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Comment by Nux | Hacker News Reader

These guys have given the world a lot and they deserve to make some money. Without people like them we'd be running abominations like MS IIS.

I am not however very sure the open core model would work that well, people generally dread it as it tends to be crippleware.

Serious question: can anyone name one open core product that is really successfull?

If I were the people behind Nginx I would make my money through selling my technical expertise and support. Pretty much like RedHat make their money.

On the other side, this would make room for some new projects or for older to pick up some new steam (e.g. lighty, cherokee).

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> can anyone name one open core product that is really successfull?

Mysql? Was doing really well even among the OSS crowd until Oracle, and post Oracle still seems to be doing alright.

Postgresql while not traditionally open core, there are a couple of companies that employ core contributors that sell addons fairly similar to the way Mysql used to(maybe still does I haven't looked at Mysql in a while.)

Xen/XenSource seemed to go OK.

I'm not very sure about that. It certainly worked, but Xen lost a LOT of market to KVM, to the point they open sourced the whole thing (maybe a little too late?) in order to slow down the fall.

At least this is my impression. At the end of the day I do like Xen and Citrix, they were/are certainly good for virtualisation on linux.

You misspelled "apache".

How is apache an open-core model? AFAICT the server is open source and they aren't selling server addons ...

I assume he was correcting the line "we'd be running abominations like MS IIS". Many of us were running Apache httpd prior to Nginx (and Apache remains a very competitive server; still the easiest way to run PHP, and Rails+Passenger+Apache is arguably simpler than Rails+Unicorn+Nginx).

> Many of us were running Apache httpd prior to Nginx

Ah, ye olde dayes of Apache. Cast my memory back there, lord!

Many of us still are running Apache, as well as MySQL, & even PHP :)

There is also Rails + Phusion Passenger + Nginx, which is just as easy as Rails + Phusion Passenger + Apache.

As in Apache is an abomination?

I do not believe that and Apache has saved our arses over and over since times immemorial. Should've mentioned them, but it was kind of implied.

I think he's saying that people would be running Apache, not IIS. Which is what virtually everyone on Linux/BSD ran before nginx's rise.

(I'm both an nginx and apache fan, just trying to add some clarity here.)

If there's justice in the world, the people behind a software that powers 15% of the world's websites would have already had their fuck you money and never have to worry earning a salary anymore.

* Redhat is somewhat open-core: They develop proprietary interfaces and products as well as the core OS.

* Nagios.

> Redhat is somewhat open-core: They develop proprietary interfaces and products as well as the core OS.

What proprietary interfaces?

Red Hat does have things that are not available to the public (e.g. RH network), but these are more services than actual products (machine management and patching can be managed using Spacewalk these days, and all patches are rebuilt and released by CentOS/SL). There's a bit more leg-work required but RH's whole business is based around adding service value for customers.

AFAIK their whole virtualization management stack is closed.

It's fully open source, it's called Ovirt, find it at ovirt.org.

The one thing they do not provide to everyone for some reason is signed Windows drivers for QXL KVM graphical devices, but one can sign it himself need be.

Here is, at least in my industry, a fairly successful open core product: http://www.mirthcorp.com/products/mirth-connect.

I've spent a lot of time working with Mirth Connect (the OSS version), including submitting patches and bug reports back to them.

The OSS base product is not crippleware by a long shot.

Instead, MirthCorp's main way to encourage folks to purchase the paid version is the lack of freely-available, up-to-date documentation, and getting secure connections working with the OSS version requires either custom code or more sophisticated server admin skills (i.e., stunnel or proxying to get SSL support for incoming connections).

canvas[1], the LMS that a lot of of universities have been adopting is open-core and has been quite successful over the past few years.

1. https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

Riak.

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