I've been blown away by how totally awesome Cloudron is (both in terms of how great the platform is, but also how great the community is, and how incredibly productive and responsive @girish and @nebulon are) since I first decided to give a try just 6 months ago. Thank you for creating something wonderful.
Given this incredibly positive experience, I have understandably been actively promoting Cloudron whenever an opportunity to do so presents itself (I've already generated 9 15 referrals 
).
However, recently I was called out on Mastodon for sharing my referral code, which led to quite a few more discussions about Cloudron (and especially about the not-fully-open-source nature of Cloudron) both on Mastodon and elsewhere.
I have to admit, I think many of the criticisms, concerns and perspectives people shared with me are valid and as a result I have begun to be less enthusiastic in my promotion of Cloudron (and even ever so mildly concerned about my continued use of it too).
Therefore, I'd really like to hear @girish and @nebulon's answers to these two questions:
- Why is the Cloudron front end proprietary? but, moreover,
- What would need to be in place in order to convince you both to make ALL of Cloudron open source again?
(because I would love, love, LOVE, this to happen! AND it'd be really GREAT PR for 6.0! 
).
The answer to my first question has to some degree already been answered...
Back on Monday 29 August 2016, Cloudron was fully open sourced! Hooray! 
But, as noted by @ryangorley in his post asking "Cloudron no longer AGPL?", the licence was changed in GitLab on 26 February 2019:
a blog post (https://cloudron.io/blog/2016-08-29-opensource.html) dated 29 August 2016 announcing that Cloudron was being distributed with an AGPL license. At the top was a notice added 28 March 2018 indicating that Cloudron was no longer advertising open source, but was still being developed in the open. It did not indicate any license change. Then I found that the license had in fact changed in GitLab on 26 February 2019.
Some people realise this but just accept the compromise:
Like when @ruihildt recently wrote:
FYI, not all Cloudron code is open source (FOSS).
I'm not happy about it, but it's a comprise I can take, like so many others I have already in my life.
Other people seemingly still think/ assume Cloudron is still open source:
Just a week ago, @marcusquinn said in Scaling / High Availability Cloudron Setup:
Clouron is open-source
@girish said in Cloudron no longer AGPL? (my emphasis added):
The technical reason is that the code base has subscription, appstore and sign up logic. It's unclear what the license should be if it requires the cloudron.io service to work. The non-technical reason is that we were spending too much time explaining why we call ourselves opensource and charge for it. To put an end to such conversations (many of them very hurtful), we just stopped calling ourselves opensource as as early as 2017. I don't know of an easy solution to this.
And in one of the threads on Mastodon, a Cloudron dev said (again, my emphasis added):
Cloudron is attempting to enable people with lesser technical knowledge to get apps running and most importantly updated, backed up and secured"
and:
most of our work goes into reliable, reproducible app updates
And later on in the same thread Cloudron devs go on to describe their desire to create:
a sustainable product with support
And:
We believe more into source available for trust and validation reasons bundled with a business model which is sustainable to ensure continuity for users and one which does not rely on external investment or other means to pay for dev. We have seen sandstorm failing, everyone looses out.
My personal opinion: Ideally we all have the luxury to develop all this for free, but sadly at least I don't. And we have tried patreon style.
So, to summarise, and correct me if I'm wrong @girish and @nebulon, but it would appear to me that the primary reason given for why Cloudron is not fully open source is simply because:
the business model is to sell subscriptions in order to fund ongoing development, updates and support.
Assuming I'm not wrong(?), this really confuses me, because I don't understand why Cloudron being fully open source would stop Cloudron from selling subscriptions for updates and support?
Indeed, selling subscriptions for updates and support is pretty much exactly the same business model as the first one-billion dollar (now nearly $4B) open-source company in the world, and one of the most successful open source companies of all time: RedHat:
Red Hat sells subscriptions for the support, training, and integration services that help customers in using their open-source software products. Customers pay one set price for unlimited access to services such as Red Hat Network (makes updates, patches, and bug fixes of packages included within Red Hat Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux available to subscribers) and up to 24/7 support.
This was also one of the points raised on Mastodon:
"Choosing a FOSS license does not impact your ability to have a subscription service."
It was also made previously on this forum too:
@gabrielcossette said in Cloudron no longer AGPL?:
It should be pretty simple for customers to understand, they are paying for a service of maintenance and support (indirectly funding the development of the core product). That is no different than let's say a WordPress maintenance service to have plugins/themes kept up-to-date by a company.
So, to rephrase my first question to @girish and @nebulon
- What exactly is it about Cloudron and/or the AGPL that leads you to the conclusion that if Cloudron were fully AGPL licensed you would be unable to continue with your sustainable business model of selling subscriptions for updates and support?
And to repeat my second question:
- What would need to be in place in order to convince you both to make ALL of Cloudron open source again?
(because I would love, love, LOVE, this to happen! AND it'd be really GREAT PR for 6.0! ).
From my perspective, I really cannot see any real reason why Cloudron could not continue to sell subscriptions for updates and support whilst being fully AGPL.
I certainly would not cancel my subscription! Indeed, I'd be considerably more likely to purchase an annual one (or even a 3 year subscription if that were even an option!)
Far from cancelling my subscription, if Cloudron it were to become fully open source again I'd get all excited and go on a giant Cloudron promotion spree that would no doubt generate lots more subscriptions too! (quite likely including additional subscriptions from people who've expressed their concerns to me about the licencing, and many other like minded people too).
So, here's a few additional question to all my fellow Cloudron subscribers:
- Would you stop subscribing for updates and support if Cloudron were AGPL?
- Or would you be even more inclined to invest even more in Cloudron?
- Might you, for example, be willing/ able commit to taking out a 3+ year Cloudron subscription, if that would help @girish and @nebulon feel comfortable going full open source again?
Upvote and comment to let us all know! 
Many thanks in advance to everyone, especially to @girish and @nebulon for creating such a great platform and community (and for your forthcoming answers too, of course )
