“Open Core” Is the New Shareware

[ I originally wrote this essay below centered around the term “Open Core”. Despite that even say below that the terms is somewhat meaningless, I later realized this term was so problematic that it should be abandoned entirely, for use instead of the clearer term “proprietary relicensing”. However, since this blog post was widely linked to, I've nevertheless left the text as it originally was in October 2009. ]

There has been some debate recently about so-called “Open Core” business models. Throughout the history of Free Software, companies have loved to come up with “innovative” proprietary-like ways to use the FLOSS licensing structures. Proprietary relicensing, a practice that I believe has proved itself to have serious drawbacks, was probably the first of these, and now Open Core is the next step in this direction. I believe the users embracing these codebases may be ignoring a past they're condemned to repeat.

Like most buzzwords, Open Core has no real agreed-upon meaning. I'm using it to describe a business model whereby some middleware-ish system is released by a single, for-profit entity copyright holder, who requires copyright-assigned changes back to the company, and that company sells proprietary add-ons and applications that use the framework. Often, the model further uses the GPL to forbid anyone but the copyright-holding company to make such proprietary add-on applications (i.e., everyone else would have to GPL their applications). In the current debate, some have proposed that a permissive license structure can be used for the core instead.

Ultimately, “Open Core” is a glorified shareware situation. As a user, you get some subset of functionality, and may even get the four freedoms with regard to that subset. But, when you want the “good stuff”, you've got to take a proprietary license. And, this is true whether the Core is GPL'd or permissively licensed. In both cases, the final story is the same: take a proprietary license or be stuck with cripple-ware.

This fact remains true whether the Open Core is under a copyleft license or a permissive one. However, I must admit that a permissive license is more intellectually honest to the users. When users encounter a permissive license, they know what they are in for: they may indeed encounter proprietary add-ons and improvements, either from the original distributor or a third party. For example, Apple users sadly know this all too well; Apple loves to build on a permissively licensed core and proprietarize away. Yet, everyone knows what they're getting when they buy Apple's locked down, unmodifiable, and programmer-unfriendly products.

Meanwhile, in more typical “Open Core” scenarios, the use of the GPL is actually somewhat insidious. I've written before about how the copyleft is a tool, not an end in itself. Like any tool, it can be misused or abused. I think using the GPL as a tool for corporate control over users, while legally permissible, is ignoring the spirit of the license. It creates two classes of users: those precious few that can proprietarize and subjugate others, and those that can't.¹

This (ab)use of GPL has led folks like Matt Aslett to suggest that the permissive licensing solution would serve this model better. While I've admitted such a change would have some level of increased intellectually honesty, I don't think it's the solution we should strive for to solve the problem. I think Aslett's completely right when he argues that GPL'd “Open Core” became popular because it's Venture Capitalists' way of making peace with freely licensed copyrights. However, heading to an Apple-like permissive only structure only serves to make more Apple-like companies, and that's surely not good for software freedom either. In fact, the problem is mostly orthogonal to licensing. It's a community building problem.

The first move we have to make is simply give up the idea that the best technology companies are created by VC money. This may be true if you