Plausible Community Edition(plausible.io)
plausible.io
Plausible Community Edition
https://plausible.io/blog/community-edition
108 comments
How does AGPL license work for such services?
Would I have to distribute source code of my web application if I use Plausible CE?
If not, how is it different from MinIO where as far as I understand the AGPL licensed use of the product requires distribution of entire code base?
Keep in mind that the obligation to release source code applies to modified versions of AGPL-licensed components.
So if you simply use something without modifying it, you have nothing to do.
So if you simply use something without modifying it, you have nothing to do.
...are you sure that's right? At first blush, it feels like it break the viral nature of the GPL.
It's pretty well understood that non-GPL software cannot link to GPL-licensed libraries, which is why the LGPL exists. This is true even though most software doesn't need to vendor or otherwise modify upstream libraries.
Or does AGPL have a special carve out for this, different from the GPL?
It's pretty well understood that non-GPL software cannot link to GPL-licensed libraries, which is why the LGPL exists. This is true even though most software doesn't need to vendor or otherwise modify upstream libraries.
Or does AGPL have a special carve out for this, different from the GPL?
No, AGPL does not have any "special carve out".
But in the section that is the difference from GPL (section 13, "Remote Network Interaction"), it clearly states: "if you modify the Program, your modified version must ..." [emphasis added]. So the extra stuff that differentiates AGPL from GPL applies only for modified versions of the software.
For the rest, usual GPL stuff applies: if you distribute the binary, you must make the sources available, etc.
But in the section that is the difference from GPL (section 13, "Remote Network Interaction"), it clearly states: "if you modify the Program, your modified version must ..." [emphasis added]. So the extra stuff that differentiates AGPL from GPL applies only for modified versions of the software.
For the rest, usual GPL stuff applies: if you distribute the binary, you must make the sources available, etc.
You don’t need to distribute anything if you didn’t change anything. You’re using something available somewhere else already.
Vitality comes from the way you combine this AGPL code with other code and how you can’t change the license of modified Plausible CE, or the thing you build using Plausible CE.
If you modify Plausible, you distribute the modified version. If you build something using Plausible, you distribute the thing, and with AGPL license. That’s it.
Vitality comes from the way you combine this AGPL code with other code and how you can’t change the license of modified Plausible CE, or the thing you build using Plausible CE.
If you modify Plausible, you distribute the modified version. If you build something using Plausible, you distribute the thing, and with AGPL license. That’s it.
By including Plausible in a bigger website, doesn't that website become a derivative work of Plausible? If not, why is this situation different from an app that links a GPL'd library?
According to the docs [0], Plausible CE is installed as a Docker image, running in its set of containers, as an independent service from your site, which you only add the tracking snippet.
This doesn't make your site as a derivative of Plausible, but you're installing Plausible as a different tool, independent from your site.
Like installing a GPL binary doesn't make all BSD licensed binaries switch to GPL license on your system, running an AGPL licensed service on your server which communicates with your site doesn't make your site AGPL automatically, because you're not deriving Plausible, but you're installing and using it.
Now, if you want to build a service/website by directly modifying the Plausible CE source code, you have to open that derivative codebase with AGPL, only if you're redistributing the modified code (i.e. making the modified website available to other people). If you modified the code, but you're not distributing it (i.e. Only you're using it yourself), you can keep it to yourself.
[0]: https://github.com/plausible/community-edition/
This doesn't make your site as a derivative of Plausible, but you're installing Plausible as a different tool, independent from your site.
Like installing a GPL binary doesn't make all BSD licensed binaries switch to GPL license on your system, running an AGPL licensed service on your server which communicates with your site doesn't make your site AGPL automatically, because you're not deriving Plausible, but you're installing and using it.
Now, if you want to build a service/website by directly modifying the Plausible CE source code, you have to open that derivative codebase with AGPL, only if you're redistributing the modified code (i.e. making the modified website available to other people). If you modified the code, but you're not distributing it (i.e. Only you're using it yourself), you can keep it to yourself.
[0]: https://github.com/plausible/community-edition/
> Would I have to distribute source code of my web application if I use Plausible CE
No, you don't. Folks pick AGPL because of the FUD/uncertainty around it while still appearing "FOSS". In reality these companies don't have the legal teeth to back the bark, otherwise they'd go BSL and make their intention known.
Before folks reply with whataboutism, no one has ever successfully proven the AGPL infectiousness to other web applications in court. Positing about it on hear is pointless.
No, you don't. Folks pick AGPL because of the FUD/uncertainty around it while still appearing "FOSS". In reality these companies don't have the legal teeth to back the bark, otherwise they'd go BSL and make their intention known.
Before folks reply with whataboutism, no one has ever successfully proven the AGPL infectiousness to other web applications in court. Positing about it on hear is pointless.
> In reality these companies don't have the legal teeth to back the bark, otherwise they'd go BSL and make their intention known.
Or alternatively, they still want to be FOSS, which AGPL is, but BSL isn't.
Or alternatively, they still want to be FOSS, which AGPL is, but BSL isn't.
The community has been trained over many years to believe that anything FOSS is immediately trustworthy, and that anything non-FOSS is immediately untrustworthy.
This gets exploited all the time when companies use FOSS licenses to get traction, then pull the rug and switch to a more restrictive license once customers are locked in.
On the flip side, if a company tries to be honest from the beginning by using BSL (or similar) they get endless grief from religious zealots.
AGPL is the magic unicorn license that is just restrictive enough to protect you from your competitors, while still passing the FOSS religious purity test.
This gets exploited all the time when companies use FOSS licenses to get traction, then pull the rug and switch to a more restrictive license once customers are locked in.
On the flip side, if a company tries to be honest from the beginning by using BSL (or similar) they get endless grief from religious zealots.
AGPL is the magic unicorn license that is just restrictive enough to protect you from your competitors, while still passing the FOSS religious purity test.
Actually that’s not true. I’ll not trust VSCode/ium or Chrome/ium with anything.
We trust Free Software not because of the license, but because of the ecosystem and number of eyeballs. Go tried to pull something similar by forcing telemetry on everyone, and they were almost burning everything down. Almost.
People/companies get vilified when they change licenses because of the way they do it. They don’t openly say that they need the money, did some mistake and need to change things to keep company afloat, but they also change their tone after license change and vilify the past contributors and become aggressive themselves.
There are many friendly open core or closed source companies out there, and I trust them with my code, data and secrets, and pay them without any hesitation.
Software ideologies are something, so the real world. While I’d love to see everything as Free Software, we’re not there yet, we might never be, and that’s OK. I’m writing Free Software and try to use Free Software as much as I can to show my colors and do my part in the thing I believe. But I’m never a mindless zealot spewing things.
We trust Free Software not because of the license, but because of the ecosystem and number of eyeballs. Go tried to pull something similar by forcing telemetry on everyone, and they were almost burning everything down. Almost.
People/companies get vilified when they change licenses because of the way they do it. They don’t openly say that they need the money, did some mistake and need to change things to keep company afloat, but they also change their tone after license change and vilify the past contributors and become aggressive themselves.
There are many friendly open core or closed source companies out there, and I trust them with my code, data and secrets, and pay them without any hesitation.
Software ideologies are something, so the real world. While I’d love to see everything as Free Software, we’re not there yet, we might never be, and that’s OK. I’m writing Free Software and try to use Free Software as much as I can to show my colors and do my part in the thing I believe. But I’m never a mindless zealot spewing things.
> People/companies get vilified when they change licenses because of the way they do it. They don’t openly say that they need the money, did some mistake and need to change things to keep company afloat, but they also change their tone after license change and vilify the past contributors and become aggressive themselves.
What? I can't think of any examples where they don't quote money and the lost revenue from hyperscalers just taking their software and reselling it without contributing. InfluxData's CTO and co-founder even wrote a blog post on open source monetisation and how hard it is. Elastic, Mongo even explicitly pointed the finger at Amazon. Many others smaller ones did it preventively, like Sentry and Sourcegraph.
I've also never heard any vilifying of past contributors, outside of bickering about the meaning of open source (I think it was Mongo that claimed they're still open source with the SSPL license?).
What? I can't think of any examples where they don't quote money and the lost revenue from hyperscalers just taking their software and reselling it without contributing. InfluxData's CTO and co-founder even wrote a blog post on open source monetisation and how hard it is. Elastic, Mongo even explicitly pointed the finger at Amazon. Many others smaller ones did it preventively, like Sentry and Sourcegraph.
I've also never heard any vilifying of past contributors, outside of bickering about the meaning of open source (I think it was Mongo that claimed they're still open source with the SSPL license?).
We've been using Plausible for over four years at our startup. Always reliable, simple, and fast metrics. Open source is tricky to scale and maintain while also ensuring a consistent income. Happy to hear they're making this change to protect their brand, IP, and ensure a sustainable future for the team.
> The code for all these features is still available to the public so it can be reviewed and inspected, but these features will not be a part of Plausible CE and they’ll have a different license.
Will the code for these features be in the same repo, or be kept separate? If the former, is it easy to remove them to create a fork that is fully open source? Or does the community edition actually contain proprietary code that is disabled?
> if you want to contribute to our codebase in the future as an external contributor, you’ll need to sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA)
What are the terms of this CLA? Does it mean that Plausible could change the license to something that isn't FOSS in the future?
Will the code for these features be in the same repo, or be kept separate? If the former, is it easy to remove them to create a fork that is fully open source? Or does the community edition actually contain proprietary code that is disabled?
> if you want to contribute to our codebase in the future as an external contributor, you’ll need to sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA)
What are the terms of this CLA? Does it mean that Plausible could change the license to something that isn't FOSS in the future?
> Does it mean that Plausible could change the license to something that isn't FOSS in the future?
Sadly, yes.
Edit: However, they might also need this to integrate the contributions back to the managed version, which is not AGPL licensed to begin with.
Sadly, yes.
Edit: However, they might also need this to integrate the contributions back to the managed version, which is not AGPL licensed to begin with.
There could probably be a way to word the agreement to ensure the open part remains under the AGPL, such as one of the following:
- include in the terms of the CLA that Plausible will never change the license of any part currently licensed as AGPL to another license without the consent of all contributors, or make the CLA conditional on the code modified continuing to be available under the AGPL
- limit the license rights of Plausible to very specific uses which wouldn't allow relicensing the entire repo
- have the contributor agree to dual license their contribution with a license like the MPL to Plausible, which would allow combining with separate enterprise code, but wouldn't allow them to relicense the source files modified by the contributor. I think the GPL would also work for that, unless Plausible starts distibuting an enterprise self hosted version.
- include in the terms of the CLA that Plausible will never change the license of any part currently licensed as AGPL to another license without the consent of all contributors, or make the CLA conditional on the code modified continuing to be available under the AGPL
- limit the license rights of Plausible to very specific uses which wouldn't allow relicensing the entire repo
- have the contributor agree to dual license their contribution with a license like the MPL to Plausible, which would allow combining with separate enterprise code, but wouldn't allow them to relicense the source files modified by the contributor. I think the GPL would also work for that, unless Plausible starts distibuting an enterprise self hosted version.
Sounds similar to the issues FUTO [1] is having and why they made their "Source First" license[2].
Plausible definitely took a different approach though. Interested to see how it works out.
[1] https://futo.org
[2] https://sourcefirst.com
Plausible definitely took a different approach though. Interested to see how it works out.
[1] https://futo.org
[2] https://sourcefirst.com
> Our license doesn’t prevent these corporations from using the Plausible Analytics name and logo either, as these are a part of our self-hosted code
Don't licences normally explicitly bar this? Tough over-sight for Plausible unless there is an actual reason for letting other businesses pretend to be you. Perhaps they figured it would act as a bit of marketing?
Don't licences normally explicitly bar this? Tough over-sight for Plausible unless there is an actual reason for letting other businesses pretend to be you. Perhaps they figured it would act as a bit of marketing?
The treats and risks from "corporations" described can be true, but if you are a small site using the self hosted version, this isn't good news. The product will not be fully featured as the managed version, and the feature gap may be bigger and bigger on the long term. CE is like a "free basic plan" that you host, they now have a better reason to up-sell the users of the self hosted product to the managed "premium" version.
This is good news, I set this up once and then realized it was a 30-day self-hosted trial and abandoned it as it was for a tiny site with no budget for SaaS
Any particular reason for the submission OP?
Related discussion just two days ago:
Plausible Analytics: GDPR Compliance w/o Cookie Consent Banner
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40909006
Related discussion just two days ago:
Plausible Analytics: GDPR Compliance w/o Cookie Consent Banner
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40909006
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is this like a PR stunt ? genuinely curious
Being cynical it looks like a way of holding features hostage for the purpose of extracting revenue.
I sympathise with the problem of re-sellers abusing their hard work but they are also creating two different classes of product with this change.
I sympathise with the problem of re-sellers abusing their hard work but they are also creating two different classes of product with this change.
Sonarqube/cloud is working the same way.
Community edition with enough features for small businesses.
Once you reach a certain size, you'll need the other features but you now have the money to pay for it and as you've used the community edition for some time, you know that you want this products. (and if the product is deep into your workflow, the cost of change is high that you'll rather pay than switch)
As I'm currently building the stack for my startup, I'm more interested in that model than into a "full features 7 days trial" that then turns into a 19$/m/user.
Community edition with enough features for small businesses.
Once you reach a certain size, you'll need the other features but you now have the money to pay for it and as you've used the community edition for some time, you know that you want this products. (and if the product is deep into your workflow, the cost of change is high that you'll rather pay than switch)
As I'm currently building the stack for my startup, I'm more interested in that model than into a "full features 7 days trial" that then turns into a 19$/m/user.
They got backlash from their community for switching licenses. They got forked and now want to appease to the forkers/fork users by offering a slightly better license... Seems like the the 101 for Startups atm.
When did they recently try to change licenses? I must have missed that. I don't see any PRs or issues related to a license change, aside from their change from MIT to AGPL 4 years ago.
How is this offering "a slightly better license"?
[deleted]
It's not but they present it as such, excuse my brevity.
I don't get these "privacy" based tracking / analytics systems, it sounds like an oxymoron to me.
These new ones preach they are better than Google Analytics (also another evil tracking system) yet some how these ones still track you anyway and you're paying for analytics which is useless and you're punished for growing.
It might be best to save money and not use any analytics system, it's just noise at this point.
Am I missing something?
These new ones preach they are better than Google Analytics (also another evil tracking system) yet some how these ones still track you anyway and you're paying for analytics which is useless and you're punished for growing.
It might be best to save money and not use any analytics system, it's just noise at this point.
Am I missing something?
What do you mean when you say they "still track you anyway"?
They don't set cookies. They're effectively the same level of tracking as a web server log file... except Plausible don't even collect and store IPs (unlike the server log).
That feels very different from cookie-based analytics platforms like Google Analytics.
More in their docs here: https://plausible.io/vs-google-analytics
They don't set cookies. They're effectively the same level of tracking as a web server log file... except Plausible don't even collect and store IPs (unlike the server log).
That feels very different from cookie-based analytics platforms like Google Analytics.
More in their docs here: https://plausible.io/vs-google-analytics
> I don't get these "privacy" based tracking / analytics systems, it sounds like an oxymoron to me.
Not really oxymoron if they don't track your PII like IP address, email etc. Don't know how Plausible works, but usually these systems track page views, etc without the associated visitors' data. They either anonymize the visitor metadata or just aggregate the site data like what urls are visited, etc.
Not really oxymoron if they don't track your PII like IP address, email etc. Don't know how Plausible works, but usually these systems track page views, etc without the associated visitors' data. They either anonymize the visitor metadata or just aggregate the site data like what urls are visited, etc.
This is for the owners of the site tracking their users (who have the logs anyway), as opposed to Google hoovering up information from the whole internet.
I can see that this software has a SaaS version so I was referring to all privacy tracking software in general.
So except for self hosting it doesn't seem that this is any different to GA.
So except for self hosting it doesn't seem that this is any different to GA.
AFAIK, Google takes advantage of the signals collected using GA (or did), and you might not want to surrender this information to them. (Sure, most people use Chrome so Google gets some of these signals anyway, but that is not something that you can control.)
> yet some how these ones still track you anyway
There is tracking and tracking.
Google Analytics tracks you across the internet and collects all sorts of private and public user data and metadata, analyses behaviour, correlates with other metrics and sources of information (like ad campaigns), etc.
Plausible and co tell you there were X users with an average of 30s spent on page Z. Which Google Analytics also does, on top of the other things.
Yes, it's technically "tracking", but if you thing it has much to do with the first one you're fundamentally misunderstanding analytics and tracking and thinking in FUD terms.
There is tracking and tracking.
Google Analytics tracks you across the internet and collects all sorts of private and public user data and metadata, analyses behaviour, correlates with other metrics and sources of information (like ad campaigns), etc.
Plausible and co tell you there were X users with an average of 30s spent on page Z. Which Google Analytics also does, on top of the other things.
Yes, it's technically "tracking", but if you thing it has much to do with the first one you're fundamentally misunderstanding analytics and tracking and thinking in FUD terms.
I've been a paying customer and advocate of Plausible for over 2 years, and this is not ok.
Marko frequently posts on social media about Plausible's revenue growth, currently at over $1M ARR with a tiny team and little overhead.
They are doing great financially. Yet in this post he tries to gain sympathy by focusing on "we only make $300/mo in donations".
Frequently moving the goalpost on what it means for your product to be open source betrays a lack of integrity and will have me, and probably others, looking for an alternative.
Marko frequently posts on social media about Plausible's revenue growth, currently at over $1M ARR with a tiny team and little overhead.
They are doing great financially. Yet in this post he tries to gain sympathy by focusing on "we only make $300/mo in donations".
Frequently moving the goalpost on what it means for your product to be open source betrays a lack of integrity and will have me, and probably others, looking for an alternative.
Counterpoint: I've been a paying customer of Plausible for ~2 years, and this is totally fine.
$1M ARR with an 8 person team is by no means "doing great". Assuming 20% of income goes to overheads (such as hosting, marketing, legal, accounting), that leaves a salary of $100k for each staff member. Even if they had 0 overhead, this is still only $125k each -- that's hardly big money.
Also, in reading the post - I find little to object to. They're not changing their license. They're not doing anything to prevent self-hosting.
They're making it clear they're not offering support to people who don't pay (completely reasonable), and gatekeeping a few features that add value - while still giving away a huge amount for free. That's a fair deal to ensure the company remains viable, which is in everyone's best interest. In practice, this decision is unlikely to materially impact anyone.
Open source is a gift, not a right, and certainly not an obligation - and from what I can see, they're not doing anything here that undermines the Open Source-ness of their offering.
FWIW, I'm not sure you'd find an alternative analytics offering that's both commercially viable, and "more open" than what Plausible are offering today.
$1M ARR with an 8 person team is by no means "doing great". Assuming 20% of income goes to overheads (such as hosting, marketing, legal, accounting), that leaves a salary of $100k for each staff member. Even if they had 0 overhead, this is still only $125k each -- that's hardly big money.
Also, in reading the post - I find little to object to. They're not changing their license. They're not doing anything to prevent self-hosting.
They're making it clear they're not offering support to people who don't pay (completely reasonable), and gatekeeping a few features that add value - while still giving away a huge amount for free. That's a fair deal to ensure the company remains viable, which is in everyone's best interest. In practice, this decision is unlikely to materially impact anyone.
Open source is a gift, not a right, and certainly not an obligation - and from what I can see, they're not doing anything here that undermines the Open Source-ness of their offering.
FWIW, I'm not sure you'd find an alternative analytics offering that's both commercially viable, and "more open" than what Plausible are offering today.
> this is still only $125k each -- that's hardly big money.
That works out to be about $10.5K (9.7K EUR) per month, pre-tax. I'm not sure where you're from/at geographically in the world, but in most places where I have lived that would be considered a large salary for just software development.
Outside of the major cities in the US, wouldn't that also count as a fairly large salary?
That works out to be about $10.5K (9.7K EUR) per month, pre-tax. I'm not sure where you're from/at geographically in the world, but in most places where I have lived that would be considered a large salary for just software development.
Outside of the major cities in the US, wouldn't that also count as a fairly large salary?
Just so you know businesses have other expenses than just salary. These can range from insurance to office space to accounting to server hosting and so on.
$1M ARR is not very much when you have almost 10 employees. This would be considered rather modest. Generally the rule of thumb for me has been that each €100k ARR is an absolute minimum to hire an additional employee, thus €1M ARR would be an absolute maximum of 10 employees.
$1M ARR is not very much when you have almost 10 employees. This would be considered rather modest. Generally the rule of thumb for me has been that each €100k ARR is an absolute minimum to hire an additional employee, thus €1M ARR would be an absolute maximum of 10 employees.
> $1M ARR is not very much when you have almost 10 employees.
You're talking from the perspective of the company, I was specifically replying to the "this is still only $125k each -- that's hardly big money" part, which I thought was very clear since that's the part I quoted.
Besides, parent already went through those, their back of the napkin guessestimate is after other expanses. Click the "parent" link next to the timestamp if you're having troubles finding it.
You're talking from the perspective of the company, I was specifically replying to the "this is still only $125k each -- that's hardly big money" part, which I thought was very clear since that's the part I quoted.
Besides, parent already went through those, their back of the napkin guessestimate is after other expanses. Click the "parent" link next to the timestamp if you're having troubles finding it.
They make $300/mo from donations from those that self-host. The point they are making is that enterprise level users are self-hosting and not putting back into the running of Plausible.
I still think the way they've done this stinks though.
I still think the way they've done this stinks though.
I understood that the biggest problem is that some people self host and resell. Sometimes offering a shitty service that might be confused as Plausible-Cloud, damaging the brand: "Plausible is shit, back to Google Analytics".
> I still think the way they've done this stinks though.
What would you do in their position?
This seems like on of these things, just like changing the design of your product where you will never be able to make everyone happy and there will always be a small group complaining.
What would you do in their position?
This seems like on of these things, just like changing the design of your product where you will never be able to make everyone happy and there will always be a small group complaining.
They might only be making $300/mo in donations, but the only reason I'm a paying customer of theirs is because the product is open source. When Fathom stopped maintaining their open source version I moved to Plausible, even though I am not self hosting.
The $300/month is absolutely ignoring the free marketing they get, plus the fact that many users such as myself only use their paid product because it is open source.
The $300/month is absolutely ignoring the free marketing they get, plus the fact that many users such as myself only use their paid product because it is open source.
Curious. If you are using the hosted version, why do you care about it being Open Source ? More of a backup plan in case they go under or is it more about Trust or both ?
It's a bit of both. It gives me confidence that I have a backup plan, but really trust is the bigger issue. An analytics tool gets a lot of data from people and being able to validate what they're doing is important.
Additionally though I signed up to support an open source company, because I think open source is better for society. I like giving money to open source projects. I would rather give money to an open source group than use a free product like Google Analytics. I like being able to support open source companies, and I get annoyed when they do rug pulls like this.
Additionally though I signed up to support an open source company, because I think open source is better for society. I like giving money to open source projects. I would rather give money to an open source group than use a free product like Google Analytics. I like being able to support open source companies, and I get annoyed when they do rug pulls like this.
Thx. Yea I figured but wanted a confirmation because I am looking to start an Open Source project and getting feedback on the WHY Open Source part from potential customers.
If that is your take away from this post I urge you to read it more carefully.
If you have a counterpoint I urge you to make it.
Near the start of the article:
"That license change has helped us build a sustainable open source project with 8 core team members and several paid external contributors at the time of writing. We don’t have any investors, so all this is solely funded by the fees our 12,000+ subscribers pay us."
Then later on while talking about the self-hosting option:
"We make $300 per month from donations from our self-hosted users. It would take us more than ten years of donations to pay one month of salary for our small team."
That's only misleading if you skim the article. They clearly differentiate between the 12,000 paying subscribers who fund the operation compared to the $300 in donations from self-hosters.
"That license change has helped us build a sustainable open source project with 8 core team members and several paid external contributors at the time of writing. We don’t have any investors, so all this is solely funded by the fees our 12,000+ subscribers pay us."
Then later on while talking about the self-hosting option:
"We make $300 per month from donations from our self-hosted users. It would take us more than ten years of donations to pay one month of salary for our small team."
That's only misleading if you skim the article. They clearly differentiate between the 12,000 paying subscribers who fund the operation compared to the $300 in donations from self-hosters.
I'm a paying customer. I paid for it because of the open source license. The thing that is misleading is pretending that being open source only makes them $300/month while ignoring the number of customers who chose them because they are open source.
> The thing that is misleading is pretending that being open source only makes them $300/month while ignoring the number of customers who chose them because they are open source.
No, that one line without the entire preceeding part of the blog post makes it sound like that. However when the blog post opens with
> That license change has helped us build a sustainable open source project with 8 core team members and several paid external contributors at the time of writing.
It's abundantly clear that they attribute that success to their open core model.
No, that one line without the entire preceeding part of the blog post makes it sound like that. However when the blog post opens with
> That license change has helped us build a sustainable open source project with 8 core team members and several paid external contributors at the time of writing.
It's abundantly clear that they attribute that success to their open core model.
Thanks - this is exactly it.
[deleted]
"We want to reduce the threat from businesses such as hosting companies and other resellers who try to commercialize popular open source projects. We’ve seen our self-hosted code being used in a way it was never intended for by corporations that don’t care about us or open source."
I don't understand why people think they can stop others from commercializing their open source project. You can give something to the world. You can hold onto IP to stop others from cashing in. You can't have it both ways.
I don't understand why people think they can stop others from commercializing their open source project. You can give something to the world. You can hold onto IP to stop others from cashing in. You can't have it both ways.
The problem is people didn't understand that BSD/MIT license gives the same freedoms to all. The previous moat was to license permissively, but make it hard/impossible to install on traditional hardware without the (closed) architecture docs, and go closed source at any moment, since BSD allowed that.
Given enough eyeballs and persistent people, this moat started to be passed with relative ease, allowing big(ger) corporations to deploy intended-for-your-eyes-only, open codebases to production.
Naturally, people didn't like that, and started to move back to xGPL licenses to force modified copies to be open. This forces the parent company which started the project to keep the code open (or make people sign a CLA or don't accept PRs, etc.), but prevents their code from being cannibalized, and makes more sense on the long run because the added value is the service itself rather than the code. CE versions allows deployable open-core versions for the tech savvy.
[Actually Plausible says "A stronger moat for hosted Plausible", so the plan is exactly it].
So, Plausible at least, is returning to the root of Free Software, not OpenSourceWashed software. This is a good move in my book, and makes me happy that I was right about BSD/MIT in the long run.
Given enough eyeballs and persistent people, this moat started to be passed with relative ease, allowing big(ger) corporations to deploy intended-for-your-eyes-only, open codebases to production.
Naturally, people didn't like that, and started to move back to xGPL licenses to force modified copies to be open. This forces the parent company which started the project to keep the code open (or make people sign a CLA or don't accept PRs, etc.), but prevents their code from being cannibalized, and makes more sense on the long run because the added value is the service itself rather than the code. CE versions allows deployable open-core versions for the tech savvy.
[Actually Plausible says "A stronger moat for hosted Plausible", so the plan is exactly it].
So, Plausible at least, is returning to the root of Free Software, not OpenSourceWashed software. This is a good move in my book, and makes me happy that I was right about BSD/MIT in the long run.
> You can't have it both ways
You're right, but you're applying idealism to a concept that was popularised 35 years ago to the current landscape. If you want free-as-in-freedom software developed without restrictions with corporate backing, that ship has sailed.
What is your suggestion for how to run a business that offers an open source product that isn't going to have their lunch eaten by AWS/Azure/GCP once it becomes popular? If your answer is "well that's not open source", then I think you need to take a look at the reality of software in 2024.
You're right, but you're applying idealism to a concept that was popularised 35 years ago to the current landscape. If you want free-as-in-freedom software developed without restrictions with corporate backing, that ship has sailed.
What is your suggestion for how to run a business that offers an open source product that isn't going to have their lunch eaten by AWS/Azure/GCP once it becomes popular? If your answer is "well that's not open source", then I think you need to take a look at the reality of software in 2024.
I agree with your premise though I think we need a different word than "open source" if that's really the model moving forward.
Without going too deep into semantics, the original nature of open source is counter to business interests. If we're using that term for source code that's kinda open for some people some of the time, we risk virtue signalling.
Without going too deep into semantics, the original nature of open source is counter to business interests. If we're using that term for source code that's kinda open for some people some of the time, we risk virtue signalling.
That's a completely fair response I think, but I'd argue that language evolves, and meaning changes. Words and phrases we use now mean totally different things to what they meant 10-15 years ago, and that meaning is driven by common understanding.
Using the original intentions for Open Source is well and good, but do you think Richard Stallman foresaw IBM being the primary funding mechanism for GCC in 1989?
Using the original intentions for Open Source is well and good, but do you think Richard Stallman foresaw IBM being the primary funding mechanism for GCC in 1989?
I think that underscores the tension that will always exist with open source. It's nearly impossible for altruism to remain self-sustaining. The rare glimpses when it exists should be cherished rather than conflated with the small business David vs. Goliath complex.
I think that world still exists. We're on HN, so there's always going to be a business/startup bias in what we talk about and share here. And doubly so if someone develops a product as open source with a commercial offering to support it from the get go.
Off the top of my head, Imgui[0] is an example of an open source project, widely used, developed by a small group with a main contributor. AssetCooker [1] is a project that I discovered recently which is clearly a passion project from a single developer who shared it with the world. CNCF [2] is an odd one, but in my mind it's a 21st century Apache foundation - they have a bunch of core projects which are complete open source projects, used widely in production and sustained through different models.
I think imgui (of the bunch) is probably closest to the GCC-of-the-early-90's idea.
[0] https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
[1] https://github.com/jlaumon/AssetCooker
[2] https://www.cncf.io/projects/
Off the top of my head, Imgui[0] is an example of an open source project, widely used, developed by a small group with a main contributor. AssetCooker [1] is a project that I discovered recently which is clearly a passion project from a single developer who shared it with the world. CNCF [2] is an odd one, but in my mind it's a 21st century Apache foundation - they have a bunch of core projects which are complete open source projects, used widely in production and sustained through different models.
I think imgui (of the bunch) is probably closest to the GCC-of-the-early-90's idea.
[0] https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
[1] https://github.com/jlaumon/AssetCooker
[2] https://www.cncf.io/projects/
It's a growth hack. I don't believe anyone who releases their product under a FOSS license will remain FOSS unless the company goes under. It becomes a "too much money left on the table" situation.
It’s not even a hack these days, investors look for this as a traction metric
> You can't have it both ways.
Why shouldn't I? I created a product and I should be able to choose who do I give it to.
I want it to be as open as possible while restricting some types of usage I don't like, or that would be detrimental to the continuation of the project itself.
I don't see anything outlandish in my statement.
Why shouldn't I? I created a product and I should be able to choose who do I give it to.
I want it to be as open as possible while restricting some types of usage I don't like, or that would be detrimental to the continuation of the project itself.
I don't see anything outlandish in my statement.
There's nothing stopping you from doing that, but it's not FOSS and you can't use a FOSS license to drive your growth.
I've seen some pretty wild license clauses in things claiming to be FOSS lately...like license termination if you don't support trans rights or if you're anti-furry.
It is FOSS, it's just not a free meal for FAANG & co.
How would you make the distinction, in a way that is legally enforcable?
I can understand why people would prefer FAANG & Co. weren't re-selling their FOSS, but I don't see how you can pick and choose who has access to and is allowed to run your code, and still be open source. Maybe you could have an application process, where you decide to give a license on a case-by-case basis, that can be rescinded later. But I'm not confident you'd get much traction.
The OP's point is that product owners want the benefits of being open source, but are frustrated with the downsides. You can't have one without the other, they are two sides of the same coin.
I can understand why people would prefer FAANG & Co. weren't re-selling their FOSS, but I don't see how you can pick and choose who has access to and is allowed to run your code, and still be open source. Maybe you could have an application process, where you decide to give a license on a case-by-case basis, that can be rescinded later. But I'm not confident you'd get much traction.
The OP's point is that product owners want the benefits of being open source, but are frustrated with the downsides. You can't have one without the other, they are two sides of the same coin.
FAANG & Co won't touch AGPL, ditto for most enterprises. There are some exceptions in countries with weak IP enforcement on smaller players.
Interesting. Why don't more of these open source companies complaining about being cannibalised adopt AGPL instead?
Wouldn't it be possible to have a license that gives different rights based on some binary indicators, e.g., annual revenue (or profit), an individual vs. a corporation, etc.? In theory, this could be gamed, but perhaps it wouldn't be worth it in most cases.
BSL usage grants sometimes do exactly this (free if you have less than X annual revenue) or similar (free if you're not competing with the company behind the project).
But it's technically not open source since there are usage restrictions, and considered "source available" which isn't descriptive enough IMO.
But it's technically not open source since there are usage restrictions, and considered "source available" which isn't descriptive enough IMO.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable that the people who develop some software and run a business doing so, wish to not have their livelihoods cannibalised out from under them by some larger entity.
I think the sunshine and rainbows idealism of some of the licences and OSS gatekeeping was fine 20 years ago, and works fine for certain kinds of software and mature, well-established projects (compilers, Postgres, MySQL etc) but these days, no longer fits the reality of the software landscape.
I think the sunshine and rainbows idealism of some of the licences and OSS gatekeeping was fine 20 years ago, and works fine for certain kinds of software and mature, well-established projects (compilers, Postgres, MySQL etc) but these days, no longer fits the reality of the software landscape.
And on top of that how many open source products are they commercializing? Compilers, programming languages, operating systems, dev tools…
real. wants the good parts of open source and hating the bad parts of open source.
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Out of curiosity: if the companies reselling Plausible (the ones mentioned in the post) kept the old version running, the old license applies?
(I know they wouldn't get updates, security improvements, etc)
(I know they wouldn't get updates, security improvements, etc)
Yes, and they can fork it and maintain it themselves. Would need to change some trademark stuff, rename it to Implausible or something.
Yes. The old MIT-licensed version continues to be MIT-licensed, and anyone can continue to use it freely.
Yes that is correct, they can keep using the old code under the license they were granted for the old code.
I seriously wonder what HN thinks is a valid business model for writing open source software. Everyone here seems to insinuate that people want to create a business and use open source as a growth hack. But how do you differentiate those from people who want to write open source (because they believe in it) and have to have a business to support their livelihood?
This is a team of eight people that tried to do everything „right“ by changing to a FOSS license (which happened four years ago) and the changes announced here sound very reasonable (changing branding and removing undocumented APIs). But all comments are dunking on them as if they haven’t even read the article.
This is a team of eight people that tried to do everything „right“ by changing to a FOSS license (which happened four years ago) and the changes announced here sound very reasonable (changing branding and removing undocumented APIs). But all comments are dunking on them as if they haven’t even read the article.
From my experience, people here like permissive licenses because they can grab the source and don't think about it further (and don't forget to give credit if their coffee was good that day), because it's building on top of other people's work without any effort.
I don't think it's bad intentions though. Just grab the pieces you need, assemble, add the missing parts and start a project, and earn money.
xGPL (which I strongly support) prevents this building model by forcing license inheritance, release of changes and limiting license interoperability, preventing creation of technical secret sauces, and many people think that all secret sauces are technical.
OTOH, the harder (but better in the long run) way to create value with FOSS and Free Software particular to have stellar support and reliability. i.e.: Your code can be deployed, compiled, or built upon, but you're the best source to get the software in the first place. Your presence, human relations and knowledge about the product is the secret sauce you have, but this needs more effort, is a more of a soft skill and grows like a sequoia (i.e. roots first for a decade, then start to get taller).
This is not a quick buck, but an old school proper business building, but many people don't have time for that, and since everyone wants to build fast and consume fast, this more healthier mode of making business is frowned upon.
Sometimes you need to move slow and break(through) things, but as the meme says "ain't nobody have time for dat!", which is shortsightedness in my perspective.
I don't think it's bad intentions though. Just grab the pieces you need, assemble, add the missing parts and start a project, and earn money.
xGPL (which I strongly support) prevents this building model by forcing license inheritance, release of changes and limiting license interoperability, preventing creation of technical secret sauces, and many people think that all secret sauces are technical.
OTOH, the harder (but better in the long run) way to create value with FOSS and Free Software particular to have stellar support and reliability. i.e.: Your code can be deployed, compiled, or built upon, but you're the best source to get the software in the first place. Your presence, human relations and knowledge about the product is the secret sauce you have, but this needs more effort, is a more of a soft skill and grows like a sequoia (i.e. roots first for a decade, then start to get taller).
This is not a quick buck, but an old school proper business building, but many people don't have time for that, and since everyone wants to build fast and consume fast, this more healthier mode of making business is frowned upon.
Sometimes you need to move slow and break(through) things, but as the meme says "ain't nobody have time for dat!", which is shortsightedness in my perspective.
> OTOH, the harder (but better in the long run) way to create value with FOSS and Free Software particular to have stellar support and reliability. i.e.: Your code can be deployed, compiled, or built upon, but you're the best source to get the software in the first place.
...It's not obvious to me that the person who originally wrote the software is necessarily better positioned to support the software. Everyone has the current source code, so from that standpoint it's a level playing field. Another party could come in and build a business as the premier support consultants without most of the original developer's startup costs.
Now, I'm not sure if this has ever actually happened. If it hasn't, maybe I'm wrong. I would like to be wrong.
...It's not obvious to me that the person who originally wrote the software is necessarily better positioned to support the software. Everyone has the current source code, so from that standpoint it's a level playing field. Another party could come in and build a business as the premier support consultants without most of the original developer's startup costs.
Now, I'm not sure if this has ever actually happened. If it hasn't, maybe I'm wrong. I would like to be wrong.
The biggest example is SQLite. It's public domain [0], yet its secret sauce is how the developers know, develop and test the software.
They do not accept outside patches, which is not against Free Software, it's more like a cathedral, but it's not "not open source".
> ...It's not obvious to me that the person who originally wrote the software is necessarily better positioned to support the software.
Let's take an example. Scientific software. Something like OpenFOAM, or some simulation code. Open it with GPL, everybody has the source code, but only the developers know the intricacies of material simulation, the fragile math of it, how to optimize it, how to test it. You can fork it to infinity, but unless somebody has the expertise to understand the science of it, nobody can do anything with it, maybe besides breaking it in subtle ways making things worse.
> Another party could build a business as the premier support consultants without most of the original developer's startup costs.
When you have good enough product with tons of implicit knowledge buried in its source code (see above), it's not easy as it sounds.
Many people write CRUD software, and CRUD software has no effective moat. It's just DB dressing and some automation. Start to blend in domain specific knowledge into it, and now we're talking.
[0]: https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html
They do not accept outside patches, which is not against Free Software, it's more like a cathedral, but it's not "not open source".
> ...It's not obvious to me that the person who originally wrote the software is necessarily better positioned to support the software.
Let's take an example. Scientific software. Something like OpenFOAM, or some simulation code. Open it with GPL, everybody has the source code, but only the developers know the intricacies of material simulation, the fragile math of it, how to optimize it, how to test it. You can fork it to infinity, but unless somebody has the expertise to understand the science of it, nobody can do anything with it, maybe besides breaking it in subtle ways making things worse.
> Another party could build a business as the premier support consultants without most of the original developer's startup costs.
When you have good enough product with tons of implicit knowledge buried in its source code (see above), it's not easy as it sounds.
Many people write CRUD software, and CRUD software has no effective moat. It's just DB dressing and some automation. Start to blend in domain specific knowledge into it, and now we're talking.
[0]: https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html
> When you have good enough product with tons of implicit knowledge buried in its source code (see above), it's not easy as it sounds.
I don't doubt that it's hard. But I'm not convinced that it's harder than writing the software in the first place, so that is still a major savings for the competitor (which they could then use to undercut in terms of rates, etc).
As a point of comparison, let's say that SQLite's development team all died in a plane crash. Would a new team throw out SQLite's codebase and start from scratch, because they could never hope to understand the old code as well as something they wrote themselves? No—they'd review the code and documentation and bring themselves up to speed. Maybe they're never 100% as good as the first team, but they'd be quite capable.
I don't doubt that it's hard. But I'm not convinced that it's harder than writing the software in the first place, so that is still a major savings for the competitor (which they could then use to undercut in terms of rates, etc).
As a point of comparison, let's say that SQLite's development team all died in a plane crash. Would a new team throw out SQLite's codebase and start from scratch, because they could never hope to understand the old code as well as something they wrote themselves? No—they'd review the code and documentation and bring themselves up to speed. Maybe they're never 100% as good as the first team, but they'd be quite capable.
> but they'd be quite capable.
That's the thing. They won't have the same shared vision and abstract model and roadmap of SQLite to begin with.
Let's take more examples: Audacious, GIMP, Darktable, DigiKam, Inkscape, KiCAD, Blender... Why these programs are not forked, or forked successfully? These are not niche programs. They are standard tools for some people. The thing is, all of these tools require very deep knowledge about some obscure and hard subjects. Some groups may take them over, but they can't just continue them as is. They will break things, or need to relearn tons of theory and their numerical versions which can be applied in programming languages.
I did my Ph.D. in SWE, writing a material forming simulator. Boundary Element Method more specifically. You can't expect a group of people just to say "Meh, let's fork something like this and just be better". You can't. You need to know deep numerical math, theory of BEM, need to build the formulae, and know enough CS + numerical linear algebra to transform that math to computer code.
I spent 7 years to build one from scratch. Not all applications can be transferred to a new team in two weeks flat. KiCAD is in development for 30+ years, for example.
That's the thing. They won't have the same shared vision and abstract model and roadmap of SQLite to begin with.
Let's take more examples: Audacious, GIMP, Darktable, DigiKam, Inkscape, KiCAD, Blender... Why these programs are not forked, or forked successfully? These are not niche programs. They are standard tools for some people. The thing is, all of these tools require very deep knowledge about some obscure and hard subjects. Some groups may take them over, but they can't just continue them as is. They will break things, or need to relearn tons of theory and their numerical versions which can be applied in programming languages.
I did my Ph.D. in SWE, writing a material forming simulator. Boundary Element Method more specifically. You can't expect a group of people just to say "Meh, let's fork something like this and just be better". You can't. You need to know deep numerical math, theory of BEM, need to build the formulae, and know enough CS + numerical linear algebra to transform that math to computer code.
I spent 7 years to build one from scratch. Not all applications can be transferred to a new team in two weeks flat. KiCAD is in development for 30+ years, for example.
> Now, I'm not sure if this has ever actually happened. If it hasn't, maybe I'm wrong. I would like to be wrong.
It has. As a popular example, Percona are among the best consultants on MySQL/MariaDB/MongoDB/databases in general, and they are not related to any of those projects (one of the founders of Percona used to work at MySQL decades ago).
It has. As a popular example, Percona are among the best consultants on MySQL/MariaDB/MongoDB/databases in general, and they are not related to any of those projects (one of the founders of Percona used to work at MySQL decades ago).
> and build a business as the premier support consultants without most of the original developer's startup costs
I think a real world example for this would be https://www.collaboraoffice.com/about-us/. And looking at it from the outside a positive example as well. At least I could not find any public beef between collabora and the document foundation (as the organisation behind libreoffice).
I think a real world example for this would be https://www.collaboraoffice.com/about-us/. And looking at it from the outside a positive example as well. At least I could not find any public beef between collabora and the document foundation (as the organisation behind libreoffice).
Collabora guys push tons of code back to LibreOffice, too, as far as I can remember.
It's not necessarily about being better. Sometimes a competitor can beat you just by being cheaper, or by being better connected.
One example is that the Matrix project recently took a budget hit when the core team apparently lost a big bid to a "large system integrator" who seems to have used their own open source code to bid against them.
One example is that the Matrix project recently took a budget hit when the core team apparently lost a big bid to a "large system integrator" who seems to have used their own open source code to bid against them.
Sadly this wasn't a one off - Element has repeatedly lost deals to larger SIs who take our own FOSS software and compete with us with it, and win because they are better connected and don't have any of the costs of actually maintaining the software and so can charge a lower price. Hence shifting to AGPL to make it less desirable for SIs to commercialise us without first agreeing an AGPL exception.
A better approach would be if the purchaser mandated that the upstream project has to participate in the deal rather than being disintermediated by the SI, but we've seen very few instances of that happening.
A better approach would be if the purchaser mandated that the upstream project has to participate in the deal rather than being disintermediated by the SI, but we've seen very few instances of that happening.
Hacker News isn't a single mind, so it doesn't "think" anything of its own.
Personally, I believe there are several "valid" business models that include open source contributions. Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon and even Apple all contribute to open source software. Redhat, Canonical, Suse are all companies that have open source software at the heart of their products. Blender and Godot have found viable paths as nonprofit foundations. Linux, OpenStack, Eclipse and others are all foundations that work on a different level, combining contributions from many different companies and individuals, and support multiple projects.
There are open core companies like Gitlab that are also "valid", while I personally don't prefer the open core model.
Automatic sponsors WordPress development, and makes money providing hosting and related services. Automatic competes in a very competitive market with other companies providing hosted WordPress, but they survive.
Releasing code as open source is not an automatic mint. Business is hard. Businesses that don't release a single line of open source code fail all the time. It should not surprise anyone when a company that contributes to open source fails, because companies fail all the time.
Personally, I believe there are several "valid" business models that include open source contributions. Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon and even Apple all contribute to open source software. Redhat, Canonical, Suse are all companies that have open source software at the heart of their products. Blender and Godot have found viable paths as nonprofit foundations. Linux, OpenStack, Eclipse and others are all foundations that work on a different level, combining contributions from many different companies and individuals, and support multiple projects.
There are open core companies like Gitlab that are also "valid", while I personally don't prefer the open core model.
Automatic sponsors WordPress development, and makes money providing hosting and related services. Automatic competes in a very competitive market with other companies providing hosted WordPress, but they survive.
Releasing code as open source is not an automatic mint. Business is hard. Businesses that don't release a single line of open source code fail all the time. It should not surprise anyone when a company that contributes to open source fails, because companies fail all the time.
Just because you want something to have a viable business model doesn't mean it does. If you want to get paid to develop open source software, I think you have a couple of options:
1. Just don't. Work on open source on the weekends, etc.
2. Do it as part of a "commoditize your complements" strategy.
3. Work at a company that is so large they can fund open source development as part of their advertising strategy.
4. Gather together some expertise in existing open source projects and sell consulting. Crucially, you'll probably need to build on top of some existing open source install base or name recognition. Redhat didn't start the linux project or the gnu userland, Percona didn't write mysql, etc. In some sense you are now one of the leaches that posts such as this one complain about.
The fundamental piece in common here is that the open source bit isn't the main value driver for the business.
1. Just don't. Work on open source on the weekends, etc.
2. Do it as part of a "commoditize your complements" strategy.
3. Work at a company that is so large they can fund open source development as part of their advertising strategy.
4. Gather together some expertise in existing open source projects and sell consulting. Crucially, you'll probably need to build on top of some existing open source install base or name recognition. Redhat didn't start the linux project or the gnu userland, Percona didn't write mysql, etc. In some sense you are now one of the leaches that posts such as this one complain about.
The fundamental piece in common here is that the open source bit isn't the main value driver for the business.
This framing is just wrong; there has never been, is not currently, and will never be a guarantee that you can sustain a company entirely off of an open-source offering.
If you are concerned about your livelihood then don't hinge it on the viability of open source projects to underpin your business model.
I've said it before, I will say it again.
If you are concerned about your livelihood then don't hinge it on the viability of open source projects to underpin your business model.
I've said it before, I will say it again.
i think the issue is less "sustain a company" and more the unspoken qualifier "extremely valuable".
sustaining a small company offering commercial licenses or hosting or support or consulting or whatever for an open source product is not going to be that much more difficult than sustaining any other kind of small company.
the issue that I see most often are OSS devs not approaching the problem like a company would and startup founders looking to build a unicorn while also keeping some kind of purity wrt open source.
not everything needs VC investment with valuations measured in the tens of millions but everything does need some level of formal business development (even if that business is of the non-profit variety).
sustaining a small company offering commercial licenses or hosting or support or consulting or whatever for an open source product is not going to be that much more difficult than sustaining any other kind of small company.
the issue that I see most often are OSS devs not approaching the problem like a company would and startup founders looking to build a unicorn while also keeping some kind of purity wrt open source.
not everything needs VC investment with valuations measured in the tens of millions but everything does need some level of formal business development (even if that business is of the non-profit variety).
> I've said it before, I will say it again.
Cool, and what is your proposal to people who both believe in open source, build on open source, but would also like to be able to put food on the table and enjoy their work?
Cool, and what is your proposal to people who both believe in open source, build on open source, but would also like to be able to put food on the table and enjoy their work?
Blender and Godot both show one possible way to putting food on the table and spending your time contributing to open source projects that you love. Other companies provide consulting and related services. Business is hard, you can't just write some code, throw it over a wall with an open source license, and expect the money to start pouring in.
You can get a job at a company like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or hundreds of others where they pay folks to write open source code, too.
You can get a job at a company like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or hundreds of others where they pay folks to write open source code, too.
Uhh, suck it up? Just because you really want something to work some way doesn't mean it can work that way. It's just that simple.
The geomsys model, featured two days ago on the front page, seems like being on the right track: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40905849
Don't try to sell software, sell your expertise. Basically variations on consulting.
Don't try to sell software, sell your expertise. Basically variations on consulting.
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I've been very pleased with Plausible as a Google Analytics alternative. I don't really care about the privacy and open source stuff, but the integration is simple and if you just want to know "how many people are looking at my site, where are they coming from, etc" it's fantastic. GA4 is really too complex for most people.
I've been using Plausible for a while and been pretty happy with it. I agree that GA4 is too complex.
I do sometimes worry that Plausible's more relaxed session tracking is making it harder for me to understand my true user count.
I do sometimes worry that Plausible's more relaxed session tracking is making it harder for me to understand my true user count.