A $130M company faked trials instead of running our free OSS
a year ago
- #ethics
- #trial-abuse
- #open-source
- Open source projects face challenges like maintainer fatigue and AI-assisted fake contributions.
- A semi-governmental company has been abusing a 30-day trial of Xen Orchestra Appliance (XOA) for a decade, using multiple email addresses to avoid payment.
- The company, despite generating $130 million annually, refuses to pay for the supported version, opting instead to repeatedly exploit the trial system.
- Vates, the company behind XOA, emphasizes the value of their supported, pre-packaged VM, which saves time and reduces risk compared to the open-source version.
- The behavior of the company is seen as a breach of the unwritten moral contract of open source, undermining its sustainability.
- Vates plans to introduce smarter trial limits to prevent abuse while continuing to support genuine users and the open-source community.