Ask YC: What are the downsides of open source?

Re:Ask YC: What are the downsides of open source? by tptacek on Saturday June 07, 2008 @05:52PM (#211737)

If you make a development component, you can dual GPL/commercial license your product, like Sleepycat.

If you make an enterprise product, you can sell an appliance or a VM that runs it, and GPL the programs themselves, like SourceFire.

If you make a web product, you can GPL the code and sell the hosted version, like WordPress.

If you make an extensible product, you can GPL the core and sell the bells and whistles, like Splunk.

If you make an end-user product, you can GPL the core and sell the UI.

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Re:Ask YC: What are the downsides of open source? by davidw on Sunday June 08, 2008 @04:23AM (#212026)

Good examples, which confirm what I said: you have to introduce an element of scarcity somewhere, that is not the software itself (with the possible exception of GPL'ed libraries, but that's sort of a special case).

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