Outdoor saas

I recently saw a couple of commercial services that make their code open source. Some examples are cloud9 ide and reddit . Of course, Wordpress comes to mind. It was OSS because I don’t know when - under GPl (for example, cloud9) with a parallel service that charges for "features" or premium things. ( full list )

So the question is:

  • Is it safe to open the source application (under the GPL) and use it to enable Saas, which charges for the β€œservices” it provides on top of this application?

  • What are the pros and cons of this?

  • Does it really make sense? :)

I just love open source and would like to share some of my projects with open source and also get some revenue from it. So my concern!

Thank you so much for your help!

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2 answers

No open source license allows you to charge for software or services. The GPL simply says that if you are distributing a modified version of some GPL software, your changes should also be released under the GPL. He does not say that you should distribute your modified version at all, if you do not want it, only if you do, you should do it under the GPL.

The Affero GPL goes further than this and says that if you use the AGPL software to manage your network service, then you should release any changes you make to the software in the AGPL. In other words, providing public access to the service is treated in the same way as software distribution.

Of course, if you own the copyright (all parts) of this software, then you can release and / or use it for free under any licenses that you have chosen. You can release it (A) the GPL, but also provide the option of a commercial license or release the main software like AGPL, and then run your own service that will add your own custom extensions whose code you don't release, an open source license says : anyone can use this software in accordance with the terms of the [GPL / Apache / independently] without requesting special permission, "but you, as the copyright holder, can provide other licenses to determine nnyh people / affairs, including (obviously) own.

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FWIF, freeing the source of your SaaS, you will lose the "security from the unknown." Everyone can see that you are using an outdated version of the framework and are looking for security tickets for this version. On the other hand, it makes you think about proper security, for example. updated version of libraries.

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