[mska]

Out of curiosity, how do companies offering self-hosted/on-prem solutions monetize their offerings?

Do they rely on legal contracts to prevent customers from using the software for free or modifying it for their own purposes?

[wongarsu]

Most of them do it by charging money for the product, just like every other software company in the last four decades.

If we are talking about open source self-hosted specifically, it's mostly consulting, paid support, and offering managed hosting.

[passwordoops]

Wait a minute... You mean to seriously say people used to pay a one time fee for software? Next you're going to tell me in this magical Utopia companies allowed you to continue using the same version of their software even after they made updates no one asked for

[sebzim4500]

Presumably the same way as every software company before SaaS took over a few years ago.

[bonestamp2]

A lot of them use a phone home/license key model... so it will stop working if you don't pay for the license. Where they don't, ya it's basically a trust system and most big companies would rather just pay the license fee than expose the legal risk of using software illegally.

[ushakov]

VC money, mostly