Opinion Repeat after me: Open source is not a business model. It is a programming model. Still businesses keep trying to make it one, and far more often than not, they fail.

Some of them then get the bright idea of switching to a fauxpen source license, such as the Business Source License (BSL) and Server Side Public License (SSPL). This enables them to dump their open source obligations and, hopefully, make more money.

Yet what if even the far less onerous requirements chafe as well? Well, in that case, why keep the fig leaf of a fauxpen source license and just go full proprietary? That's what CockroachDB did with its distributed transactional database.

Of course, that's not how the company explained its move. It announced it would drop its BSL 1.1 for its free "Core" product in favor of a new Enterprise licensing structure for self-hosted users. This, claimed CockroachDB CEO Spencer Kimball, will provide "all of our users with the full breadth of CockroachDB capabilities." It will also provide "a fair exchange of value." Fair according to whom?

Yeah, yeah, it's for our users, yadda-yadda.

The CockroachDB Enterprise Free version will appear in November 2024 with version 24.3. The code will still be available to look at but not be used. You can use it for free if you're an individual developer, student, academic researcher, or a business with under $10 million in annual revenues. Of course, moving ahead, you'll need to prove this every year before your license is renewed. If it's renewed, that is.

As one observer put it on Ycombinator: "I understand the goal, and the perceived abuse of the Core edition. But the problem with the Enterprise edition is that it's quite expensive, 'contact us' salesy, and it feels like taking a bite of this edition is possibly getting into bed with a future Oracle/landlord type of relationship where you end up squeezed by your database vendor."

Another person followed up: "It seems that whenever an open source project is run by a VC-backed company, it sooner or later ends up like this. Increasingly, it seems that 'open source' is just the teaser to get people interested and then when investors want revenue growth, the rug gets pulled."

Exactly so. It's not, however, that "open source" is just a teaser. True, developers, in particular, are attracted to open source programs. But if it weren't for the help of uncompensated open source programmers, CockroachDB wouldn't exist.

What makes the CockroachDB case unique is that it had already dumped open source. Now it's no longer even pretending to be a fauxpen source. It's a pure proprietary play with a free taste.

It's not like CockroachDB or the other companies that have adopted fauxpen source haven't made money. Far from it! In 2021, CockroachDB had a valuation of $5 billion. While the VC-financed company hasn't announced revenue numbers, it did claim in 2023 that it had landed two Fortune 50 banks as customers.

At an expert guesstimate, I expect CockroachDB will be well over $100 million in revenue this year. But when VCs are calling the shots, that's not close to good enough. CockroachDB may already be a unicorn in valuation, but a billion in revenue would be even sweeter.

That's why companies such as Elastic, MongoDB, Redis, and Terraform adopted fauxpen source licenses. It's all about increasing profits. Now, though, the question is: "Will they also transition to proprietary licenses?" I expect they'll watch CockroachDB closely to see how its move will play - and pay out.

If CockroachDB successfully converts fauxpen source "freeloaders" into paying customers, they'll all follow.

The ultimate result might be to muddy the water for future open source software companies. The balance between maintaining an open source ethos and ensuring business viability has always been delicate. This move might wreck it.

If corporate open source becomes just a route to increasing VC and founders' profits, will anyone bother to work on such projects? I doubt it. In the short run, CockroachDB may profit, but in the long run, the open source business ecosystem might completely collapse. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/23/cockroachdb_opinion/