Ask HN: List of open-source business models?

Re:Ask HN: List of open-source business models? by mtmail on Saturday June 06, 2020 @03:29PM (#23441647)

Dual license can be on different products, e.g. community edition and then you have extra binaries or plugins which come with a commercial non-open license.

But it can also be by use case. MongoDB's has extra requirements for those who run services (database-as-a-service) and thus who compete against MongoDB, the company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MongoDB#Licensing

Sponsorship is hoping companies rely on your software enough to open their money pockets. Or to have a strategic interest, e.g. by keeping something open/free that a competitor charges money for. https://letsencrypt.org/sponsors/

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Re:Ask HN: List of open-source business models? by johnx123-up on Saturday June 06, 2020 @03:38PM (#23441700)

Thank you!

Will people pay for a license if there's no differentiation? (In HN we read a lot of stories where even donate button is not working well)

Also, will people pay for a commercial add-on when the product itself is free? (open core model)

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Re:Ask HN: List of open-source business models? by zelly on Saturday June 06, 2020 @09:21PM (#23443900)

> Will people pay for a license if there's no differentiation?

That is really a separate issue. If there is no differentiation from its competitors, then it may not be used at all.

People aren't generally the customers of dual-licensed software; usually companies that ship proprietary software are the customers. The typical model for dual-licensing is to allow the code to be used in an open source project for free but charge for the code to be used in a proprietary project.

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