has any software project successfully implemented a dual licensing model with a source available individual license and a paid commercial license?
do we have any real examples of this?
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witch hat hacker π spooky ver (haskal@cybre.space)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 07:13:58 UTC witch hat hacker π spooky ver -
Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 07:13:55 UTC Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π @haskal When you download GitLab you get the whole open source + source available code base, but out of the box the source-available part will only run with a license file. So it's close but not quite there, no official trial mode. -
Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 07:35:27 UTC Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π @haskal Arguably the Commons Clause-derived and SSPL-like licenses are this.
It's source-available for general use and if you're not SaSSing it you can pretend it's open source.
MongoDB and Redis Labs modules do this and I believe they're both offered free of charge as long as you satisfy the restriction on Freedom Zero.
igorkotua.com/strong-oss-licen⦠(the headline is a misnomer, but there's good information in there when read critically) -
Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 07:37:17 UTC Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π From the same article, Elastic has restrictions on freedoms Zero and One, you explicitly are not licensed to mess with their licensing check. -
Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 07:47:23 UTC Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π Actually the article brings up MariaDB MaxScale that forms part of the Enterprise offering I mentioned as a non-answer above. The website doesn't give you binaries, but the source is publically available and allows you limited commercial use. So that's a positive answer to your question.
The BSL is also interesting as it has a sunset clause that limits the restrictive condition to four years, after which the source is automatically licensed under the designated open source license. -
Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Thursday, 21-Apr-2022 08:25:16 UTC Santa Claes πΈπͺππ°π Finally the article mentions CockroachDB and Sentry, which use BSL and grant an SSPL-like restricted Freedom Zero.
I don't know which of these actors have "successfully implemented" source-available for individual use, but as far as I know they're all still going concerns a few years after they adopted it. I'll leave it to someone else to find their income statements.
I admit they all skirt closer to open source than I had previously realized. Everyone except Elastic offers freedoms 1, 2, 3 and restrict 0 and the BSL projects in particular fall back to open source after some time, which makes those freedoms actually relevant for the open source community.
@haskal
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