|
Interesting, I've been thinking about something like "openlag" lately. It seems like an ideal compromise between the need to make money and the desire to open source everything. When I've been thinking about it, I was considering a much shorter period of time than three years, though, something more like 3-6 month periods, so your competitive edge comes from the newest features, and anything older is Open. I feel like it would work really well with a premium SaaS model- open source everything that's free to everyone, and have a reserved feature set that's only for paying customers. Paying customers get new features first, and eventually, everyone gets them. Of course, at some point, you might shoot yourself in the foot by making enough of the app free and open source that no one will want to pay for whatever you've been developing lately. You also, of course, have to always have compelling new stuff coming out to keep subscribers. I definitely don't think it's viable for every project, or even most projects, but "openlag" definitely seems like it has a place. |