Open Source as a Business: Strategy, Struggle & Success
A presentation at Freenode #live in in Bristol, UK by Philipp Krenn
Open Source as a Business Strategy, Struggle & Success Philipp Krenn @xeraa @xeraa
[...] allow software to be freely used, modified, and shared. https://opensource.org/licenses @xeraa
https://twitter.com/ geowolf/status/ 971811346823221248
Ninety-eight-point-five percent of the code ever put into the core of Puppet was put in there by somebody I paid. Luke Kaines (founder of Puppet), https://www.geekwire.com/2018/might-time-bigcloud-share-wealth-open-source-startups/ @xeraa
Open Source ≠ Business Model @xeraa
Open source is a distribution model that allows us to build community. It’s a force multiplier. Shay Banon, Elastic @xeraa
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Developer @xeraa
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!"# Where is the ? @xeraa
Agenda Strategy Struggle Success @xeraa
Strategy @xeraa
Services Support, Consulting, Training, Certification @xeraa
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https://investors.redhat.com/~/media/Files/R/Red-Hat-IR/documents/q418-fact-sheet.pdf
Support Problem Ease of Use @xeraa
Support Problem Renewal Rates @xeraa
Service & Training Problem Consulting-Only Competition @xeraa
Open Core @xeraa
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Problem Competing Tools @xeraa
Problem Less Open, More Commercial @xeraa
Problem Cloud Providers @xeraa
Cloud Service @xeraa
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Problem Cloud Providers @xeraa
The intent of open source software was not so that someone else can take the exact same software and offer it as a service. https://www.geekwire.com/2018/might-time-big-cloud-share-wealth-open-sourcestartups/ @xeraa
Partnerships @xeraa
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Problem Domain Specific @xeraa
Donations @xeraa
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Problem Scaling & Planning @xeraa
For Patreon/donations to be a viable business model, have to put in just as much work as you’d have to do selling services/product, likely ending up w less from donations You can point to donation models that had it easy & I can point to traditional businesses that got lucky too https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/1036091578060656640 @xeraa
Certified Partners @xeraa
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Problem Requires Commercial Ecosystem @xeraa
Ads @xeraa
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Problem What Is Acceptable @xeraa
Merchandise @xeraa
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Problem Revenue @xeraa
Bounty / Crowdfunding @xeraa
Problem Vision & Maintainablility @xeraa
Corporate Sponsoring @xeraa
https://aws.github.io
Problem Incentives @xeraa
Struggle @xeraa
Philosophy @xeraa
If you are claiming your startup/company is open source and you aren’t contributing to some form of upstream... then you aren’t really. Sorry not sorry. https://twitter.com/jessfraz/status/954802380125736961 @xeraa
Contributors Users Consumers @xeraa
[...] Amazon, on one hand, bashes the open source ecosystem and highlights the advantage of its own tools, while at the same time taking projects like Presto, which was developed in the open by Facebook, and turning it into a packaged, revenue-generating product (the newly announced Athena service). https://dzone.com/articles/did-amazon-just-kill-open-source @xeraa
[...] If you are MSFT and I ask you if you’ve used Redis and you say "you mean Azure Redis Cache?", that’s not a good sign. https://twitter.com/jensenharris/status/984268950136537088 @xeraa
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RedisLabs Modules: AGPL Apache 2 modified with Commons Clause (2018/08) RediSearch, Redis Graph, ReJSON, ReBloom, Redis-ML @xeraa
Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software. https://commonsclause.com @xeraa
Commons Clause Still OSS? Why not AGPL? @xeraa
Confusion CC Apache 2 modified with Commons Clause https://commons.apache.org @xeraa
Some rabid open-source wonks accused Redis Labs of trying to trick the community into thinking that modules were open source, because they used the word “Apache.” https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/07/commons-clause-stops-open-source-abuse/ @xeraa
Be aware that the debate starting up about the Common Clause license due to Redis Labs adopting it will likely be heavily tainted by large corporations who have a lot of free labor to lose suddenly pretending to be huge champions of free software ideals. https://twitter.com/taotetek/status/1032248562116186112 @xeraa
Redis: BSD "Redis will remain BSD licensed" http://antirez.com/news/120 "Redis is not "open core" http://antirez.com/news/121 @xeraa
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Neo4j Enterprise consists of modules from Neo4j Community Edition [GPLv3] and modules licensed under AGPLv3 with the Commons Clause in this repository, and other closed source components not present in this repository. https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j @xeraa
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AGPL Server / Apache Clients Server Side Public License (2018/10) @xeraa
"13. Offering the Program as a Service." https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license @xeraa
SSPL Still OSS? Why not AGPL? @xeraa
Timing Effective Today @xeraa
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! Users @xeraa
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If you’re unhappy with an open source project you’re entitled to a full, immediate refund to the $0.00 you paid for it. Alternatively, get involved with the project to make it better. https://twitter.com/MikeMcQuaid/status/970000490468708352 @xeraa
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Money @xeraa
Conflict of Interest Open Source vs Commercial View @xeraa
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Venture Capital Accelerated Development vs Calling the Shots @xeraa
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Development Hobbled Product vs Starving Company @xeraa
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Commercial Code Open / Visible Code vs Closed Source @xeraa
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Tricks Open Source but... @xeraa
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Success @xeraa
Business Is Optional @xeraa
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Business Is Complicated @xeraa
It saddens me that closed source companies are acclaimed for merely putting a piece of code on GitHub, while commercial open source companies get the worse shit for any action that involves protecting their work. https://twitter.com/icecrime/status/1032155227368185856 @xeraa
Time for an Updated Model? @xeraa
MongoDB seeks to do what the FSF failed to do in 2007: close the “ASP loophole.” That is, to make the GPL (and open source) more relevant to the cloud era by ensuring those that modify and distribute open source as a cloud service contribute back. https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/1052191818937327616 @xeraa
More than Reciprocal Permissive vs Copyleft vs SSPL @xeraa
https://www.percona.com/blog/2018/10/24/poll-mongodb-license-change/ @xeraa
Friends don't let real friends use non open source databases @xeraa
Elastic's Strategy @xeraa
All Code Open Not Open Source — Apache 2 & Elastic License @xeraa
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Training Consulting @xeraa
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https://elastic.shop
Questions? Disagreement? Philipp Krenn @xeraa @xeraa
How do you build a lasting and successful company that also stays true to its open source roots? This talk takes a look at why open source is important to business and three essential elements of this path:
- Strategy: How can you monetize your open source product? Is it support, an open core approach, cloud services, or a combination of the three? And which ones are the features you can even commercialize without alienating your community?
- Struggle: “You received a 100 million dollars in venture capital and yet you have so many open issues?!” Once money is involved the dynamics often change. How can you manage expectations and still build on a flourishing open source community?
- Success: How do you balance open source and commercial success? How do you align engineering and sales decisions?
This talk takes the perspective of Elastic, the company behind the open source products Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash, which makes its money with support, the commercial X-Pack extensions, and cloud offerings. But we are also taking a look at how others are approaching this challenge, what worked, and what failed.
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