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> Open core companies tend to lean into "we'll figure out how to monetize later" which inherently means it's harder to trust what they say now because their inc
by imiric 4y ago
> Open core companies tend to lean into "we'll figure out how to monetize later" which inherently means it's harder to trust what they say now because their incentives are guaranteed to shift towards monetization eventually.
How is this guaranteed? If the OSS product is truly core to the business, the incentive will always be to make it as best as possible, which will benefit both OSS users and commercial customers.
This "shift towards monetization" either doesn't happen, or if it does, has no negative effect for OSS users, who will only benefit from the company having more resources to invest in growing the team, more frequent updates, better support, etc.
I can name countless products that have done this right, yet can't think of any that haven't. Can you mention some? Your article lists a few along with their funding data, as if this is somehow inherently a bad thing.
Chances are that companies that did this wrongly had much larger problems, and took advantage of their users in other ways as well. This isn't an issue with the open core model, but with these companies.
> The other models bake in monetization from the start, so you know what you're getting into when you start using the product.
The thing is that none of the alternatives you propose have any benefits for the user. They're either not free software (source available), the OSS component is not standalone and is intrinsically tied to a proprietary service, which serves more like a commercial hook, or the OSS components are noncritical to the business, which doesn't incentivize maintenance.
This is a very opportunistic view of OSS, and is no better than companies that do open core wrongly.
- ahepp 4y ago> I can name countless products that have done this right, yet can't think of any that haven't. Can you mention some? Your article lists a few along with their funding data, as if this is somehow inherently a bad thing. Elsewhere in the thread there are a couple examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35026270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35026270 I think part of the problem is that once you rely on premium tier features like LDAP, you're hooked and now the fact that it's open core has about zero relevance to you. Although it still has some relevance. A child comment on that link I posted talks about going back to the open core by using an oauth workaround for LDAP. So it does seem like the open core might be worth something.
- imiric 4y agoNagware and price gouging are not problems exclusive to the open core model, though, so it's unfair to criticize it as being responsible for this. Especially when the proposed alternatives in the article offer much less benefits to the user. > I think part of the problem is that once you rely on premium tier features like LDAP, you're hooked and now the fact that it's open core has about zero relevance to you. For a product like Mattermost, I can see how LDAP is a premium tier feature. If you're using OSS products in an enterprise environment, you can surely afford to support its development, so I don't see how you're on the hook in any way. Your support is making the software available to users who don't need or can't afford these features, which is a net positive. Besides, it gives you the freedoms to modify the software in any way that suits you, which you wouldn't get by paying for a proprietary product. If a certain feature is so important to you, and you refuse to pay the original developers for it, you can always choose to develop it internally for yourself, as that user's company did.