Definition
Supported Source
noun
- A licensing model in which software is publicly viewable but commercial use requires a paid license, while individual hobbyists and short-term evaluators can use it for free. “We're going Supported Source next month so we can get paid to substainably support the project.”
- The platform (that's us!) that issues those licenses, handles billing, wire transfers, dunning management, and provides the enterprise procurement so maintainers can focus on their project.
More about Supported Source
Open in spirit, sustainable in practice. The source is public so anyone can read it, learn from it, audit it, contribute to it. But when a company turns it into revenue, the maintainer gets paid.
How it differs from things it sounds like
- vs. Open Source. OSS is free for everyone, including the companies making money from it. In practice, that means the project maintainers are working, for free, for big companies.
- vs. Closed Source. You can make closed source software libraries, but good luck getting people to use it. Everyone likes to `git clone` their code right from GitHub these days. Supported Source keeps your source code available online (important for adoption) but only charges for commercial use (important for sustainability).
- vs. Open Core. Open core splits a project into free and paid editions. While Supported Source can work with open core, the open core model is often problematic in practice. Introducing an artificial divide into your source code is typically not the best approach. It can be tricky figuring out what parts to charge for and what parts to give away for free. Ideally, Supported Source keeps the project whole, and only the legal entitlement to use it commercially requires a paid license. But for those who like open core, yes, you can use Supported Source with your open core project, by licensing the open core edition through Supported Source.
- vs. Dual Licensing. Dual licensing is an approach where you offer one license under a viral copyleft license, and the other under a commercial license. You may use Supported Source for this use case by selling the commercial licenses through Supported Source. Supported Source already has three tiers: commercial licenses, free temporary evaluation licenses, and free hobbyist licenses, so you do not need to use dual licensing, but for those who like it, there's no problem doing it that way.