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by pessimizer
1340 days ago
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> One may suggest: “If things are running perfectly, won’t customers reduce their required engagement or remove the support plan?” Generally, no. The cost of keeping experts around is usually far lower than a SaaS bill and new features will always need to be built. I don't understand this assertion. One of the main perverse incentives affecting open core software quality is that the more help people need with the software, the more they'll value support. This article about open core incentives regarding software quality just handwaves this away. The other demotivator is that having your (OSS) open core be good means that if you make any user-hostile business-motivated demands, somebody will simply fork you and take over your business. The best defense against the latter is the GPL. Make your competition share all of their work while you don't have to. And ask yourself: if your strategy is going to be to leverage an OSS application to sell proprietary accessories, why be bitchy about copyleft? It's the best of both worlds - open enough that you're contributing to the commons, and restrictive enough that you (as the copyright holder) can still play games with licensing keys and obfuscation to accomplish business objectives. If the community forks your GPL core and publicly builds on it better than you do behind closed doors, it means that you've been outcompeted fair and square. |
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Can't your competitor then just release their contributions as AGPL? Of course, you're free not to accept their contributions, but under the AGPL you can no longer merge their contributions back into your commercial product without having to share all of your work too.
(Yes, usual caveats about the scope of "the work" apply. But that applies just as much to your competitors as to you)