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The Shift of Open Source Solutions

Minio is archived


 [DISCLAIMER: THIS IS MY POINT OF VIEW AND SHALL NOT BE LINKED WITH THE COMPANY WHERE I WORK NOR ITS DECISION]


As a supporter of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) movement and even once one of the spearhead of Indonesian FOSS movement, all I can say is that there is a great shift of what is an Open Source movement.


Ever since Eric Raymond shift the definition of Open Source, which forced Stallman to use new term: Free Software, it is clear that project that made its source open is a new strategy for new startups to gather masses. Yeah, a for-profit company seeking fame using open source strategy.


However, how far would you go to open them up?


Well, there are two things that made it not profitable:

1. You made the product too stable and easy to use that you failed to commercialized it. The biggest example is RethinkDB.

2. You made the product with permissive license (MIT/BSD clause) and cloud companies use your product and make superior offerings.


From long ago, commercialization is all about battle of offerings. I can think of few successful strategies:

1. "The software is free, but the service is ours." It was a statement by Mark Shuttleworth when he was on Jakarta attending Ubuntu conference (I forgot the year, btw). Companies open their repositories but selling the managed operation contracts.

2. Dual licensing. Use GPL or AGPL for the free software and proprietary license for closed-source software that use your software. Current software companies (Redis, HashiCorp, etc.) learned that the hard way. But, Qt is already done that since day one, since the first KDE. From the Trolltech era, Nokia, and now.

3. Freemium. Use permissive license and take the good features into the Enterprise license. This is apparently the one that MinIO would like to take.


But, here's the catch: I always the supporter of free/open source software because I believe it makes the company where I am in survived. Some of you might not remember, but there was a digital divide between third world countries and the US and its allies.


Since GNU founded and Linux was part of its offerings, the gap was reduced. We didn't have to smear our laws to use pirated solutions. Since OpenPGP opened its source code, we can protect our data like them. Kudos to the inventor to take the hit and made the global Internet safer.


And now, MinIO, like Mattermost and others, chose freemium. I believe there would be multiple migrations happening. This is inevitable and unfortunately these developers didn't know about the escalated tension between countries.


I'm Indonesian and our country is on the neutral side. But, Trump made it clear that no words can be held accountable to stabilize trust. We don't know how tomorrow will come. A tension between China and US, Russia with US and so forth. We as the third countries could be on the collateral side. Think about the other countries more affected by the tensions like countries in Europe and East Asia. As Indonesian, I think my country running in delicate ways to balance sides. Indonesia notoriously in the side Non-Block movement. We want to stay neutral, but that neutrality also comes with costs. I wish the world in peace and we all can take differences as colors of the rainbows and sunshine.

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