> From experience, I find it that it's always better to start with a paid offering and an open core solution. +1, today this is the best compromise, but unfort

> From experience, I find it that it's always better to start with a paid offering and an open core solution. +1, today this is the best compromise, but unfortunately only really works well for SaaS, and less well for pure software, because of DRM. On the most extreme end, we don't use any DRM and the app is OSS, but then charging users becomes an honor system because how easy it would be to circumvent. On the other extreme, you have a closed source "paid portion" with DRM phoning home before you can access the full feature set. But if you can't build your own client, you can't eg audit for security. It's complex, but in short: it's difficult to combine an open source core with monetization without losing many of the benefits of open source.