Open Source as a Business
A presentation at FrOSCon in in 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany 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
Four Freedoms: Use, Study, Share, Improve https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/basics/ 4freedoms.en.html @xeraa
Who is using OSS? @xeraa
Who is opening issues? @xeraa
Who is contributing back? @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
Consulting & Training Problem Service-Only Competition @xeraa
Red Hat has a unique business model crafted in the late 90’s/early 00’s when open source lived in a much stronger ideological environment. Sacha Labourey (Hudson / Jenkins / CloudBees), https://medium.com/ @sachalabourey/ibm-acquires-red-hat-where-is-google-b2fe186ccfe4 @xeraa
https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/15/suse-is-once-again-an-independent-company/ @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
With the advent of the public cloud, pure open source models are very hard to defend. Sacha Labourey (Hudson / Jenkins / CloudBees), https://medium.com/ @sachalabourey/ibm-acquires-red-hat-where-is-google-b2fe186ccfe4 @xeraa
Cost in the Cloud @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. Salil Deshpande (Bain Capital), https://www.geekwire.com/2018/might-time-bigcloud-share-wealth-open-source-startups/ @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 Stephanie Hurlburt (Entrepreneur, Founder), 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 (the Price to Be) Acceptable @xeraa
Merchandise @xeraa
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Problem Revenue @xeraa
Bounty / Crowdfunding @xeraa
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Problem Vision & Maintainablility @xeraa
Corporate Sponsoring @xeraa
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. Jessie Frazelle (Keyser Söze of containers), 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 RediSearch, Redis Graph, ReJSON, ReBloom, Redis-ML @xeraa
Apache 2 modified with Commons Clause (2018/08) @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
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
RedisLabs Modules: Redis Source Available License (2019/03) @xeraa
https://redislabs.com/community/licenses/
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AGPL Server / Apache Clients Server Side Public License (2018/10) @xeraa
“13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.” “13. Offering the Program as a Service.” https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license @xeraa
More than Reciprocal Permissive vs Copyleft vs SSPL @xeraa
https://www.percona.com/blog/2018/10/24/poll-mongodb-license-change/ @xeraa
Timing Effective Today @xeraa
Clones Amazon DocumentDB @xeraa
[…] we are hereby withdrawing the SSPL from OSI consideration. http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2019March/003989.html @xeraa
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For purposes of this Agreement, “Excluded Purpose” means making available any softwareas-a-service, platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service or other similar online service that competes with Confluent products or services that provide the Software. https://www.confluent.io/confluent-community-license @xeraa
https://www.confluent.io/blog/license-changes-confluent-platform
Money @xeraa
Conflict of Interest Open Source vs Commercial View @xeraa
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In case you needed proof, @zdatainc just released a #benchmark report where #DataStax6 outperforms #OpenSource #cassandra http:// bit.ly/2txOvWl #databases #data https://twitter.com/DataStax/status/1012380187886055424 @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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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. Arnaud Porterie (former Docker engine lead), 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. Matt Asay (former MongoDB VP of Community), https://twitter.com/mjasay/status/1052191818937327616 @xeraa
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Today, we’re adopting an extremely permissive version of the Business Source License (BSL). CockroachDB users can scale CockroachDB to any number of nodes. They can use CockroachDB or embed it in their applications (whether they ship those applications to customers or run them as a service). They can even run it as a service internally. The one and only thing that you cannot do is offer a commercial version of CockroachDB as a service without buying a license. https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/oss-relicensing-cockroachdb/ @xeraa
What to Protect @xeraa
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We release open source code under the Apache 2.0 license, which permits third parties to copy and redistribute the underlying software under the terms of the license. However, the Apache 2.0 license does not provide any license or right to use any of the Chef Marks. You may redistribute the applicable Chef open source software under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license, but you may not use the Chef Marks in doing so without express written permission from Chef or as expressly permitted in this Policy. https://www.chef.io/trademark-policy/ @xeraa
The “Elasticsearch” word mark may be used in referring to Elasticsearch, such as “for Elasticsearch” or “compatible with Elasticsearch,” etc. The reference must be correct, namely, the product must actually fully function with Elasticsearch. https://www.elastic.co/legal/trademarks/ @xeraa
Elastic’s Strategy @xeraa
All Code Open Not Open Source — Apache 2 & Elastic License @xeraa
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What (incentive | perception | behavior) is (OSS | Basic | Gold | Platinum) going to drive with (users | customers | OSSonly users | competitors | sales | development) @xeraa
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 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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