Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

> 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