Hi there! On 09/27/2010 04:58 PM, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
Am Donnerstag, 23. September 2010 01:16:39 schrieb David Gerard:
On 22 September 2010 22:51, Hugo Royhugo@fsfe.org wrote:
Le mercredi 22 septembre 2010 à 17:51 +0100, David Gerard a écrit :
On 22 September 2010 17:21, Anastasios Hatzisanh@hatzis.de wrote:
On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 17:12 +0200, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
It is proprietary business on top. Just like the neo-proprietary business people do it, like SugarCRM.
Bernhard, would you mind explaining "neo-proprietary"? Thanks.
I have no good reference for neo-proprietary at hand. I've meant that those companies are advertising a "free software" edition and they have a lot of proprietary extensions. Often you only get support for the proprietary stuff.
Technically free software that isn't in practical application, I'd think.
Your description matches some of the symptoms, but it does not seem to be enough to let a reader decide which is "neo-proprietary" or not.
In the case of SugarCRM, isn't it about "Open Core"? Just a guess,
The name changes, the concept remains the same ;-)
Yes, some people seems to call stuff "open core". I also do not have a good explanation for that term at hand. Just two observations: the "neo" in "neo-proprietary" does not seem to fit perfectly, this proprietary business modell seems to be quite old. Often it went by "dual licensing". "Open Core" is giving readers the wrong idea, as it sounds positive, but I have only found uses where it was actually a proprietary business, not a Free Software based one.
Here's a quote from the FLOSSresearch project: "Open Core (previously called “split Free Software/proprietary” or “proprietary value-add”): this model distinguishes between a basic Free Software and a proprietary version, based on the Free Software one but with the addition of proprietary plug-ins."
http://guide.flossmetrics.org/index.php/6._FLOSS-based_business_models
Note that Dual licensing is actually a different model, though also an effort to make business around proprietary software.
Fortunately, the "open core" form of locking people into proprietary hooks accounts only for 52 out of 451 of the free software projects that they researched, and the dominant model is "fully free software".
best,