Open source may be a building block of the modern software stack, but companies building businesses on open source software are constantly caught between keeping the community happy and ensuring that third parties are not abusing the rights provided by the license. We face a struggle.
Many companies started out with grand ambitions for open source, but then went into hiding when the reality of the commercial world hit them. It is especially important to protect returns to the satisfaction of investors (public or private).
However, it can be difficult to monitor all these changes while also distinguishing between abandoning open source altogether and taking refuge behind less permissive but still open source licenses (such as Element and Grafana have done in the past few years).
So TechCrunch has compiled a timeline of open source companies that have changed direction over the past decade.
Movable Type (2013)
Movable Type created an open source version of its web publishing software (called MTOS) in 2007 under the “copyleft” GPL open source license. This brings it closer to WordPress. These licenses provide certain freedoms, but require that any derivative works be released under a similar license. In any case, this move lasted until 2013, when Movable Type’s then-owner abandoned the open source product, saying it was “harming adoption” of the commercial version.
“The community hasn’t grown with MTOS, and we’ve never seen more downloads than the paid version of Movable Type. It is virtually useless,” the company wrote at the time.
SugarCRM(2014)
SugarCRM, a customer relationship management (CRM) software maker first founded in 2004, announced in 2014 that it would no longer offer an open source “community edition.” This meant that the product was not effectively served by two key markets: developers looking for an affordable solution and first-time CRM users.
The company continued to support the last version (v6.5) of its open source incarnation for four years before pulling the plug in 2018.
Redis (2018)
Redis, creator of the popular in-memory database store, has been moving away from its open source roots since 2018, moving its “Redis modules” (such as RediSearch) from the open source AGPL license to Apache 2.0 via “common terms.” ” Appendices (e.g. commercial restrictions). The following year, Redis replaced the Commons terms with its own Redis Source Available License (RSAL). The Redis Source Available License (RSAL) guarantees some freedoms, but includes notable limitations associated with competing database services offered by companies such as AWS.
In many ways, this was a harbinger of things to come. Because other companies later cited “Amazon issues” as the reason for switching licenses. Earlier this year, Redis completed its transition into proprietary territory when it announced that its core software would be moving from the BSD 3-Clause license to a dual-license setup (RSAL or Server-Side Public License (SSPL)).
MongoDB (2018)
In 2018, database company MongoDB switched from its open source AGPL license to SSPL. Why? Yes. This is to prevent cloud hyperscalers like AWS from selling versions of their own services without contribution.
Confluent (2018)
A “year” of open source license transitions concluded for Confluent, a company that sells enterprise-grade tools and services around Apache Kafka, switching some components of its core platform from Apache 2.0 to the proprietary Confluent Community license.
This license provides a notable exclusion that prohibits competing services from offering Confluent’s products “as a service.”
Cockroach Lab (2019)
Cockroach Labs, creator of the eponymous distributed SQL database known as CockroachDB, has continued to change its licensing ethos.
In 2019, the company’s founders announced that they were transitioning CockroachDB from the permissive Apache 2.0 license to the Business Source License (BUSL). Again, cloud hyperscalers like AWS were the driving force of change.
“We are seeing highly integrated providers leverage their unique position to offer ‘as-a-service’ versions of open source software (OSS) products and deliver superior user experiences as a result of their integration.” The founders wrote at the time:
Last August, Cockroach Labs announced another change. That means we’ll be consolidating our self-hosted products into a single enterprise license as a way to encourage larger businesses to pay for the features they actually need.
Sentry (2019)
Sentry, the $3 billion company behind the app performance monitoring platform of the same name, was once available under the permissive BSD 3-Clause open source license. But in 2019, the company moved to BUSL, which co-founder and CTO David Cramer said was meant to counter “funded companies that are plagiarizing or copying our work to compete directly with Sentry.”
Last year, Sentry released its own Functional Source License (FSL), which is similar to BUSL but a bit simpler. And starting this year, Sentry is focused on supporting a new licensing paradigm called “Fair Source.” As TechCrunch reported at the time, this paradigm is “designed to bridge open and proprietary worlds, filled with new definitions, terms, and technologies.” Governance Model.”
Elastic (2021)
It’s been years in the making, but Elastic, creators of the enterprise search engine Elasticsearch and Kibana visualization dashboards, became exclusive in 2021. It’s a familiar story that can be traced back to 2015, when AWS launched its self-managed Elasticsearch service. .
But Elastic is somewhat unique as one of the only companies to move away from open source and then come back. Last August, Elastic announced that in 2021 it would adopt the AGPL license, which is different from the Apache 2.0 license it previously used but is nonetheless open source.
Hashkov (2023)
HashiCorp also abandoned the open source ship last year when it announced it was switching its popular “infrastructure as code” tool Terraform from a copyleft open source license to BUSL.
The familiar reason was to prevent certain vendors from monetizing Terraform without contributing back to the project.
An open source fork called OpenTofu was released by a third party earlier this year, and, noteworthy, IBM acquired HashiCorp for $6.4 billion.
Snowplow (2024)
Snowplow, a VC-backed platform that helps companies collect behavioral data for AI applications, switched this year from the open source Apache 2.0 license to the Snowplow Limited Use License Agreement.
That’s because it needs to fund an “exciting technology roadmap” and therefore anyone running the software in production “must pay for the value they receive in return,” the company said. Additionally, the new license explicitly prohibits users from creating competing products built on top of Snowplow.
