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by ignoramous 1339 days ago
The problem is, some think that these (and other) approaches are killing open source.

> If we normalize projects baiting developers with an open source license to gain traction and switching to a non-open source license to monopolize the returns on that traction, then the logical next step for investors will be skipping that first step entirely.

> And that, for the industry, is nothing but a dead end.

- redmonk.com/sogrady, https://archive.is/GN2Bd
2 comments
andrewstuart2 1339 days ago
You can absolutely use GitLab to the highest levels of productivity and effectiveness without paying a cent. It just tends to require more input and effort and results in tool sprawl if you want to recreate the GitLab EE experience for free. It's possible for many of the important features, and where it's not possible, it's usually not critical.

GitLab is, imo, one of the best examples of how to do paid open source. Especially because they've gone about it without the relicensing switch that many companies have attempted in order to "protect their business/product."

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debugnik 1339 days ago
> If we normalize projects baiting developers with an open source license to gain traction […], then the logical next step for investors will be skipping that [bait] step entirely.

But where would traction come from, then? Switching to a proprietary license works well because they're baiting devs, if investors skip that step there's not as much to monopolise. Or am I misreading that paragraph?

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