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their "talk to us and we'll see what we can do" policy puts too much risk into my business plan You're thinking of adopting a framework that has been publicly

their "talk to us and we'll see what we can do" policy puts too much risk into my business plan You're thinking of adopting a framework that has been publicly released for a grand total of three days and this is the source of risk to your business plan? Have you tried talking to the Meteor folks directly about licensing terms, yet? Maybe so. This comment sounds like the opening of a public negotiation, an aggressive one in which we try to get the other side to name a number first. We do so in public to leverage additional social pressure ("Look at all the commenters who want you to sell your work at a fixed rate, so that we can derive much more valuable things from that work and keep the profits for ourselves") and to better evoke the as-yet-imaginary competitors ("you should give out your code on flat-rate terms, because otherwise we'll switch to Project X, which is just like Meteor, has a more permissive licensing scheme, and ships with ponies and rainbows"). The last threat is pretty empty, though. When a customer tells you "I don't like your price, I'm going to wait six months and download a clone of your code for free from the Internet" the correct response is generally "good luck with that, and enjoy your six-month vacation". Those clones will always exist - in the case of Meteor, unless it proves to be a flash in the pan, they will exist by the dozen, and some of them may even get written by programmers with the same skill as the Meteor folks, and I wouldn't even rule out the ponies and/or rainbows. But that doesn't mean Meteor stands no chance against these "free" alternatives: No code is one hundred percent free. You pay for the code, you pay for the support, you pay a developer to do the support, or you pay with time, but you still have to pay. And the first threat is empty, too, because Meteor doesn't need to court everyone in the world as a customer. It doesn't necessarily matter even if their non-GPL price is too high for all but one customer. They may only need one customer. Ask the folks who sold MySQL to Oracle.

nkoren 15y ago
Excuse me, but why are you talking about "threats"? Saying "I wish I could use your product, but I can't" is a threat? No, Meteor isn't a risk to my business plan, because I wouldn't put a three-day-old framework into my business plan under any circumstances. What I am saying is that I won't ever put a framework which has this license plus an obfuscated pricing model into my business plan, and that makes me sad. And no, I haven't talked to the Meteor folks. I have no doubt that they're completely lovely people, but really, there's nothing to talk about yet. As explained above. There wouldn't be anything to talk about until after a fairly substantial amount of code had been written. As explained above. And that code won't be written with Meteor, for reasons explained above. If they want to give assurances about the nature of their licensing terms, then there's no reason they can't do so in public.
- ajross 15y ago
  But... every product that doesn't have a price sticker attached to the box (which includes pretty much every development tool out there) has an "obfuscated pricing model". Are you saying you'd never buy a commercial database product? A RHEL site license? Maybe not, but if so: why are you complaining about the GPL specifically instead of just stating that you won't buy products without fixed pricing?
  - nkoren 15y ago
    I'm complaining about the GPL in conjunction with obfuscated pricing. If their pricing were more transparent, I would certainly have less of a problem. And yes, I know that many products are sold on a negotiated, non-fixed-price basis. I generally do everything possible to avoid buying those products, as that is too often a cover for predatory pricing practices. There are plenty of ways to do sensible price differentiation while still stating your policies clearly.
eaurouge 15y ago
They may only need one customer. Ask the folks who sold MySQL to Oracle The folks who sold MySQL, sold MySQL to Sun before Sun was bought by Oracle. They were able to sell to Sun because they had a LOT more than one customer using MySQL in the first place.

nkoren 15y ago

Excuse me, but why are you talking about "threats"? Saying "I wish I could use your product, but I can't" is a threat? No, Meteor isn't a risk to my business plan, because I wouldn't put a three-day-old framework into my business plan under any circumstances. What I am saying is that I won't ever put a framework which has this license plus an obfuscated pricing model into my business plan, and that makes me sad. And no, I haven't talked to the Meteor folks. I have no doubt that they're completely lovely people, but really, there's nothing to talk about yet. As explained above. There wouldn't be anything to talk about until after a fairly substantial amount of code had been written. As explained above. And that code won't be written with Meteor, for reasons explained above. If they want to give assurances about the nature of their licensing terms, then there's no reason they can't do so in public.

ajross 15y ago
But... every product that doesn't have a price sticker attached to the box (which includes pretty much every development tool out there) has an "obfuscated pricing model". Are you saying you'd never buy a commercial database product? A RHEL site license? Maybe not, but if so: why are you complaining about the GPL specifically instead of just stating that you won't buy products without fixed pricing?
- nkoren 15y ago
  I'm complaining about the GPL in conjunction with obfuscated pricing. If their pricing were more transparent, I would certainly have less of a problem. And yes, I know that many products are sold on a negotiated, non-fixed-price basis. I generally do everything possible to avoid buying those products, as that is too often a cover for predatory pricing practices. There are plenty of ways to do sensible price differentiation while still stating your policies clearly.

eaurouge 15y ago

They may only need one customer. Ask the folks who sold MySQL to Oracle The folks who sold MySQL, sold MySQL to Sun before Sun was bought by Oracle. They were able to sell to Sun because they had a LOT more than one customer using MySQL in the first place.