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Open source may be the building blocks of the modern software stack, but companies that build businesses on the back of open source software face a constant struggle between keeping their community happy and ensuring third parties don’t abuse the permissions granted by the license.
Many companies have launched into open source with lofty ambitions, then ducked for cover once the realities of the commercial world hit the ground running. It’s all about protecting their bottom line, especially with investors (public or private) to appease.
But it can be difficult to monitor all these changes, while also distinguishing between those that have abandoned open source altogether and those that have sought refuge behind a less permissive (but still open source) license (such as the likes of Element, I did Grafana in the past few years).
As such, TechCrunch has compiled a timeline of open source companies that have changed course over the past decade.
The Movable Kind (2013)
Movable type It created an open source version (called MTOS) of its web publishing software in 2007 under “copyleft” JBL The license is open source, a move that brought it closer to WordPress. Such licenses It provides certain freedoms, but requires that all derivative works be released under a similar license. However, this move continued until 2013, when the ported species was created Then the owners It abandoned the open source product, saying it “hurts adoption” of commercial versions.
“The community hasn’t grown because of MTOS, and we haven’t seen greater download numbers from our paid versions of Movable Type, so at this point it doesn’t make economic sense to continue to keep something that has become so popular and distribute it of little use.” The company He wrote at that time.
Sugar CRM (2014)
Initially founded in 2004, it is a maker of customer relationship management (CRM) software. Sugar CRM Advertise on 2014 It will no longer offer an open source “community edition,” noting that its two core markets — developers and first-time CRM users looking for a cheap solution — are not effectively served by the product.
The company continued to support the latest version (v6.5) of the open source version for another four years, before pulling the plug In 2018.
Redis (2018)
redisthe creators of the popular in-memory database store, have been moving away from their open source roots since 2018, when they ported their “Redis modules” (e.g. Re-search) from open source AGPL Apache 2.0 license with “Commons clause” extension (i.e., commercial restrictions). The following year, Redis replaced the Commons clause with its own Redis open source license (Message) which promised to maintain some freedoms, but with notable limitations related to competing database services — such as those offered by companies like AWS.
In many ways, this was a sign of what was to come, with other companies later citing the “Amazon problem” as a reason for changing their license. Earlier this year, Redis’ transition into the proprietary world was completed, when it announced that its core software would go from barebones BSD 3-item License to set up a dual license – RSAL license or generic server-side license (SSBL).
Mongo D. B. (2018)
In 2018, database company MongoDB moved away from the open source AGPL license to the SSPL. the reason? Yes: To prevent cloud expanders like AWS from selling their own version of the service without contributing in return.
Wavy (2018)
The “year that was” for the open source license switch has ended with Wavya company that sells enterprise-class tools and services around Apache Kafka, Switch Some components of its core platform from Apache 2.0 are proprietary wavy community license.
This license provides a notable exception, one that prevents any competing service from offering the Confluent Products “as a service.”
Cockroach Labs (2019)
Cockroach laboratoriescreator of the distributed SQL database of the same name known as CockroachDB, has continued to change its licensing ethos.
In 2019 the company’s founders Announce They were moving CockroachDB from the permissible Apache 2.0 license to the Business Source License (bus). Once again, cloud scaling tools like AWS have been the driving force behind this change.
“We are seeing the emergence of highly integrated providers that leverage their unique position to offer ‘as-a-service’ versions of OSS (open source software) products, and deliver a superior user experience as a result of their integrations.” The founders wrote at the time.
Last August, Cockroach Labs announced another change: It would consolidate its self-hosted product under a single enterprise license, as a way to encourage larger companies to pay for the features they really need.
Sentry (2019)
sentrythe A $3 billion company Behind the application performance monitoring platform of the same name, it was previously available under license BSD 3-item open source license. But in 2019, the company Go to BUSL, with co-founder and CTO David Cramer saying this is aimed at countering “funded companies that plagiarize or copy our work to compete directly with Sentry.”
Last year, Sentry launched its own functional source license (FSL), which is similar to BUSL but a little simpler. And as of this year, Sentry is putting its weight behind a new licensing model called “Fair Source,” which, as TechCrunch reported at the time, “is designed to bridge the gap between the open and proprietary worlds, filled with new definitions, terms, and concepts.” Governance Model.”
Rubber (2021)
It’s been several years In makingbut flexible – Enterprise search engine builder Flexible search and Kibana Conceptual dashboard – gone Ownership In 2021. It was a familiar story, one that can be traced back to 2015 when AWS launched its Elasticsearch managed service.
However, Elastic stands as more or less one of the only companies that has moved away from open source, and then come back again. Back in August, Elastic announced that it would adopt the AGPL license – different from the Apache 2.0 license it used before 2021, but open source nonetheless.
Hashi Corp (2023)
Hashi Corp It also abandoned the open source ship last year, advertisement It was replacing the popular Infrastructure as Code tool Terraform From a copyleft open source license to BUSL.
A common reason was that some vendors were prevented from monetizing Terraform without contributing anything to the project.
An open source fork called OpenTofu was launched earlier this year by third parties, and it’s worth noting that IBM acquired HashiCorp for $6.4 billion.
Snow Plow (2024)
Snow plowa venture capital-backed platform that helps companies collect behavioral data for AI applications this year turned from Apache 2.0 open source license for Snowplow Limited Use License Agreement.
The reason, the company said, is that it needs to fund its “exciting technology roadmap,” and so everyone who runs its software into production must “pay for the value they get in return.” The new license also explicitly prohibits users from creating a competitive product built on top of Snowplow.
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