> We’re also toying with the idea of an “enterprise” self-hosted deployment, similar to gitlab’s billing model, and thoughts from the community on this front would be appreciated!
First, Thanks for sharing - there might be a few interesting applications in my (non competitive to you) world I wouldn't have considered for the sheer amount of work to begin with.
My experience with B2B on prem has been that maintaining first class on-prem support will have an outsized growth vector for you. The cloud after all is someone else's computer under the control and ownership of someone else, and that won't work for everyone. It's easier to do from the start than to try to shim in. If you really want it to be an unfair advantage and moat, being present as a first class verified citizen in the marketplaces of multiple clouds is good too for those groups who might want it.
For example, being ready to roll (and license for enterprise) int he Microsoft Marketplace is a bit of a superpower, because they already have a good chunk of the Fortune 500 already as customers, so you don't have to go get them and be close to being a one click install where an on-prem m365 environment might allow things from Azure directly or indirectly.
The harder part is making sure enough of the useful and even valuable bits aren't locked away from the spirit of open-source, or critical ones committed moving forward. It's hard but the hope is the magic of creating beginners for your platform remains the chief priority for growth and adoption for your system - people readily available and skilled in it.
One nice way to do this is to perhaps consider some creative licensing around headcount of an organization, sector, or yearly revenues. Appgyver had an interesting approach to this prior to being acquired by SAP and seem to have been able to maintain it.
, some folks do well with an AGPL type of license to minimize competitors which I respect a groups right to do for their own sustainabilty.
First, Thanks for sharing - there might be a few interesting applications in my (non competitive to you) world I wouldn't have considered for the sheer amount of work to begin with.
My experience with B2B on prem has been that maintaining first class on-prem support will have an outsized growth vector for you. The cloud after all is someone else's computer under the control and ownership of someone else, and that won't work for everyone. It's easier to do from the start than to try to shim in. If you really want it to be an unfair advantage and moat, being present as a first class verified citizen in the marketplaces of multiple clouds is good too for those groups who might want it.
For example, being ready to roll (and license for enterprise) int he Microsoft Marketplace is a bit of a superpower, because they already have a good chunk of the Fortune 500 already as customers, so you don't have to go get them and be close to being a one click install where an on-prem m365 environment might allow things from Azure directly or indirectly.
The harder part is making sure enough of the useful and even valuable bits aren't locked away from the spirit of open-source, or critical ones committed moving forward. It's hard but the hope is the magic of creating beginners for your platform remains the chief priority for growth and adoption for your system - people readily available and skilled in it.
One nice way to do this is to perhaps consider some creative licensing around headcount of an organization, sector, or yearly revenues. Appgyver had an interesting approach to this prior to being acquired by SAP and seem to have been able to maintain it.
, some folks do well with an AGPL type of license to minimize competitors which I respect a groups right to do for their own sustainabilty.