Category: 1. Software Industry
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Solving the Commercial Open Source Licensing Dilemma With Triple-Licensing
As you may have noticed, the move away from approved open source licenses to commercial almost-like-open-source licenses by single-vendor-owned open source projects has created a lot of bad press for the vendors behind such software. I don’t really understand this, because for all that I can tell, a triple-licensing rather than just a dual-licensing approach…
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Free and open source software licenses explained (Miriam Ballhausen, IEEE Computer)
I’m happy to report that the second article in the open source column of IEEE Computer has been published. Title Free and Open Source Software Licenses Explained Keywords Open source software, licenses, computer security Authors Miriam Ballhausen, Bird & Bird, LLP Publication Computer vol. 52, no. 10 (June 2019), pp. 82-86 Abstract: This installment of…
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The Commercial Open Source Pledge
I’m pretty frustrated by some of the discussion around the recent relicensing decisions by commercial open source companies. A fair bit of it seems confused to me, and I think this is mostly due to commentators not understanding the purpose of community for the vendor. So I decided to write a hypothetical pledge for venture-capital…
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Market Segmentation in the Open Core Model
Life is exciting in commercial open source land. On Tuesday this week, another commercial open source vendor relicensed its product while at the same time disavowing the open core model, which they call a tiered approach to their business. This disavowel piqued my interest, not because the open core model is good or bad, but…
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From the Bag of Commercial Open Source Tricks: Paying for the Upgrade
On a recent trip to Montreal, I reconnected with Marc Laporte, leader of the WikiSuite project and an old friend and fellow wiki enthusiast. Naturally, we talked about open source business strategies and he pointed me to one way of how commercial open source companies make money: They don’t provide you with a free upgrade…
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How to Convince Your Management of the Need for an Open Source Program Office
Here is the simplest eye-opener that I have found in my consulting practice to convince management of the need for an open source program office: Ask your manager to look at the open source license section under legal notices on their mobile phone. Ask them to scroll down to the end (they’ll never finish). Then…