[prabhatsharma]

Most people who talk about SSO Tax don't really care for it's values but rather want free stuff. I have had conversations with multi-billion dollar companies who would avoid paying a single dollar to support open source companies and bring SSO tax into conversation.

On our part OpenObserve offers free SSO on our cloud service to anyone and Free SSO for anyone using enterprise version if they ingest under 200 GB/Day (6 TB/Month).

[MajimasEyepatch]

The problem with not offering SSO on lower tiers is that it can make it hard to test into a new service. I might want to try out a new tool with one team for a couple of months and see how it goes before recommending adoption for a broader group. I don't want to have to sign a year-long six-figure contract just to try something out. Sometimes you can work out a trial period with the sales team, but that's not always easy, and it puts a strict ticking clock on things that doesn't work in all situations.

[yourapostasy]

> ...conversations with multi-billion dollar companies...

Slight clarification here. Might not apply in OpenObservability's case but might help others on their journey to enterprise sales with their projects.

Those are typically conversations with managers holding $X purchasing authority, typically like $500K for a US director'ish level, within multi-billion dollar companies. These managers usually aren't averse to spending on open source projects. They're averse to cutting a check not tied to a support contract with responsive, polite, helpful support with published support policies at 0300h local time on a break-fix line with 75 other people from other support teams in the company watching. A surprising number of open source projects won't offer that guarantee, and instead only offer the option to "donate" with vague promises of priority support. More projects are getting better at this more recently, but it takes a surprising amount of red tape to onboard as a vendor into these organizations, and a lot of open source teams don't have the appetite for putting up with that.

Until kind of recently, the conversation switching to the SSO Tax is really about accessing that level of guaranteed support delivery.

[prabhatsharma]

Thanks @yourapostasy . Agree with you for the most part.

Not all managers are averse to paying, but many are. I have had discussions with Director/Sr. Director and VP level folks in these companies. I have been paid and I have been denied.

Our biggest customer is a fortune 10 company and we are able to offer the kind of support that they need. It indeed takes a lot to provide that kind of support, though, and would be difficult for most small open source projects to do.

[thedevilslawyer]

> Most people who talk about SSO Tax don't really care for it's values but rather want free stuff.

Most people who put out open source software don't really want to accept useful PRs (which implement OpenID) rather just want free distribution.