Hacker News Reader

Comment by itsmefaz | Hacker News Reader

I like the idea of Scarf allot. This solves a very good problem of getting analytics on features that get released. And these insights would certainly help improve the software.

However, please correct me if I'm wrong but is this truly open source. If the developer intends to open-source his software then in-app purchases defeat the entire purpose?

Also, if the developer does want to release his software with the intent to make money, he can simply release a premium version with the added features.

I don't want to sound very harsh but as an open-source developer, this kinda defeats the ethics of what open-source software truly is.

Would love to hear alternative views...

View on HN

Great question. So I think this still is in the spirit of open source, because you can bypass scarf completely by just installing the package from source if you want to. For my own packages that are hosted on Scarf, I'm totally happy if someone chooses to do that, because then they're more likely to contribute code back to my projects, which is great. Scarf just gives devs a way to makes the path of least resistance for users a path that results in either usage analytics, money, or both. I hope that makes open source a more sustainable endeavor for the developers.

There is no need to bypass Scarf to align completely with FOSS principles. If Scarf is not encrypting the source, adding new license constraints, or hiding it in any way, when it adds its wrapper.

> If the developer intends to open-source his software then in-app purchases defeat the entire purpose?

Free and Open Source and making money are separate issues. This is the Free as in Beer, versus Free as in Freedom bit. FOSS is not like Beer. It is free of constraints in what a user can do with it, including changing it if it is also Open Source.

Is selling in-app-purchases really that different than selling a premium version, aside from the granularity?

Yes. It ceases to be open-source and ends up becoming software as a service.

Open Source and SaaS are not mutually exclusive. If a SaaS product is also FOSS, it just means that more than one vendor could provide the same exact service. You're paying them for their services and physical resources. Every cloud/hosting provider does this, offering Linux, Apache, etc. And, yes, they can even charge you for the software.

> And, yes, they can even charge you for the software.

Not enough people are aware of it, I think SaaS vendors need to be clear about this. I would hope that we'll see more "software payment" notions instead of just often listing "setup fee" which just reinforces the misnomer that Free is about the absence of monetary gain.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com