Great article, but here I have to disagree: "The open-core model followed by some of those companies creates an additional layer of community tension. [..] In the best case, this leads to the death of the community, and in the worst case this leads to a fork" - In this situation a fork is a great opportunity to fix a broken system and to restart the project. Done right this will lead to a revived and stronger community. https://opensource.org/node/1006 #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #business #OpenCore
Open Core is bad for freedom. It creates incentive to make work proprietary. It's bad for community members, who are now unpaid labor for a company. It's bad for customers who are often forced to use a proprietary product in order to get support, and it's bad for employees who would like to include free components, but can't because they compete with their own proprietary ones.
Open Core is just bad all around.
@bjoern @clacke I'm responding to @clacke 's assertion that "One is better than the other?"
"Death of a project is worse than a community fork" is true, but not what we're discussing, I think.
Taking a firm anti-Open Core stance is a new position for the OSI, which has always been more business oriented. I'm proud of the OSI for taking this stance, because Nextcloud itself is a story of how Open Core is just not a good model.
We need to find innovative funding models, Open Core isn't it
Article: [ . . . ] In the best case [Open Core] leads to the death of the community, and in the worst case [ . . . ] a fork [ . . . ]
Björn: [ . . . ] a fork is a great opportunity to fix a broken system and to restart the project [ . . . ]
Emacsen: Open Core is bad for freedom. [ . . . ]
Clacke: All true. But why is death better than a community fork? [ . . . ]
Emacsen: This is a false equivalency argument that is the same as "Proprietary software is better than no software".
I am (we are?) talking about a community-run free software fork of an open core project as compared to the death of the software. I don't get the comparison to proprietary software.
> Nextcloud itself is a story of how Open Core is just not a good model.
Owncloud is. Nextcloud is the counterexample. The company is profitable, they have no incentive to add anti-features, and by circumstances they have lost the ability to go open core, so nobody has to worry about that, including themselves. There is no cause for tension between community and company.
