Ask HN: Which License to Choose for an Open Core Product | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which License to Choose for an Open Core Product

5 pointsrmcoder5 comments

Hey HN;

I have been working on an Open Source project for a while and its getting popular thanks to ease of use and lack of alternatives.

I am lucky enough to find a number of clients who are willing to pay for a more feature rich version. Does anyone have any suggestions for license templates to be used in such cases?

ie an Open core free version ( free as in freedom and free beer) and a paid ( subscription based ) version

Gitlab's licensing model looks similar and am quite impressed by the way they pulled off.

https://about.gitlab.com/terms/#subscription

Any thoughts will be appreciated

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There are many things to consider when choosing a license. It is all very personal to what rights you want to grant and what risks you are willing to accept.

There is a nice tool I came across that can help you assess which license makes most sense for your open core free version. https://choosealicense.com/about/

As for commercial terms for the paid product, I would recommend seeking a legal resource to assist with those because you will want to make sure you are adequately protected. It is not as easy to simply copy someone else’s commercial terms because every product has differing risks, and every product owner has differing risk tolerances. A small investment in a legal resource upfront is significantly less expensive than hiring an attorney on the back end, once a problem arises.

I've been along these lines in the past few weeks as well.

Some examples I've come across https://github.com/snipe/snipe-it Uses GNU Affero General Public License v3.0[]

Invoice Ninja (https://github.com/invoiceninja/invoiceninja/) uses an ATTRIBUTION ASSURANCE LICENSE (adapted from the original BSD license).

I hope these can guide you in the right direction

What a coincidence. I have a similar question and my profile name is MrCoder :)

Well great minds think alike ;)

I would love to know about this as well

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