Open source is a different business model - you won't be able to do SaaS and open source at the same time. You could try open core where open source would be your marketing channel, this one works - e.g. Talend or RedHat.
> Open source is a different business model - you won't be able to do SaaS and open source at the same time.
Open source plus pay us to have a supported, hosted, managed installation doesn't seem impractical. Obviously, there is a challenge in that the code isn't "secret sauce" and you have to provide adequate value in terms of support/hosting/management to justify people not hosting it themselves, and open source means that a competitor can use your code to compete with you -- so you have to compete on the value of support/hosting/management or risk competing on price alone -- OTOH, the fact that they can host it themselves or have someone else host it, if you have a usable outbound migration facility, also mitigates lock-in risk of your paid service, and may be a value to some customers on its own.
Open source plus pay us to have a supported, hosted, managed installation doesn't seem impractical. Obviously, there is a challenge in that the code isn't "secret sauce" and you have to provide adequate value in terms of support/hosting/management to justify people not hosting it themselves, and open source means that a competitor can use your code to compete with you -- so you have to compete on the value of support/hosting/management or risk competing on price alone -- OTOH, the fact that they can host it themselves or have someone else host it, if you have a usable outbound migration facility, also mitigates lock-in risk of your paid service, and may be a value to some customers on its own.