In honor of another Open Core company moving to the Extinguish phase of Embrace/Extend/Extinguish for their #FOSS code, here are some of my thoughts on Open Core: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/some-thoughts-open-core
@okennedy I honestly don't know. I consider Microsoft an expert at selling software and even they have given up on it and moved to a services model. At smaller scales maybe a Patreon-style donation model?
@kyle You’re right, and that’s unfortunate since SaaS is straight up worse for users than closed source. The Patreon model is ok for hobby projects, but there’s got to be some way to sustain a hybrid model that allows a larger project to fund itself while still giving back. Perhaps a clearly (contractually?) defined boundary between open and closed components could be feasible if there’s critical components on the open side of the boundary to incentivize continued development.
@kyle The support model can create perverse incentives too, limiting code documentation or encouraging complex designs that ensure the company’s control over expertise maintaining or extending the software (see e.g. Redhat). Do you see any ways to fund the long-term development of a purely software open source project that don’t ultimately incentivize “monetizing” users?