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WHat do you think of OSS as a hook?

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 9:19 pm
by alex.barylski
Basically a company that gives a way a semi-useful version of it's enterprise edition...obviously it's a hook but do you still appreciate the gesture, desipte it's lack of commercial useful-ness, more geared towards a single user in a non-commercial environment.

I think we are all aware of OSS projects which have used this angle as a hook and sold a much more robust, feature-full version, sometimes at a SMB acceptable cost (few hundred bucks).

Re: WHat do you think of OSS as a hook?

Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 4:03 am
by matthijs
I know that Ellislabs does provide a free "core" version of it's CMS expression engine, but when you want the full version you pay. And you also pay for all extra modules (like a forum). This business model seems to work out well for them.

The free core version has no support (besides asking questions on the public forum), the paid version does. And there are some more differences.

Currently they are rewriting the code of the cms to be build on top of the codeigniter framework

Re: WHat do you think of OSS as a hook?

Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 4:55 pm
by alex.barylski
Thats a good example actually, thanks for that.

Re: WHat do you think of OSS as a hook?

Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 2:10 am
by Chris Corbyn
I was going to do something like that with Swift Mailer. Free version (the one that exists), then a paid version (things that I constantly get asked for).

I'm probably not going to do that now though. It seemed too off-putting and might scare potential users away (if users see that I start charging it's like "Oh, there goes another open source project working it's way to commercialization").

The model I'm think of now (I need to discuss it with the other guys really I guess) is to make everything free but put a freeze on new features. Then for all of the things that people keep asking for, have a donations page with a "target" figure for each feature. Users can pay money with a credit card/paypal and select the feature they want the money to go on, or they can "Buy the developers a beer - this isn't for any feature". It's a bit of fun and it actually acts as a driving force towards implementing features.

Donations have proven to be very successful as "pocket money generators" in the past when I've pushed them on the site. For example I raised the money for a mac mini when my dell craptop completely died (basically people were donating to get me a new computer so I could work on something that... err... worked).

Took a few months but I raised the cash.

Then I did a similar thing when I was coming out to Oz. I raised spending money to get here and to do some travelling. Again, it took a few months but I raised more than enough to fly across the world and live for a few weeks.

I imagine with proper marketing donations asked for in a clever & friendly way could be good revenue generators. So open source all the way for me :)

Of course, I have the security of a full time job so I can afford to mess around with such ideas.

Re: WHat do you think of OSS as a hook?

Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 5:38 pm
by alex.barylski
"Oh, there goes another open source project working it's way to commercialization").
This is true, unfortunately. I think it would be important to make it obvious right out of the gates.