5 ms·

The flip side of this is that for business/enterprise software, there is very little risk in just making your code open source and then selling a c

by critic 18y ago

The flip side of this is that for business/enterprise software, there is very little risk in just making your code open source and then selling a commercialversion. What if your competitor takes your open source code, adds a little bit of value, and sells cheaper than your commercial version? Or, if there's some clever (algorithmic) thing you are doing, what if he uses your ideas to better compete with you?

tptacek 18y ago
If a competitor takes your code, modifies it, and resells it as closed source software, you sue and win. If a competitor takes your code, modifies it, and tries to sell it as a new open source project, nobody cares. It's a fork: * For better or worse, real customers will stick with the "original brand". * The fork won't get any of the community support the original did, and will always be out of sync. * Whatever community forms around the original project will angrily reject the fork. * Worst of all, any future development your competitor does on the product reverts back to your own code. You have all the structural advantages, as the original project owner. Your competitor is just playing to lose. It's not like this is a supposition of mine. A great example of a project that executed this business plan: SourceFire/Snort (now a public company). Lots of companies have tried to piggyback on Snort, but for Snort's core customers, nobody has succeeded. There's no clever algorithmic idea you can "hide" in closed-source code. Copycats are an issue (although far less of one than you think) regardless of your business model. Arbor Networks did all sorts of clever stuff under the hood (we were baselining the Internet backbone, after all), was closed source, and was beseiged by copycats.
- kragen 18y ago
  If a competitor takes your code, modifies it, and resells it as closed source software, you sue and win. I guess you're talking specifically about GPL-style copyleft, not Apache or BSD licensing? There's an additional alternative: the competitor takes the code and adds features to it, then sells services on top of it. This is kind of a best-case scenario: you get free R&D.
- joeyo 18y ago
  * For better or worse, real customers will stick with the "original brand". * The fork won't get any of the community support the original did, and will always be out of sync. * Whatever community forms around the original project will angrily reject the fork. I don't believe this is always true--usually the superior* fork wins out. Take Firefox or xorg. Both of them effectively replaced the projects from which they came. * Where superior here means technically, or aesthetically or friendlier to contributers or whatever.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    Got an example where a commercial product usurped another commercial product's open source project?
    - critic 18y ago
      Few commercial projects will open source their code, unless they already have reasons to believe that they can't be usurped for one reason or another.
  - yason 18y ago
    On a market a single law applies: the product that is better marketed wins out. Eventhough I'd love to see it otherwise, any aesthetical or technical superiority would need to come in enormous figures to even challenge the position of the market leader. For a unsurprising and worn example, look at Microsoft. On the other hand, if some company takes your code and does better both in marketing and technical aspects, you _should_ lose! The better product is better for everyone in the developer/user base, including you. The community and users don't lose anything -- instead they gain! You do gain as well because you can incorporate the other company's changes back to your own codebase -- of course you did license the software under GPL.
cookiecaper 18y ago
That's a much better situation than keeping everything closed and having a competitor surpass you, assuming copyleft. Someone always will if they want the market badly enough, but with OSS, you have the advantage of the source of the competitor's changes as well. So, if they create something really cool and start marketing better, you integrate the really cool into your software in a cooler way, and then figure out how to market better than they're marketing. Everyone wins. : )
- tptacek 18y ago
  Yeah. It's also just all about risk. People overestimate the risk of competitors stealing trade secrets, and the impact that might have on their business. And then they drastically underestimate the risk of sucking out because nobody ever uses their product. 15 years in the business, mostly in software, and my take is if you can trade some extra competitive risk to mitigate marketing risk, that's an absolute no-brainer. Feel free to ask me when we're going to open-source our product. I have no idea. ;)
nikblack 18y ago
if the "adds a bit of value" is enough for your customers or new customers to switch to the alternate product then you were missing something all along that your customers wanted that you weren't providing, so: * Listen to your customers * Provide top-quality support * Constantly improve your product you will see loyalty and a growing business through more referrals, all of which will make the other guy look like a cheap imitation.

by critic 18y ago

tptacek 18y ago

If a competitor takes your code, modifies it, and resells it as closed source software, you sue and win. If a competitor takes your code, modifies it, and tries to sell it as a new open source project, nobody cares. It's a fork: * For better or worse, real customers will stick with the "original brand". * The fork won't get any of the community support the original did, and will always be out of sync. * Whatever community forms around the original project will angrily reject the fork. * Worst of all, any future development your competitor does on the product reverts back to your own code. You have all the structural advantages, as the original project owner. Your competitor is just playing to lose. It's not like this is a supposition of mine. A great example of a project that executed this business plan: SourceFire/Snort (now a public company). Lots of companies have tried to piggyback on Snort, but for Snort's core customers, nobody has succeeded. There's no clever algorithmic idea you can "hide" in closed-source code. Copycats are an issue (although far less of one than you think) regardless of your business model. Arbor Networks did all sorts of clever stuff under the hood (we were baselining the Internet backbone, after all), was closed source, and was beseiged by copycats.

kragen 18y ago
If a competitor takes your code, modifies it, and resells it as closed source software, you sue and win. I guess you're talking specifically about GPL-style copyleft, not Apache or BSD licensing? There's an additional alternative: the competitor takes the code and adds features to it, then sells services on top of it. This is kind of a best-case scenario: you get free R&D.
joeyo 18y ago
* For better or worse, real customers will stick with the "original brand". * The fork won't get any of the community support the original did, and will always be out of sync. * Whatever community forms around the original project will angrily reject the fork. I don't believe this is always true--usually the superior* fork wins out. Take Firefox or xorg. Both of them effectively replaced the projects from which they came. * Where superior here means technically, or aesthetically or friendlier to contributers or whatever.
- tptacek 18y ago
  Got an example where a commercial product usurped another commercial product's open source project?
  - critic 18y ago
    Few commercial projects will open source their code, unless they already have reasons to believe that they can't be usurped for one reason or another.
- yason 18y ago
  On a market a single law applies: the product that is better marketed wins out. Eventhough I'd love to see it otherwise, any aesthetical or technical superiority would need to come in enormous figures to even challenge the position of the market leader. For a unsurprising and worn example, look at Microsoft. On the other hand, if some company takes your code and does better both in marketing and technical aspects, you _should_ lose! The better product is better for everyone in the developer/user base, including you. The community and users don't lose anything -- instead they gain! You do gain as well because you can incorporate the other company's changes back to your own codebase -- of course you did license the software under GPL.

cookiecaper 18y ago

That's a much better situation than keeping everything closed and having a competitor surpass you, assuming copyleft. Someone always will if they want the market badly enough, but with OSS, you have the advantage of the source of the competitor's changes as well. So, if they create something really cool and start marketing better, you integrate the really cool into your software in a cooler way, and then figure out how to market better than they're marketing. Everyone wins. : )

tptacek 18y ago
Yeah. It's also just all about risk. People overestimate the risk of competitors stealing trade secrets, and the impact that might have on their business. And then they drastically underestimate the risk of sucking out because nobody ever uses their product. 15 years in the business, mostly in software, and my take is if you can trade some extra competitive risk to mitigate marketing risk, that's an absolute no-brainer. Feel free to ask me when we're going to open-source our product. I have no idea. ;)

nikblack 18y ago

if the "adds a bit of value" is enough for your customers or new customers to switch to the alternate product then you were missing something all along that your customers wanted that you weren't providing, so: * Listen to your customers * Provide top-quality support * Constantly improve your product you will see loyalty and a growing business through more referrals, all of which will make the other guy look like a cheap imitation.