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Open core makes sense to simplify the sales funnel, especially in areas with a strong open-source culture. Most data engineers are quite skeptical towards close

Open core makes sense to simplify the sales funnel, especially in areas with a strong open-source culture. Most data engineers are quite skeptical towards closed-source software, so packaging something as open-source makes it easy for people to interact with it. Then, if companies already use the tool it's often an easy pitch to sell the enterprise version. Look at Hashicorp for example, people invest hundreds or thousands of hours writing Terraform configs, so when the company finally feels the pain of managing it at scale the decision to upgrade to an enterprise plan is a no-brainer, as otherwise you'd have to either write the functionality yourself or abandon all your existing work and start over with a different system. So the value of open-core is that companies can get locked into a product without knowning it and without you doing any real sales effort. And when the time comes to sell the enterprise edition you'll have lots of champions within the company that navigate the most difficult aspects of the sales process for your (i.e. identify the decision makers, pitch to them, get management onboard). If you can make this work it's like magic. The other risk is of course that you'll make your open-source version too useful so companies will rarely upgrade, or that someone will just snatch up your work and build their own stuff on top, though that seems less relevant.

jrochkind1 4y ago
> So the value of open-core is that companies can get locked into a product without knowning it and without you doing any real sales effort. I see the obvious value to the people selling the software! Is there any value to the consumer, or is it basically just a trick?
- ThePhysicist 4y ago
  I mean you get software for free, isn't that value? I know e.g. tons of people / companies using Terraform that get enormous value out of that without ever paying for it. Personally I run Gitlab CE for my company and that also gave me tons of value for free, so I don't think it's a trick. If you curtail your software so much that no one can use it without paying you won't get much traction, you have to provide something that's useful enough for 90 % of the users without paying.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    I'm talking about the scenario you describe where the free version is meant to lock in the customer and funnel them to the paid version. I mean, you just said: "companies can get locked into a product without knowning it and without you doing any real sales effort." You can see how that sounds like trying to trick the consumer? But you don't see trying to get companies locked into a product without knowing it as a trick? I guess thats the normally quiet part out loud. As a customer/consumer, getting tricked into getting locked into a product, where you intentionally try to make the free version _not_ good enough for me (but not obvious to me at first) so I have to go to the paid once locked in -- which is what the OP is describing too, I think you accurately described it -- this isn't feeling like a benefit to me? But ok, maybe there's some benefit, let's go with that for a second. That benefit of the "freemium" model, the free initial offering, is there with or without the free initial offer having an open source license. The reason to actually give it an open source license (or something you claim is open source) is just because it's good marketting, it makes it even easier to lock companies into the product without knowing it, because of their wrong assumptions about what open source means?
    - deleted 4y ago
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jrochkind1 4y ago

> So the value of open-core is that companies can get locked into a product without knowning it and without you doing any real sales effort. I see the obvious value to the people selling the software! Is there any value to the consumer, or is it basically just a trick?

ThePhysicist 4y ago
I mean you get software for free, isn't that value? I know e.g. tons of people / companies using Terraform that get enormous value out of that without ever paying for it. Personally I run Gitlab CE for my company and that also gave me tons of value for free, so I don't think it's a trick. If you curtail your software so much that no one can use it without paying you won't get much traction, you have to provide something that's useful enough for 90 % of the users without paying.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  I'm talking about the scenario you describe where the free version is meant to lock in the customer and funnel them to the paid version. I mean, you just said: "companies can get locked into a product without knowning it and without you doing any real sales effort." You can see how that sounds like trying to trick the consumer? But you don't see trying to get companies locked into a product without knowing it as a trick? I guess thats the normally quiet part out loud. As a customer/consumer, getting tricked into getting locked into a product, where you intentionally try to make the free version _not_ good enough for me (but not obvious to me at first) so I have to go to the paid once locked in -- which is what the OP is describing too, I think you accurately described it -- this isn't feeling like a benefit to me? But ok, maybe there's some benefit, let's go with that for a second. That benefit of the "freemium" model, the free initial offering, is there with or without the free initial offer having an open source license. The reason to actually give it an open source license (or something you claim is open source) is just because it's good marketting, it makes it even easier to lock companies into the product without knowing it, because of their wrong assumptions about what open source means?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]