open core

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Longevity, or abandonware?
2 months ago
- In typical business relationships, paid customers are prioritized over free users, but open core reverses this by offering 'longevity' to free users while leaving paying customers with abandonware.
- Under open core, free users can fork and maintain the core if the project is abandoned, but customers cannot legally modify proprietary bits after subscription ends.
- Promises by open core projects to open source proprietary bits are not codified in the license, making them unreliable for customers.
- The author relicensed from ELv2 to FCL (a fair source license) to fix the 'longevity' issue, ensuring both customers and users have a fail-safe via DOSP (Deferred Open Source Publication).
- Fair source (fair core) guarantees that after 2 years of abandonment or a bad direction, both core and proprietary bits become fully open source, providing longevity for customers.
- From a customer's perspective, the choice is between longevity (fair source) and abandonware (open core).
The real problem with Open Core
2 months ago
- Open core projects have a proprietary part that remains closed, making the overall system not truly open.
- Relying on an open core project's proprietary features is risky because the default outcome when the company shuts down is abandonment.
- Users of proprietary features in open core often face legal and engineering risks when trying to rebuild or continue use.
- Goodwill-based outcomes like open-sourcing proprietary code are rare; most default scenarios leave dependents without support.
- Fair Source offers a better model with Delayed Open Source Publication (DOSP), ensuring code becomes open source after a set period.
- Unlike open core, Fair Source provides long-term viability and true openness for the majority of users.
The problem with Open Core
2 months ago
- Open core is not a well-defined term, with various interpretations.
- The author views open core as still open source because proprietary code can be removed from the open source-licensed core.
- Some argue that proprietary code within an open source project makes it not truly open source, but the author finds this distinction arbitrary.
- Others claim open core is only open source if the core is useful without proprietary code, but the author notes that even useless open source code is still open source.
- A minority view holds that open core is never open source, but this contradicts common usage and is not widely enforced.
- The lack of a clear definition for open core is a problem, but not a major one.
<antirez>
2 months ago
- Redis core remains under the vanilla BSD license; only certain Redis Labs modules changed from AGPL to a non-open-source license.
- Open core requires a modular system where proprietary parts remove something useful from the free software, which is not the case for Redis.
- Redis was made modular to allow extensions beyond its core scope, not to remove features for monetization.
- Redis Labs develops proprietary features (e.g., full-text search, JSON, graph, CRDTs) that are outside Redis's intended scope and not part of the open source core.
- The model is not open core because nothing is taken away from the free Redis; instead, new functionality is added separately.

open core

Longevity, or abandonware?

The real problem with Open Core

The problem with Open Core

<antirez>