- The geeks with the know-how to run a Web server benefit from your product for free, but in exchange you get bug reports, patches, etc.
- Everyone else pays, because you also offer a paid hosting option.
But because the product is fundamentally open source and federated, it can and hopefully will outlive its original developer.
1) Not the geeks, but the big multinational companies with disposable developer time end up using your open-source solution. Exactly the types of users I don't feel sorry for and would rather extract money from.
2) The "payback" in the form of bug reports and patches is negligible, because nobody likes to do work if they're not being compensated (either through money, or, more commonly in the open-source world, fame)
3) The users of the hosted version don't want to pay anything because "it's open-source, after all".
4) People that do not have the necessary technical capabilities to host your software, but also don't like to pay, harass you on GitHub and other support channels because "your software doesn't work", and it "throws error messages".
The key advantage is that some people (journalists, bloggers) tend to present you in a more positive light if you describe yourself as an "open-source solution" rather than yet another commercial app.
You want to use the base functionalities? Be my guest.
You want Single Sign On through LDAP, AD, etc.? Commercial edition.
You want advanced user management and permissions, etc.? Commercial edition.
You want the product to work behind a NTLM proxy? Commercial edition.
You want to use your own domain name (if hosted)? Commercial edition.
There's a handful of requests that are sure-sign markers that someone is using the product in a corporate environment.
Of course, if the people asking for those features also provide a pull request that complies with the project's pull request guidelines, then in that case, things might change. Though it's quite rare that such a huge feature as AD integration is actually provided by a project outsider (especially one that also comes with good code coverage, respects project coding conventions, etc.).
- People who only need basic functionalities don't bring any money
- People who need paid functionalities don't get to try them in the free version
So as much I as like free tiers as a user, for a business I think "free trial" is the way to go.
Everything is paid.
Except there is a free edition for up to N users, or non-production use.
This lets people try the product, demo and experiment.
There are consumer orientated services like Newsblur (http://newsblur.com) that do this. There are business orientated services such as SugarCRM (https://www.sugarcrm.com/) that do this.
SaaS is the likely saviour of "commercial" open source.
That said - yes users are unreasonable! All users, all the time. Whether it's open source or otherwise. Unfortunately, lots of open source users think the giving up of their time to report a problem means it should be solved, and they can't do it. The only thing I can offer is that it tells you how important what you created has become to them - think of it as a reverse compliment!
http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2016/08/applying-business-sou...
Free as in Freedom but not free as in beer.
You get to use the software for free subect to limitations (can't have more than N users, can't resell hosted access, etc), until N years from now, when the license reverts to GPL. Point releases restart the clock (so you have to fork the N year old version if Oracle acquired the company).
I'd be interested in a variant that reverts to BSD, but maybe that can't work for some reason. I haven't thought too hard about it.
"The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose."
Any limitations on use make the software non-Free.
Seriously though, you download it now, and there is a contractual obligation that the software will be GPL later. Stallman used to charge people for improvements to emacs. This is the same, but with an extended delivery timeline that (hopefully) leads to better Free software.
Also, note that once you pay, you get all the benefits / protections of the GPL, including redistribution of modifications after the timer expires.
I'm not sure if you can redistribute modifications immediately or not. I would certainly hope so! (Any money for modified versions would go to the author of the original version, and there is no "we're missing feature X" like there would be with open core / demoware so why should they block such things?)
Yes it does. "As you wish" means no limitations. It's a superset of "when you wish". By your argument all software is Free software, because eventually the copyright will expire.
Being GPL later is better than being proprietary for as long as possible, but until it happens it's still non-Free.
These companies much prefer to pay for support, even for open-source projects.
There have been open source projects that used it just as marketing tool and then shut down the open source version when they grew popular enough. There have been those which have severely limited the open source version to get people to buy the premium version which is hosted.
At the end you are dealing with locusts, they will consume anything of value to them for free without giving a damn about its implications to the future survival of the product. Altruism is nice, but it's not business savvy.