
Building an Open Source Service - joeyespo
https://blog.sentry.io/2016/10/24/building-an-open-source-service.html
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zeeg
David here from Sentry. Just saw this ended up on HN. Happy to answer any
questions about how we approach open source, the business, or anything else
about Sentry.

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fiatjaf
What if another company takes open-source Sentry and start offering hosted
versions of it, competing with Sentry.io and in the end putting Sentry.io out
of the market? Would that make you regret making your software open-source?

I guess this is probably not an issue for Sentry as it is now, but imagine
some small company with a new software-as-a-service, super useful and loved
everywhere, but without a well-established "name" in the market yet. Does the
same answer still apply?

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mperham
Generally you license the code so competitors have a disadvantage e.g. with
GNU licenses, they may have to open source any changes they make. As the
copyright holder, you can do things with the code that they cannot (since you
don't have to follow license restrictions), i.e. create premium features.

~~~
zeeg
Thats a common situation, but we explicitly refuse to do that. I have a strong
opinion that it doesn't represent what open source should be, and thats
absolutely free software. I do understand that some things are considered
necessary, but we're trying to prove thats not the case.

It's also something that can limit the adoption of your product. I've worked
with companies in the past have either refused to use allow GPL software, or
would have a significant audit process you'd have to go through to be able to
use it.

~~~
nickpsecurity
What do you think about using a license that forces freeing any changes to
what you shared but doesn't affect anything linking to it dynamically or
statically? As in:

[http://zeromq.org/area:licensing](http://zeromq.org/area:licensing)

Additionally, patent license provisions for using the shared code seem almost
mandatory given the patent trolling we're seeing of both suppliers and users
of whatever they manage to get through a patent clerk. All the FOSS licenses
should try to include some protection there against beneficiaries suing
derivatives.

~~~
zeeg
Definitely not a license expert here. Lots of legal folk I trust would stand
by "Apache and only Apache" for releasing FOSS, and I think one of the core
reasons is patent protection. We may re-license Sentry at some point to Apache
just because its a more understood model and as a growing business that may
one day be important. It's also nice that it provides good out of the box
tools that are widely supported (e.g. the CLA).

~~~
nickpsecurity
You should definitely check out MPL too. I was told it's like LGPL for static
linking. As in, commercial integrators can use it without releasing their
source. Only have to release improvements to sentry itself in that model.

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agibsonccc
Hi,

Great article. Wanted to throw out an alternative scenario: what if you arent
a hosted saas trying to get lots of users but instead sell to enterprise with
a focus on selling something like a distro (think like flavors of linux)? If
it matters we are in machine intelligence mainly dealing with bank and telco.

We are open core with an oracle style licensing and support model. We have
found this to be a great business but I always love hearing alternative
opinions on this. Gitlab follows this as well.

Have you thought about an "enterprise version" with features that dont matter
to startups?

~~~
zeeg
This is definitely a conversation we've had. In our mind, we think SaaS is the
right way for our business to work. It lets us continuously ship, scale more
easily, and in general provide great customer service and experiences.

That said, if the SaaS model isn't enough, we'll certainly explore other
opportunities, but we're trying _very_ hard to keep it FOSS without creating a
separate version intended for different customers. It's not because it has to
be that way, but for us we don't think its needed.

I do think theres a lot of software that won't move to SaaS any time soon, but
that line is going to keep shifting.

~~~
agibsonccc
Thanks for the response. Congrats on finding something that works for you!

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tschellenbach
Sentry is excellent, we use it everywhere.

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rolodato
Open source is not free software: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-
misses-the-point....](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-
point.html).

Don't get me wrong, I think open source is great and far better than
proprietary software, but we should use the correct terminology.

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LewisJEllis
Open source is not _necessarily_ free software, but often is, as that link
clarifies:

    
    
      > Nearly all open source software is free software, but there are exceptions.
    

The distinctions made in your citation make it clear that Sentry is both open
source and free. I don't think there's any incorrect terminology being used
here; can you point to a specific misuse?

