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Curious to know more about the commercial licensing scheme for Yaak: if i’ve read correctly, purchasing a pro license if based on « good faith » as the features

Curious to know more about the commercial licensing scheme for Yaak: if i’ve read correctly, purchasing a pro license if based on « good faith » as the features are exactly the same as the MIT licensed Hobby version? Sincere question, been studying lots of OSS commercial licensing and always wonder what works in which context

maccard 1y ago
If I asked my security team could I use yaak, they would (probably) say yes, and legal would say under no circumstances am I to use a personal license, they will pay for a commercial license. Large companies are incredibly risk averse when it comes to stuff like this.
gschier 1y ago
This is a conscious bet I'm making. Yes, it's a good-faith license. The license doesn't even apply to the OSS version (only prebuilt binaries). The bet is that super fans will pay for it in the early days and, as it gets adopted by larger companies, they will pay in order to comply with the legalities of commercial use. So far, it's working! The largest company so far is 34 seats, with a couple more in the pipe!
- throwing_away 1y ago
  Having often thought this is how I would attempt to monetize if I built a developer tool, I'm glad to hear that it's working. It makes good sense because companies actually have an absurd amount of liability to you if they violate your agreement.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    Without telemetry, how will you know that anyone at all is using your software let alone only within the agreement of any licensing terms?
    - array_key_first 1y ago
      You don't - ergo good faith. You can be an Oracle and audit your customers and develop that adversarial relationship. The idea is that that sort of thing makes you rot in the long run.
      - tharkun__ 1y ago
        How's that been going for Oracle so far?
        47282847 1y ago
        They may earn money but are totally rotten. They eat injured souls.
        rhdhdjdofjnf 1y ago
        Everyone of their executives can look forward to 10,000 years of burning in hell, so I’d say pretty badly
        array_key_first 1y ago
        Pretty poorly actually, people avoid Oracle products like the plague. Nobody is buying a JVM from Oracle or buying their DB - they're using open source solutions that are both free and provide more features. They have a lot of inerita, but that's it. If you're in Greenfield development, there is a close to 0% chance you will choose Oracle as your RDBMS. Um, oops.
        tharkun__ 1y ago
        Hey, personally I agree. Why would I ever go with Oracle. But that's A) me personally and B) me in Cloud/Startup type companies, so of course we don't got with Oracle. But like you mentioned, inertia. So my previous gigs that were large multi-national of course were all Oracle. And they were all huge and had zero reason to not just buy the Oracle tax. Which is why Oracle is going strong. Despite all the rage, Oracle can still survive quite some time on running boring things like I don't know, many large banks and other boring old businesses. Which of those is really gonna go "AWS Aurora MySQL" when the have had an in-house "Oracle Exadata" run their entire business operation "just fine" for longer than those Cloud providers have even be around?
- edoceo 1y ago
  Excellent work! Looking forward your post about some milestone ARR boundary, the gory details of how you got there.
  - gschier 1y ago
    My runway reaches infinity around $10k MRR so I'll likely do a post around then. Currently 11% of the way there!
- stavros 1y ago
  I was going to gripe about the price but $50/dev/year is actually pretty reasonable! Nice!
- scrps 1y ago
  I really like that, a scaling license! I have a suggestion: Under pricing for the hobby tier you could add as free or pay what you want. $50/yr isn't crazy but might get a few smaller donations if that was an avenue.
  - gschier 1y ago
    I currently direct these people to sponsor on GitHub
- rmnclmnt 1y ago
  Thank you for your honest and detailed answer! Great to see it’s working so far and this allows you to build a true OSS product in the meantime, i really appreciate that (i think this is the biggest benefit of your licensing scheme)

maccard 1y ago

If I asked my security team could I use yaak, they would (probably) say yes, and legal would say under no circumstances am I to use a personal license, they will pay for a commercial license. Large companies are incredibly risk averse when it comes to stuff like this.

gschier 1y ago

This is a conscious bet I'm making. Yes, it's a good-faith license. The license doesn't even apply to the OSS version (only prebuilt binaries). The bet is that super fans will pay for it in the early days and, as it gets adopted by larger companies, they will pay in order to comply with the legalities of commercial use. So far, it's working! The largest company so far is 34 seats, with a couple more in the pipe!

throwing_away 1y ago
Having often thought this is how I would attempt to monetize if I built a developer tool, I'm glad to hear that it's working. It makes good sense because companies actually have an absurd amount of liability to you if they violate your agreement.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Without telemetry, how will you know that anyone at all is using your software let alone only within the agreement of any licensing terms?
  - array_key_first 1y ago
    You don't - ergo good faith. You can be an Oracle and audit your customers and develop that adversarial relationship. The idea is that that sort of thing makes you rot in the long run.
    - tharkun__ 1y ago
      How's that been going for Oracle so far?
      - 47282847 1y ago
        They may earn money but are totally rotten. They eat injured souls.
      - rhdhdjdofjnf 1y ago
        Everyone of their executives can look forward to 10,000 years of burning in hell, so I’d say pretty badly
      - array_key_first 1y ago
        Pretty poorly actually, people avoid Oracle products like the plague. Nobody is buying a JVM from Oracle or buying their DB - they're using open source solutions that are both free and provide more features. They have a lot of inerita, but that's it. If you're in Greenfield development, there is a close to 0% chance you will choose Oracle as your RDBMS. Um, oops.
        tharkun__ 1y ago
        Hey, personally I agree. Why would I ever go with Oracle. But that's A) me personally and B) me in Cloud/Startup type companies, so of course we don't got with Oracle. But like you mentioned, inertia. So my previous gigs that were large multi-national of course were all Oracle. And they were all huge and had zero reason to not just buy the Oracle tax. Which is why Oracle is going strong. Despite all the rage, Oracle can still survive quite some time on running boring things like I don't know, many large banks and other boring old businesses. Which of those is really gonna go "AWS Aurora MySQL" when the have had an in-house "Oracle Exadata" run their entire business operation "just fine" for longer than those Cloud providers have even be around?
edoceo 1y ago
Excellent work! Looking forward your post about some milestone ARR boundary, the gory details of how you got there.
- gschier 1y ago
  My runway reaches infinity around $10k MRR so I'll likely do a post around then. Currently 11% of the way there!
stavros 1y ago
I was going to gripe about the price but $50/dev/year is actually pretty reasonable! Nice!
scrps 1y ago
I really like that, a scaling license! I have a suggestion: Under pricing for the hobby tier you could add as free or pay what you want. $50/yr isn't crazy but might get a few smaller donations if that was an avenue.
- gschier 1y ago
  I currently direct these people to sponsor on GitHub
rmnclmnt 1y ago
Thank you for your honest and detailed answer! Great to see it’s working so far and this allows you to build a true OSS product in the meantime, i really appreciate that (i think this is the biggest benefit of your licensing scheme)