Open Source as a Business

A presentation at FrOSCon in August 2019 in 53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany by Philipp Krenn

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Open Source as a Business Strategy, Struggle & Success Philipp Krenn @xeraa @xeraa

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[…] allow software to be freely used, modified, and shared. https://opensource.org/licenses @xeraa

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Four Freedoms: Use, Study, Share, Improve https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/basics/ 4freedoms.en.html @xeraa

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Who is using OSS? @xeraa

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Who is opening issues? @xeraa

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Who is contributing back? @xeraa

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https://twitter.com/ geowolf/status/ 971811346823221248

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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

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Open Source ≠ Business Model @xeraa

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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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@xeraa

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Developer @xeraa

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@xeraa

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!”# Where is the ? @xeraa

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Agenda Strategy Struggle Success @xeraa

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Strategy @xeraa

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Services Support, Consulting, Training, Certification @xeraa

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@xeraa

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@xeraa

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https://investors.redhat.com/~/media/Files/R/Red-Hat-IR/documents/q418-fact-sheet.pdf

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Support Problem Ease of Use @xeraa

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Support Problem Renewal Rates @xeraa

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Consulting & Training Problem Service-Only Competition @xeraa

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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

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https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/15/suse-is-once-again-an-independent-company/ @xeraa

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Open Core @xeraa

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@xeraa

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Problem Competing Tools @xeraa

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Problem Less Open, More Commercial @xeraa

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Problem Cloud Providers @xeraa

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Cloud Service @xeraa

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@xeraa

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@xeraa

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Problem Cloud Providers @xeraa

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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

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Cost in the Cloud @xeraa

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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

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Partnerships @xeraa

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@xeraa

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Problem Domain Specific @xeraa

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Donations @xeraa

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@xeraa

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Problem Scaling & Planning @xeraa

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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

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Certified Partners @xeraa

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@xeraa

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Problem Requires Commercial Ecosystem @xeraa

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Ads @xeraa

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@xeraa

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Problem What Is (the Price to Be) Acceptable @xeraa

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Merchandise @xeraa

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@xeraa

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Problem Revenue @xeraa

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Bounty / Crowdfunding @xeraa

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@xeraa

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Problem Vision & Maintainablility @xeraa

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Corporate Sponsoring @xeraa

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Problem Incentives @xeraa

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Struggle @xeraa

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Philosophy @xeraa

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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

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Contributors Users Consumers @xeraa

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[…] 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

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[…] 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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@xeraa

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RedisLabs Modules: AGPL RediSearch, Redis Graph, ReJSON, ReBloom, Redis-ML @xeraa

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Apache 2 modified with Commons Clause (2018/08) @xeraa

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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

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Confusion CC Apache 2 modified with Commons Clause https://commons.apache.org @xeraa

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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

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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

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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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RedisLabs Modules: Redis Source Available License (2019/03) @xeraa

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https://redislabs.com/community/licenses/

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@xeraa

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AGPL Server / Apache Clients Server Side Public License (2018/10) @xeraa

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“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

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More than Reciprocal Permissive vs Copyleft vs SSPL @xeraa

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https://www.percona.com/blog/2018/10/24/poll-mongodb-license-change/ @xeraa

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Timing Effective Today @xeraa

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Clones Amazon DocumentDB @xeraa

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[…] 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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@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

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https://www.confluent.io/blog/license-changes-confluent-platform

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Money @xeraa

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Conflict of Interest Open Source vs Commercial View @xeraa

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@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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@xeraa

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Venture Capital Accelerated Development vs Calling the Shots @xeraa

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@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

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Business Is Optional @xeraa

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Business Is Complicated @xeraa

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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

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Time for an Updated Model? @xeraa

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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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@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

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What to Protect @xeraa

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@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

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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