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Ask HN: Open-Source but Paid Software

5 points by codegeek 4y ago

How would you go about creating and selling software that would be Open Source but paid. For example, you pay to get access to source code and then can pay for basic support/maintenance but you self host. What are some of the examples of this model ?

i0nutzb 4y ago
Almost all WordPress premium plugins.
- codegeek 4y ago
  Good point. Any web application examples ? I mean something that can be fully hosted by you as a web app.
  - i0nutzb 4y ago
    I think GitLab somehow acts like this: they have a fully open source product, that you could host yourself for free, then you have a lot of extra functionality that works only for paying users. (tho I'm not sure how that works, if you have access to the code or not etc)
mytailorisrich 4y ago
You can sell your software but the open source license means that your customers can then freely publish the source code for anyone to see and use. If you don't want that then you need a "source available" license, not an open source license.
- codegeek 4y ago
  Interesting. Is there a website that explains these types of licenses in detail ? Ideally it would be a self hosted web app but I don't mind sharing source code to address any security questions.
phendrenad2 4y ago
This used to be more common, especially in the video game industry. Pay for a piece of software like a physics engine or GUI library, get full C++ source code. Usually those companies had legal departments to chase down non-paying infringers though... Sidenote: If you call it "open source" you'll definitely get a lot of hate from a vocal cadre who want "open source" to only apply to copyleft/BSD/MIT/etc. licenses. (I assume you're not using one of those licenses, because otherwise someone could just host your code as a free download).
tra3 4y ago
Sidekiq in the Ruby on Rails community is a success. Sidekiq itself is free, but support and some enterprise features require a yearly subscription. The author just posted a 10 year summary [0]: > 1 employee (me!) > 1850 customers > 3.0m HTTP requests to the commercial gem server per day > $13.5 million in total gross sales It's a success in my book. 0: https://www.mikeperham.com/2022/01/17/happy-10th-birthday-sidekiq/ https://www.mikeperham.com/2022/01/17/happy-10th-birthday-si...
XCSme 4y ago
I am doing something like this with https://www.uxwizz.com https://www.uxwizz.com I think the big difference is that it's not really Open Source (you get the original server-side PHP+MySQL code, but only the bundled React+TypeScript UI). The model is more similar to "old-school" software where you paid once and could use the problem, the only difference being that the backend code is easy to read/modify, and it's not a black box.

5 points by codegeek 4y ago

i0nutzb 4y ago

Almost all WordPress premium plugins.

codegeek 4y ago
Good point. Any web application examples ? I mean something that can be fully hosted by you as a web app.
- i0nutzb 4y ago
  I think GitLab somehow acts like this: they have a fully open source product, that you could host yourself for free, then you have a lot of extra functionality that works only for paying users. (tho I'm not sure how that works, if you have access to the code or not etc)

mytailorisrich 4y ago

You can sell your software but the open source license means that your customers can then freely publish the source code for anyone to see and use. If you don't want that then you need a "source available" license, not an open source license.

codegeek 4y ago
Interesting. Is there a website that explains these types of licenses in detail ? Ideally it would be a self hosted web app but I don't mind sharing source code to address any security questions.

phendrenad2 4y ago

This used to be more common, especially in the video game industry. Pay for a piece of software like a physics engine or GUI library, get full C++ source code. Usually those companies had legal departments to chase down non-paying infringers though... Sidenote: If you call it "open source" you'll definitely get a lot of hate from a vocal cadre who want "open source" to only apply to copyleft/BSD/MIT/etc. licenses. (I assume you're not using one of those licenses, because otherwise someone could just host your code as a free download).

tra3 4y ago

Sidekiq in the Ruby on Rails community is a success. Sidekiq itself is free, but support and some enterprise features require a yearly subscription. The author just posted a 10 year summary [0]: > 1 employee (me!) > 1850 customers > 3.0m HTTP requests to the commercial gem server per day > $13.5 million in total gross sales It's a success in my book. 0: https://www.mikeperham.com/2022/01/17/happy-10th-birthday-sidekiq/ https://www.mikeperham.com/2022/01/17/happy-10th-birthday-si...

XCSme 4y ago

I am doing something like this with https://www.uxwizz.com https://www.uxwizz.com I think the big difference is that it's not really Open Source (you get the original server-side PHP+MySQL code, but only the bundled React+TypeScript UI). The model is more similar to "old-school" software where you paid once and could use the problem, the only difference being that the backend code is easy to read/modify, and it's not a black box.