Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?

[ryangorley]

I'll add a counter-argument to my own argument regarding VC-backing as a sign of commercial viability. Venture capital, in software especially, isn't always motivated by earnings in the way that a normal business would have to be. As I understanding it (I'm no venture capitalist), these folks don't generally recoup their investments through dividends on earnings but by selling their ownership shares to a bank or larger private equity fund or through an IPO. So they'll often run these companies at a loss for years to try to grow the user base as much as they can to get that big cash out at the end. That's not really compatible with a business operating by its own earnings.

Still, not all open-source software companies are VC-backed. Not all of them that are VC-backed are cash negative. The underlying point remains, that open-source grows adoption. Scaling at practically no cost is what makes software such a unique product to sell, and what makes it so enticing for investment in the first place. Open source as a means to scale and ultimately monetize should be taken seriously.

[marcusquinn]

@ryangorley AKA hyper-scaling, it kinda works, but is also predatory and monopolistic. Often based on moat-building and lock-ins through migrations efforts.

Perhaps you can demonstrate by example of sustainable projects making the best of both ways or working?

[adison]

@marcusquinn i personally believe all products should be at least source.available.

[timconsidine]

@adison have you tried suggesting this to Microsoft ?

[adison]

@timconsidine uh, what? what does microsoft have to do with this post?
i don't get it

[ryangorley]

@marcusquinn I'm happy to.

• Nextcloud (managed hosting)
• WordPress (managed hosting, paid features)
• Krita (user donations, corporate sponsors)
• Blender (user donations, corporate sponsors)
• Godot (user donations, corporate sponsors)
• Red Hat (support services, curated builds)
• Gitlab (managed hosting)
• Strapi (paid features)
• 11ty (user donations, corporate sponsors)
• Astro (user donations, corporate sponsors)
• Dokku (user donations, paid features)
• LibreOffce (user donations, corporate sponsors)
• Plausible Analytics (managed hosting)
• Kaleidos/Taiga (managed hosting)

These are a few that come to mind. None are a one-for-one match to Cloudron, but to my knowledge they're all profitable companies/projects. I'm sure in the 100+ posts above this has been said, but just from the examples that come to mind one could monetize an openly licensed Cloudron with:

• Managed Hosting - A hosted Cloudron option was once available. A lot of these open source projects generate revenues that way. You're selling an additional level of convenience and security that is appealing to a lot of people.
• Paid Features - This could be a centralized Cloudron dashboard for managing multiple installs, commissioned sales of commercial software, backup hosting, domain management for in-home installs with non-static IP addresses, etc. The biggest opportunity would be to charge for access to those apps tested and hosted by Cloudron, which is a huge value and a reasonable service to charge for.
• Services - Businesses are highly motivated to keep things running, so anything from managed migrations to on-call support are something they'll pay for.
• Sponsorships - I regularly tell people Cloudron is the easiest way to host Nextcloud. There is a sponsorship opportunity from the application side. Cloudron is vastly superior to many NAS applications, and I could see hardware partnerships as another source of revenue. Cloud hosting providers would likewise benefit from builds tested and easily deployed on their infrastructure
• User Donations - This is the most obvious, but there are people who pay for free things. Where Cloudron is providing a service people rely upon to do a lot, a well communicated message that donations keep the Cloudron team able to roll out updates, add new features, and fix bugs can work.

I'm sure others have better ideas, and a couple of may have been attempted in a limited fashion, but I could see a combination of these closing the gap on the modest $15/mo/server rate being charged now.

[marcusquinn]

@timconsidine Microsoft enterprise products can sometimes be source-available. Dynamics NAV is one example I worked with that is.

[adison]

again, what does microsoft have to do with any of this?
if that is the case, we can just move this post to "off topic" at this point and change the name to "make microsofts products all available source available".
this is "make cloudron fully open source", nothing to do with microsoft products.

[adison]

keep the topic at bay.

[timconsidine]

@marcusquinn but that's the point ... "sometimes" ... "can be" .... "enterprise"
Effectively source not available unless you pay us lots of money
Contrast situation with Cloudron

Of course there are some benefits to Cloudron being open-source, but there are also some risks, and basically we as users should not be so demanding about someone else's property. Otherwise it will be 'Atlas Shrugged' scenario.

[timconsidine]

@adison read your post

@adison said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:

i personally believe all products should be at least source.available.

Maybe it's not what you meant, but it's what you wrote.
Don't blame me for misunderstandings arising.

[timconsidine]

Ignoring this topic now.

[necrevistonnezr]

@ryangorley said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:

So they'll often run these companies at a loss for years to try to grow the user base as much as they can to get that big cash out at the end.

Or they pull a Hashicorp.

[adison]

@necrevistonnezr said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:

p

what did hashicorp do? i mean, i use hashicorp vault and that works fine.

[fbartels]

@adison https://thenewstack.io/hashicorp-abandons-open-source-for-business-source-license/

[adison]

@fbartels said in Why not make Cloudron fully open source again?:

https://thenewstack.io/hashicorp-abandons-open-source-for-business-source-license/

uh what? if that is the case, how is vault still maintained?

[necrevistonnezr]

I have posted a few warnings about this - any commercial competitive offering to Hashicorp products is endangered.
Reliability and stability in licensing is a value by the way if you’re running a business and have proper budgeting.

I know a couple of businesses really struggling now: Vague license, absurd new license fees, and total dependence makes for a toxic cocktail.

[fbartels]

Especially around Terraform a lot of business has been built. I'm too lazy to check, but I think there are now two endorsed community forks of the last version before the license change.

[msbt]

@fbartels https://opentofu.org/blog/opentofu-announces-fork-of-terraform/ that's one, not sure what's the second

[fbartels]

@msbt opentofu was recently still opentf. Maybe that was because i thought there were two projects.