Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?
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Just a thought for the business-model side of open-source because as much as I love and promote open-source, I always look at what the business model is behind it. Any software choice is a long-term commitment and I want to know that progress is motivated and sustainable.
Partner programs / subscription levels. Odoo has a good example of this. The return on investment for the Partners being implementation referrals.
Sponsored development.
Affiliate deals
Hosts referral revenue share
Hosting service
Many of the FOSS apps included with Cloudron use this model.As I say, just thoughts, with the utmost respect for all that the team here do and it's their work to do with as they see best and whatever works for the schedules they have and generously share with us.
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The replies seem to be coming more from developers lately, people who have skills enough to contribute, who also hold strong beliefs about open source. This is good, and by and large it is pleasant to see an overall positive approach to Cloudron.
I am a non-developer, but am also someone who likes the idea and principle of open source. I want to get away from proprietary apps and data lock-in. From my perspective, Cloudron has been an incredible way for me to learn about and access a plethora of open source apps, the delivery of which just works! I hope the various principled devs out there can appreciate a users perspective like mine, and just how radical Cloudron is. I've tried other open source attempts, and frankly they are all lacking in deliverability; checking out their forums reveals not even the devs can figure out what went wrong when something does; and rarely it seems are the project heads in the forums, like the Cloudron Team is, since the resolution of any problem relies on the upstream devs pushing fixes that may or may not come in time. What a mess for a user like myself, and I think there are many many users like myself. I think we are one mid-layer that will help make open source more understandable, reachable, and friendly, to all our non-techy families and friends, they who think only of Skype, Word, Facebook, but themselves are increasingly becoming disgruntled. They will never read certain /r/ nor news.ycombinator.com articles, but they will listen to me when I set up an open source chat instance, using a vanity domain, with email, on Cloudron, and it just works!
Another positive aspect of Cloudron's approach is that they don't try to cloak the open sources apps they offer as though they are something the Cloudron team created. I've come across a few such endeavours, and it worries me when I think there are regions and countries that think ****blog, *****forms, *****pad are all made by *****soft! It verges on deception, even though, after some digging, a user can find out that the software is actually made by other open source efforts. I hope this means that as more people hear about Mastodon, or Element, or booktype, etc., and look for options, they will be led to Cloudron. I for one came because I couldn't for the life of me get Rocket.Chat, Taiga and SOGo all running on the same server, by hand. Not a problem for Cloudron!!
Keep it up!!
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Love your testimony. I am a developer-user (well, just developer for now - but I could see me running this for production) and I'll 100% commit myself to the Cloudron ecosystem as long as the current closed-source sections (like Dashboard access) stays un-obfuscated post installation. So far, neither have the developers have spoken into if that was intentional (not obfscating the code). But, I hope it was.
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Interesting weekend read: https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-funding
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
@marcusquinn said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
Interesting weekend read: https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-funding
Didn't think that was the best article to be honest.
It mentions charging for support, but not the good ol' charge for support + updates model which has proven successful for loads of open source projects, including the first ever billion dollar open source company Red Hat. But also think of the vast majority of the WordPress premium plugins and themes ecosystem.
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@jdaviescoates said in Who here has actually already packaged an app that is already in the Cloudron App store?:
@girish and @nebulon, obviously. Who else?
EDIT: I just realised I could do an Advanced search for "most of the packaging work" in Announcements to find lots of them (although not all, as e.g. that didn't find Moodle).
In no particular order:
- @atrilahiji did much of the work for the Moodle
- @doodlemania2 did most of the packaging work for Pixelfed and Apache Guacamole
- @jimcavoli did most of the packaging work for Metabase, Grafana, Snipe-IT and Grav CMS
- @thetomester13 did most of the packaging work for Firefly III and PrivateBin
- @fbartels did most of the packagingwork for Statping
- @ultraviolet did most of the packaging work for Vault, Trilium Notes and Apache Guacamole
- @msbt did most of the packaging work for TeamSpeak, YOURLS, Alltube Download, Bookstack and helped with Matrix/Riot
- @syn did most of the packaging work for Mastodon
- @Felix and @iamthefij did much of the heavy lifting for Bitwarden
- @murgero did the initial ground work for Directus
- @cve-random did the majority of the work for Jellyfin with the help of @mehdi
- @mehdi also implemented OpenVPN
- @sumacinitiative helped out with LimeSurvey and SearX
- @BrutalBirdie did most of the work for Greenlight
- @erics packaged dolibarr
I did a few other searches too and think I've likely got most of them now, but who is still missing?
Anyone?
Hey everyone tagged above.
First of all: THANK YOU!
Second of all: as people who've actually contributed apps to Cloudron, I'd really appreciate your input in this thread
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Hey @marcusquinn @yusf @murgero @d19dotca @fbartels @will @necrevistonnezr @mehdi @msbt @Lonk @doodlemania2 @imc67 @ruihildt @JOduMonT @atrilahiji @scooke @heliostatic @jimcavoli @Hillside502 @robi @thetomester13
As valued contributors to this forum, if you've not chimed in here already, please do so!
To all those on both lists above: HUGE RESPECT
(and I really want to hear from you) -
@jdaviescoates Woop - jeez - didn't know I could get stars for being so distracting
I'm in the good idea but not in a hurry camp - FOSS comes with admin work - and for now, I can see development progress is pretty healthy.
I've equally worked on a stack that should and will eventually be OS - but when I can commit the time to supporting the community expectations on top of our own needs, so I see both sides.
It may only a matter of time - but for now, in source available I think we all trust. So yes, but patiently
Web Design https://www.evergreen.je
Development https://brandlight.org
Life https://marcusquinn.com -
@marcusquinn said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
in source available I think we all trust
Exactly. Changing licenses only really makes sense if the current license really hinders meaningful external contributions. And I have not yet seen this.
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I don't agree with you guys. I think it does hinder contributions, but you would not notice it.
It's not like people would decide to not contribute and come say it on the forums or anything. They just... would do nothing.
Like I said earlier, back then I would not have contributed the OpenVPN server if cloudron were not open source. I honestly would not even have considered it as a platform to use. For a lot of people, it's not about what you can or cannot do with the code, it's really a matter of principles.
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@mehdi said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
It's not like people would decide to not contribute and come say it on the forums or anything. They just... would do nothing.
And I don't agree with the above
From past experience, if someone is invested enough to make a meaningful contribution they usually try to establish some for of contact with the maintainers before starting work (or at least they should, what if that contribution does not fit with the current scope of the project?). I had plenty of discussions in the past because people did not think that AGPL would be a good fit for them.
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@mehdi said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
I don't agree with you guys.
I don't either.
But it's not just about people actually contributing code either, it's about wider uptake.
I already know quite a few people who used to subscribe to Cloudron but no longer do so because it's no longer open source.
@mehdi said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
For a lot of people, it's not about what you can or cannot do with the code, it's really a matter of principles.
Exactly. I also know people and agencies who won't subscribe nor use it as a matter of principle like @mehdi says.
This is causing needless wheel reinvention as they then go off and try to patch together others tools to create a similar experience to Cloudron, when they could otherwise just contribute to improving Cloudron instead.
There are also quite a few public authorities who would be more likely to adopt it if it were open source.
Whether or not Cloudron being open source would lead to more contributions to the code (I think it would as @mehdi is far from alone in his principles), I feel fairly certain that Cloudron could sell more subscriptions and therefore fund further development if it were open source again.
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Thanks for raising this question, @jdaviescoates.
I am personally not sure open-sourcing is critical here, as I think the first beneficiaries would be big cloud platforms (AWS, etc) that would then be able to host it and cut out any income for the developers. The current source available arrangement strikes me as probably necessary and appropriate.
I'm increasingly convinced that OSS as such is broken as a means of protecting against corporate exploitation, and it should not be celebrated as an end in itself. Based on my conversations with @girish, I think the single most important fact about Cloudron is that the company is bootstrapping (based on our subscription fees) and not seeking an exit. As long as that's the case, I think the community should support their self-defense through licensing.
Rather than fixating on licensing, it might be more relevant to all of us to discuss the possibility of an "exit to community" for Cloudron, in which ultimately the company we pay into becomes owned by—and accountable to—the people who rely on it. This could help ensure that the company we're paying into, and that is stewarding the code we depend on, doesn't get captured by forces beyond our control.
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@ntnsndr said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
Thanks for raising this question, @jdaviescoates.
I am personally not sure open-sourcing is critical here, as I think the first beneficiaries would be big cloud platforms (AWS, etc) that would then be able to host it and cut out any income for the developers. The current source available arrangement strikes me as probably necessary and appropriate.
I'm increasingly convinced that OSS as such is broken as a means of protecting against corporate exploitation, and it should not be celebrated as an end in itself. Based on my conversations with @girish, I think the single most important fact about Cloudron is that the company is bootstrapping (based on our subscription fees) and not seeking an exit. As long as that's the case, I think the community should support their self-defense through licensing.
Rather than fixating on licensing, it might be more relevant to all of us to discuss the possibility of an "exit to community" for Cloudron, in which ultimately the company we pay into becomes owned by—and accountable to—the people who rely on it. This could help ensure that the company we're paying into, and that is stewarding the code we depend on, doesn't get captured by forces beyond our control.
+1!
Very good points. -
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@rmdes said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:
@ntnsndr wait, are you https://twitter.com/ntnsndr ?
It is
I know Nathan uses Cloudron with his students at at the University of Colorado Boulder and so I reached out to him to chime in here
As I mentioned to him in email:
re protecting against corporate exploitation, given it is "specifically designed to ensure cooperation with the community in the case of network server software" my understanding is that the AGPL provides at least some protection against that as per https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html
@ntnsndr replied:
The AGPL is indeed oriented this way, though from what I understand its protections have proved overly ambiguous and inadequate against the present threats.
So whilst I really love co-ops and 'exit to community stuff' (and I'd fully support, and be really excited by such a future for Cloudron were @nebulon and @girish open to such ideas?) I think my question still stands:
What exactly is it about Cloudron and/or the AGPL that leads @nebulon and @girish to the conclusion that if Cloudron were fully AGPL licensed they would be unable to continue with the existing sustainable business model of selling subscriptions for updates and support?
Given the tech giants are already the most powerful human entities on the planet, ever, with almost unfathomable resources (this visualisation of e.g. just Bezos' personal personal wealth is pretty gut wrenching), I think if they wanted to directly compete with Cloudron they could very easily do so regardless of how the code is licensed: they could just allocate an infinitesimally small percentage of their budget to reverse engineer it. But, really, why would they bother? They already own and run the infrastructure the powers the vast majority of the Internet, including nearly all web and mobile apps.
