying me some money. Also, it all depends on what country you're in and what model you're in. Bootstrappers for example, 60k is a major milestone - 5K MRR. It's not that they're making lots of money, it's that they're making enough to pay me. A bit of context, my software is what I call a product framework, it provides the user system, payment system, admin system, etc that can be used for SaaS by Bootstrappers. Others may say it's a SaaS bootstrap, but I feel like it's more than that.

freedomben 5y ago

You're presenting a false dichotomy. There are plenty of open source products that also have paid support options. That's becoming quite the norm in fact. But even still, I've had to use plenty of paid/closed source proprietary solutions that sucked up a ton of our time. At one point the company was paying more than $10,000 per month for IBM Rational Clear Case and it was a hunk of shit that routinely lost source code. We had to hire a small team just to "administer" it (aka try to help us work around bugs and become experts in the CLI options and recovery logs so they could help others). There are "open source" options that are half baked and buggy, but there are plenty more that are great polished products. The goodness of software is often not dependent on source availability. Any software you adopt has a risk of requiring work/effort to use. At least with open source you have options. I strongly advocate for open source in the company. I only consider proprietary when there isn't a suitable open source option.