[vishalchandra]

MIT license builds the trust to use it and contribute to it, or at least use it freely.

But that also enables someone to use your software as a starting point for their own competing SaaS solution.

Which is what encourages companies to at some point of time shift to a BSL license, as you might also at some point of time.

The goal is of course to build Enterprise features which are hard to replicate for others, but these imply more complex engineering challenges are being solved.

That could be plugins to integrate into other Enterprise tools like Snowflake or Salesforce for e.g.

Another interesting observation is that in next 4-5 years we could expect a robust open source MIT licensed stack for pretty much everything.

But it only feels like that, because we will start to have quantum computing and then all software will need to get rebuilt.

[mritchie712]

There's already quite a few options with a BSL, I think it's wise to stick with MIT as a clear differentiator.

[ashrafsam]

We saw some evidence that companies will prefer to work with the original developers for their own product's hosting, but I'll keep working on improving my understanding to the open source ecosystem. Very interesting thoughts.

[ensignavenger]

When I evaluate software, I see having multiple vendors offering to support/host the software as a good thing. After selecting a piece of software I then begin to evaluate vendor offerings. The vendor being deeply involved in the project- such as being the original creator or otherwise being a major contributor, is a huge plus.

Having 100% of a small pie is often worse than having a good percent of a larger pie. Fostering a large Open Source ecosystem increases the size of the pie- even if you have to share some of it.

Of course, any business is a lot of work, whether your software is Open Source or proprietary. Open Source is a great strategy, but it doesn't guarantee success.

[ashrafsam]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, we are seeing this pattern indeed. I agree that it doesn't guarantee success, we're inspired by open source apps that compete in being better software rather than only privileged as open source.