
How to sell open source software: Guacamole case study - walterbell
https://opensource.com/article/20/6/sell-open-source-software
======
jordigh
I'm really happy to see that this is an example of really selling free
software: no non-free software in sight. I'm so used to the usual response to
"how do I sell free software?" to be "write some non-free software and sell
that instead", that I was surprised and pleased to see that Guacamole really
is selling 100% free software. All they had to do was attach a price tag, not
change the license.

Another counterexample to the proposition that you have to make your users
give up their freedom in order to coax them to pay you.

~~~
randoramax
Indeed. I hoped that Ubuntu, Debian and the other understood that the APT
repository is nothing but an App Store. Ubuntu was in great position to start
asking for money to divert to projects. Who wouldn't pay $10 for the
convenience to install Gimp or libreoffice with one command?

~~~
input_sh
elementary OS has something similar to what you're proposing.

All the apps created specifically for elementary OS[0] are available on
GitHub, authors set their preferred price in the app store. As a user you can
pay-what-you-want for the app (including $0, which allows you to download an
app without paying for it).

They're working on an online account feature for the next release so that they
can remember your credit card to make the process more streamlined, persist
between installs and similar. At the moment, it's more convenient to specify
$0 than it is to enter your card over and over again.

You can also skip the AppCenter all together by specifying the package name
(example: "apt install com.github.alaim23.planner").

[0] 162 at the moment:
[https://appcenter.elementary.io/](https://appcenter.elementary.io/)

~~~
zerd
Similar with Cyberduck. $24 on the Mac App Store to get one-click install, but
you can go to their website and download it manually for free.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
The big issue with this type of thing is that there is no moat. As long as it
is small not to attract attention, you are fine.

However, if it becomes big, or a larger company sees it as strategic, then it
is hard for you, especially for Enterprise software. Suppose Microsoft or
Amazon uses the same Guacamole components to create a solution. Then they send
their sales people to the CTO of the Enterprise. "We heard you are using this
Guacamole software in your enterprise. Why don't you buy our solution instead.
It has the same features (actually, even the same code), but it is supported
by Microsoft (or Amazon) instead of Glyptodon, Inc."

~~~
gregwebs
The moat with the Red Hat model is the trademark. Someone else can build an
alternative (such as CentOS), but they cannot call it Red Hat and they have to
do their own brand development.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I think Red Hat is pretty unique. In the decades since Red Hat was founded, I
don't think a similar company has emerged at Red Hat's scale and reputation.

~~~
gregwebs
There are other open source companies using the Red Hat licensing model now
such as Chef. Some are coming to the realization this license style is the
only one where the goal of both being open source and having some kind of moat
are easy to accomplish. Otherwise every time you start a new code repository
you need to think about its license and your future business strategy.

------
auggierose
I don't really understand the argument. Does the commercial version have
something that the open source one doesn't have? If yes, is the commercial
version also open-source, but with a different license?

And what exactly differentiates the commercial version from the open-source
one? Is it that they took the lessons from their support & service business,
and formalised them into a product?

~~~
TAForObvReasons
It sounds like what Caddy tried doing years ago, with an open source thing you
could build from source and paid commercial binaries. Especially since the
Apache Guacamole installation docs don't mention RPM, it seems like the value-
add here is in the packaging.

I think the lesson here is that if open source software has nontrivial setup,
there's money to be made by simplifying the packaging and distribution.
Perversely it suggests you should make your open source software harder to
integrate, so that people will pay you to set it up for them.

~~~
darkwater
I don't think that's really true. In Caddy case for example, simply it's a
software space where the rivals are AWS, GCloud and Nginx. But Nginx
(enterprise) came way before the cloud boom and so they had already a foot in
the market.

The Guacamole case is really different since their customers will be by
definition the IT departments. So, even if OS packaging was already good
enough, you will still have a big chance of selling it to a big corporation.

------
whalesalad
Guacamole also has one of the best, most succinct open source websites out
there. No BS, easy to navigate, clear call to action on most pages. Bravo.

------
miles
Previously:

Guacamole – A clientless remote desktop gateway, 1096 points | Oct 3, 2017 |
218 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15389727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15389727)

------
IshKebab
Unfortunately the answer usually seems to be "make it difficult to build or
set up so people will be pay you to do that for them" (or put no effort into
making it easier).

I think the open core model is better - it provides less incentive to make the
open source version difficult to set up, and I'd guess it provides more stable
income.

------
guerby
Another less well-known free software for remote access:

[https://github.com/Ylianst/MeshCentral](https://github.com/Ylianst/MeshCentral)

Developped by Intel for AMT/vPro management but works also as a remote desktop
in the browser.

------
Shared404
Another interesting example of this is ZynAddSubFX [1].

Although there is not a company built around this (to the best of my
knowledge), they do sell binaries while leaving all of the code open source.

[1] [https://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.io/](https://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.io/)

