Or c) Those who are interested in tech and the possibility of a open-source self-hosted option, but too busy to install and maintain it so also paying for a subscription like those in category (a).
We (my small research group) chose it over Authorea and others because of this possibility and implication that we won't get caught in a vendor lock-in situation in the future.
Exactly! That's what I meant by "possibly both, but only one at a time". At the moment you're in group (a), but might shift to group (b) later. I'd guess that if and when that shift occurs, we'd lose you as a paid user, regardless of whether we had an open-source version or not. This way at least you get an easier transition, and you'd still be using 'ShareLaTeX' which helps us from a brand recognition POV.
Re:Online, collaborative LaTeX editor
by NotSammyHagar on Thursday July 21, 2016 @01:09PM
(#12138325)
I have to applaud your attitude. And your strategy. It's actually pretty clever to support the host your own so people can see it's a way to avoid lock-in.
Our working hypothesis is that people fall into one of two categories (possibly both, but only one at a time):
a) Those who just want a simple to use LaTeX environment that just works for their task at hand.
b) Those who are more interested in the tech, and happy to install software locally, happy to explore things like git for collaboration and really refine their own personal workflows with the tools they like.
The paid plans are used by people in category (a) and would never be of much interest to those in category (b). But the self-hosted option is great for some people in category (b).
We also have a paid version of self-hosted ShareLaTeX, with direct support from us, and enterprise features like LDAP, admin controls for managing thousands of users, etc. The open-source version forms a natural part of this, (see GitLab, etc)