Hey All, 2010/4/14 Rahul Sundaram <metherid@xxxxxxxxx>: > Hi, > > Open core, for those not familiar with the term is the business model of > keeping some key features closed and selling a proprietary product where > the "core" functionality is free and open source. Two features in the > feature list are such software > > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/13/FeatureList > > Zarafa groupware and IntelliJ IDEA, IDE for Java have a number of > features that is only available in their proprietary product. > > http://www.zarafa.com/content/editions > http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html > > Do we care? I am concerned about this. We had an interesting talk about the differences between Open Core and Open Source at LOADays last weekend. We went over some of the different "Open Core" models out there, and while we were pretty unanimous in that Open Source is better, one takeaway was that we need to differentiate between who is doing Open Source The Right Way (TM) and who isn't. There are a number of issues we can identify, mostly orthogonal to each other, but combine defines how "Open" you might say the project/product/company is. 1) The source code is available freely, but not really usable without some tweaks, build hacks and possibly the sacrifice of $furry_animal_that_doesn't_offend_your_religion 2) The source code is available only to customers and is not freely available on the company's website. 3) There are modules you can purchase or get a support contract that adds critical value to the software, but are not available under an open source license; the community is forced to reimplement this functionality. 4) There are modules you can purchase or get a support contract that primarily focuses on interoperability with uncooperative proprietary software, and the code itself is encumbered by legal hurdles such as patents, trade secrets, NDA. To different degrees, each situation here can be understandable and reasonable or not. I suggest that if this is an important issue, we go into exactly the different models of what's open core and what's just 'barely' open source, provide working recommendations on what works for us, and codify these standards. In any case, as long as the code itself can be gotten Freely, there's no reason why it shouldn't be in Fedora. Perhaps people demanding more openness because they like the product can change the minds of the company that's creating it. -Yaakov -- marketing mailing list marketing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
