On Friday, November 05, 2010 09:09:21 pm Sean Clark wrote:

> There's been some discussion of the "open core" business model going

> around lately, so it's not an unreasonable concern. If it WERE the case

> that a lot of the new really useful features were going "paid premium

> only", I think it WOULD slowly kill off the free community version. I

> suspect that's really what Heitor was trying express concern about (and

> I suspect English is not his primary language, so his post ended up

> looking more intense than perhaps he'd intended).

>

Maybe I can address whether the term "open core" applies here, and explain why it doesn't.

I feel I need to, because I feel personally offended by the application of the term to a suspected future path of Bacula -then again maybe I care about this too much ;-)

"open core" is creating the suggestion of a product sold commercially being Open Source, which is a very, very marketable term to use these days, and is being abused all over the industry, but effectively selling additional program components or extensions as part of the one product sale that are not Open Source but in fact proprietary, rendering the complete product sold not-so-open any longer.

"proprietary" in this previous sentence reads: no source code, no freedoms, no insight, no auditibility, all of the above and possibly more, or any combination thereof, and very probably much less then you paid for.

That said, some go about it completely wrong, and every once in a while someone like me gets the opportunity to call them out and give them a little spanking -example case in point is Zmanda.

Sometimes, some go about it completely right, which is a very difficult challenge as "all of the product is readily available, to all, with the same quality as the product you are trying to sell" is, as you can undoubtedly understand, undermining the very concept of what a business is. Without revenue, there is no business, and without a business, there is no revenue to sustain the project in the long term -example cases in point are Bacula Systems, Kolab Systems, Red Hat.

There's added value to be added to the product available commercially *somehow*, like you will undoubtedly understand, for a sustainable business to grow a sustainable revenue stream. Like I said, some chicken out and abuse what I hold dearest, going about it entirely wrong, and some stick with it and commit to the fullest and hence deserve my most sincere endorsement and support whereever I can.

Now, slapping the term "proprietary" to feature enhancements and/or extensions to Bacula, by Bacula Systems, by creating the mere suggestion a product is (becoming) Open Core, or "Not So Open", or "French", or whatever you call it, to the product of one out of two truly Free Software companies in Europe I can think of -and I do this for a living- is... incomprehensible for me.

Remember, "Free Software" does not spell "unconditional availability to everyone all the time". Free Software perfectly well allows you to charge a fee for obtaining the work; the conditions it sets are related to user freedoms, not price nor availability.

What Bacula Systems does with it's extensions and utilities available to customers only is in compliance, Free, morally and ethically correct, and should not meet any resistence from anyone while they (Bacula Systems) are committed and show such commitment over and over again, to further the project we all enjoy consuming and/or being a part of, for as long as the license on the work available to customers only does not restrict such customer in any of the four essential freedoms (paraphrasing; use, study, modify, redistribute).

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen

-kanarip