Isn't this the reason why AGPL has started to get more popular? Everyone has to play by the very strict rules except the copyright holder, who can do whatever they want, but the community still benefits from the core software being open source.
The BSD license in particular seems like a particularly bad way to run a business.
The whole move to new "open-core" licenses started with the most famous (infamous?) AGPL project - MongoDB. The AGPL is not what companies like this want (Mongo, Elastic, Redis etc). They don't want AWS's code: AWS is already providing that. They want AWS to pay them royalties or stop competing.
> They want AWS to pay them royalties or stop competing.
But the switch from AGPL to SSPL didn't do either of those things.
AWS still built DocumentDB to compete with Mongodb, and didn't use any SSPL OR AGPL code in the implementation (at least according to their FAQ[1]). And AFAIK AWS isn't paying mongo any royalties.
> But the switch from AGPL to SSPL didn’t do either of those things.
Well, yeah, its mostly a bad plan, because while it can block competition with your code, it doesn’t block substitution with other code that provides the same function, and if you aren’t one of the big cloud providers, competing in the same function market with bundled services from the big cloud providers, whether or not it is the same underlying code, is the actual problem you face when your monetization is based around “sell a hosted service”.
Well, I was using AWS more as a catch-all term for cloud. They never actually offered a managed MongoDB service, but other like IBM and Oracle did (or still do?). I'm not sure what impact this had exactly, whether those services were discontinued or if they are now paying Mongo for them - but surely they had a significant impact one way or the other.
> They want AWS to pay them royalties or stop competing.
but at the same time, they want people to be able to use the software for free (esp. at the start), to kick-start the network effect.
In other words, open-core business models want to have their cake and eat it. If you are able to make lots of money off said software, we want a piece of it after the fact. But we dont want to take on the risk of actually looking to build a business and compete on the same.
They dont't want AWS royalties. They wanna be able to command higher margins. Since AWS has lower costs and prices, Redis can't compete with good margins. The royalties are just a way to increase AWS costs, so that they raise their prices and give Redis the ability to keep high prices and margins, while still remaining attractive to customers (which don't have a cheaper choice anymore).
They want to make ludicrous profits on the software others have built for them.
There's nothing wrong with making money and being profitable. But they have to justify investments taken with greed. This license change is motivated by greed, not by "making money" fairly.
Yeah, it feels like this pattern of “ship an open source product, get popular, try to backtrack” ignores the fact that the only reason you got popular in the first place was the open source aspect.
Would anyone have given mongo a look if it was a fully proprietary technology? They would have gone bust years ago.
OP, OpenSearch, OpenTofu all seem to indicate the jury is still out on this one. I still see many smaller projects using open core. Three I started using recently ( llama-index, langfuse, qdrant ) are in this category.
There is certainly a difference between AGPL and BUSL style licenses. One of the new projects I'm using as some of their code with a BUSL style, but still open core primarily
I get it. If there are alternatives that overall would be better (including their technical merits and how easy it is to introduce them to a commercial company) then use them. No one is forced to buy dual-license.
If you’re happy with paying a few maintainers, a support staff, and some salespeople the cash flow necessary for being a successful endeavor is a whole lot different than if you’ve raised $350 million.
Maybe the problem lies more with overreaching and trying to cash out?
For sure, there is a problem in startup culture that looks down upon lifestyle companies. Devtools and developer focused products often get caught up in this.
At the same time, founders take money to build their idea into something more than they could do with a small team. An big companies are risk averse, having a small staff or being susceptible to "hit by a bus" failure is often a deal breaker
That’s very true. Business is very much a balancing act in that sense. Sometimes raising money is the reason you succeed, but it can equally well be why you fail (especially if you’d be happy running a smaller company but take on investors that want you to be hungrier).
some kind of GPL + no CLA = good. If you contribute to GPL Redis, the Redis company cannot relicense your work, because they own it as much as you do.
GPL + CLA = bad. If you contribute to GPL Redis and transfer the copyright to your contributions to the Redis company, they can switch to whatever license they want.
SSPL + no CLA = interesting, I would love to see the Redis company open source their hosting stack because they are accepting external contributions.
The BSD license in particular seems like a particularly bad way to run a business.