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Why Open Core Licensing Sucks!!

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Why Open Core Licensing Sucks!!
FOSDEM 2016

Newer open source projects are embracing "Open Core" licensing model, where key parts of the software are restricted under a proprietary license. This model is deceiving and worse than a fully proprietary licensing model. This talk discusses the threats of open core model and how to successfully build a fully free commercial software.

It has become a trend to start as fully open source project until it reaches a critical mass adoption and then switch to a partially proprietary model. Typically, management user interface or some high-end features are restricted to commercial customers. Open source community is treated like a bunch of hackers and hobbyists. There isn't a really good reason to adopt open core model.

  • Proprietary vs Open Core vs Open Source vs Free Software
  • How to commercialize Free software?
  • How to get venture funding and still stay Open source?
  • Impact of GNU (A)GPL vs Apache License for commercial software?

Speakers: Anand Babu (AB) Periasamy