Concerns regarding Play becoming closed-source / commercial software

[Andris Spruds]

Hi,

Typesafe has just released their latest version of Typesafe Activator, 1.3.0. Here's the catch: templates based on "Typesafe Reactive Platform", which as I understand, also includes Play getting-started guides, now require "a free trial subscription ID". In other words, Typesafe is starting to give Play documentation only to those users who are willing to register for "a trial subscription".

If I remember correctly, Slick was also once open source, with drivers for Oracle and MSSQL. Then version 2.0 came along and drivers were pulled from the codebase, now requiring subscription: http://slick.typesafe.com/news/2013/05/27/commercial-licensing.html.

I am worried that in the future, Typesafe could simply stop providing free updates (including security updates) for Play / Akka, so leaving anyone who has invested in developing applications / tools / etc. arround the "Reactive" stack with no other choice but to stop using the code or buy a subscription.

Am I the only one with such concerns?

Best regards,
Andris Spruds

require a free trial subscription ID

require a free trial subscription ID

require a free trial subscription ID

1.3.0#sthash.jXoHZuRH.dpuf

1.3.0#sthash.jXoHZuRH.dpuf

[Ryan Tanner]

Didn't Slick always say that Oracle/MSSQL drivers would be for pay?  

[Andris Spruds]

I might be wrong, but I'm quite sure that Play did not always tell us that access to docs (tutorials in this case) would require a subscription, albeit a free one for now.

Regards,
Andris Spruds

[raunak]

Which tutorial are these - links?

[Mirko Stocker]

On Thursday 26 February 2015 04.08:35 Andris Spruds wrote:
> I might be wrong, but I'm quite sure that Play did not always tell us that
> access to docs (tutorials in this case) would require a subscription,
> albeit a free one for now.

From what I can see, all the tutorials are also available from the
Seeds/Tutorials tab. They simply point to different branches, e.g. here:

https://github.com/typesafehub/activator-slick-multidb/commits/reactive-platform-15v01

So, I wouldn't worry too much about this. I guess the difference is that the
dependencies are taken from a private repository, with "blessed" versions that
you can cover with a support agreement.

Cheers

Mirko

--
Mirko Stocker | mi...@stocker.email
Work: http://ifs.hsr.ch | http://infoq.com
Personal: http://misto.ch | http://twitter.com/m_st

[Andris Spruds]

I'm referring to this blog entry: http://typesafe.com/blog/typesafe-activator-130-released-contains-new-sbt-server-and-ui

Best regards,
Andris Spruds

[Isaka]

I am increasingly seeing these notices, and people raising concerns about them. I try to look at these things from a different perspective.

With regard to the subscription mentioned, Typesafe has a video up which explains the benefits for organisations: get help in your project endeavours, assurance for when you run into serious production issues. So it's a service subscription. This is what everyone in the industry does, Red Hat is a $bn company just for this, Pivotal, you-name-it, all have a very similar model. If you ever hold a position of responsibility, running business systems that are critical to your company, you know how important it is to get this kind of thing right.

I find it normal that Typesafe should charge for services, they run a business and must be able to afford the talented people that they employ. Typesafe isn't the same as scala-lang.org, the latter is the one that the community should pay closer attention to.

If you follow tech news in the wider JVM world, you would have heard that Pivotal recently dropped funding for Grails and Groovy. I am sure that managers at companies running large grails and groovy codebase would have had alarm bells going off. I wouldn't be surprised if a Typesafe like organisation would emerge in the near future.

I have given serious thought to this topic at large. This is not the place for such discussion. But I do think we should consider other factors upon hearing this type of news. 

PS: I have no affiliation with Typesafe. I am, like millions, from the community that have embraced scala.

Isaka

[James Roper]

Hi all,

I'm tech lead of Play, working for Typesafe.

Let me first speak for myself, not for Typesafe.  I am an open source developer.  I have always had a passion for contributing to open source.  Before Typesafe hired me, I was very actively involved in the Play community, running user groups, making pull requests, responding to mailing list questions, writing my own plugins, all as a volunteer, because I love contributing to open source.  When Typesafe hired me, I counted myself very lucky, because working full time on open source software is my dream job.  If Typesafe were to ever endanger the fundamental open source nature of Play, I would no longer be in my dream job - and that would mean I'd have no reason to stay working for Typesafe.  I'd likely leave, find a company that let me spend 20% of my time contributing to open source, and then continue to contribute to Play, forking it if necessary.

Fortunately for all of us, it will never come to that, because Typesafe as a company is open source to its roots.  Our board of directors has many people that are passionate about open source, including Rod Johnson, founder of Spring.  Our leadership team is full of people who have spent most of their lives working in open source, not just people with engineering backgrounds such as Martin Odersky and Jonas Boner, but people such as our CEO Mark Brewer who has spent many years in leadership positions in various successful open source companies.  And then the engineers at Typesafe, who make up over 50% of the company, generally share a very similar story to me, and are just as passionate about open source.  The only way that Typesafe could abandon open source would be if every single employee left the company, including the leadership team and the board.

For a company that centres themselves around making open source software, there is always a tension between doing what's best for open source, and giving people a reason to pay you money.  It can be a fine line to walk sometimes.  At Typesafe, we have a no compromise policy on open source - our open source products must be full featured, fit for purpose, no functionality that is turned off or crippled for open source users, or anything like.  Everything we do to make money must work within that restriction, this means the commercial features that we offer must be optional things that you don't need to use the software, etc.  We believe strongly in the open source model, we wouldn't be where we are if it weren't for our open source communities, and so we see our open source products and communities as things that we must build and nuture.

Another tension, and I think this is possibly where you've found things a little difficult, is in how we market what we sell.  On the one side, if you don't want to pay us, we're completely cool with that, that's one of the basic features of open source, it's free, we want to get out of your way in that case.  On the other hand, there are many people that would find our services and extra products very useful that simply don't realise the value of our commercial offerings.  We want somehow to advertise ourselves to them.  So we use activator and the Typesafe website as a method to do this, to try and make people aware of what we offer.  You can always use Play without activator, I don't use activator myself, I just use sbt.  And all the Play documentation is available freely on the Play website.  Activator also has a community aspect, you can get community contributed free tutorials through it.

Sometimes these tensions are difficult, and we don't always get the compromises right, but we do ask that you bear with us, give us feedback when you think there is a problem, and don't get too worried by the commercial marketing.  Play is as good as it is because Typesafe makes enough money to pay a team of people to maintain it.  But making that money is dependent on providing value to our paying customers, and that also requires marketing to find those paying customers.

Regards,

James

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "play-framework" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to play-framewor...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

James Roper
Software Engineer

Typesafe – Build reactive apps!
Twitter: @jroper

[ric...@jesims.com.au]

Hi,

Let's compare some scenarios: a) Typesafe helps maintain / evolve open source software and offers commercial support / consulting service on top of it. b) Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc, offer commercial software and services. Now suppose a hypothetical scenario a') in which Typesafe "closes" the OS software (if that was possible)... Is there any single reason to choose b) over a)? I mean, even if scenario a') did happen, isn't it exactly the same alternative you have right now with b)?

I guess James' answer is the most important thing to consider: these guys love open source, why would they stop doing that? I totally get it. And I think OSS companies figuring a way to become lucrative is essential for open source to grow, to become sustainable, maybe even mainstream some day.

Additionally, there's 2 interesting characteristics of OSS:

1. You can always grab the source code and 'do it yourself'
2. The OSS license is viral, making it hard (in legal terms) to close something that started as OSS

Cheers, Richard

[James Roper]

And let's not forget that when an open source project has enough momentum behind it (which Play certainly does), if the commercial company behind it does anything that goes against the interests of the open source community, the open source community will always win, as Oracle showed the world in the Hudson/Jenkins fiasco.

[Philip Johnson]

Thanks, James, for providing insight into the relationship Typesafe as a company has with open source. It is very reassuring.

Parenthetically, I helped found a startup this past year with a somewhat similar business model: a ".org" which is totally open source (all of hardware, software, and the power quality data collected by the hardware/software system), combined with a ".com" that will (someday) (hopefully) be financially viable based on services and value-added products without endangering the .org in the process. I think it will be a big win to the open source Play project if Typesafe is a financially successful company.

In terms of how to make money without treading on anyone's OS toes, I think one kind of product that Typesafe could sell is "high-end" documentation packaged as "interactive e-books".   I am once again teaching Play as part of my software engineering course, I am once again finding the available books as either out of date or not well suited to my needs, and so I am once again building up a series of online tutorials and "workouts" with accompanying solution screencasts to help my students get up to speed with simple use of Play:

http://philipmjohnson.github.io/ics613s15/modules/web-application-frameworks/

http://philipmjohnson.github.io/ics613s15/modules/mvc/

(others coming later this semester)

Imagine something similar produced by Typesafe, focussed on a popular design pattern or application domain for Play, with accompanying sample code and exercises and tutorial screencasts, for which a user would need to pay, say, $30 a pop.  Just like buying a book on Play, only better. Typesafe could leave the "intro" stuff for people like me and other book authors, and instead focus on the needs of those who need advanced material and/or the most recent enhancements.  The books could be updated with each new release, and folks buying the book would maybe get one year of free updates, after which they'd have to re-buy. 

Philip

[Richard Sazima]

​Well done Philip​! Railscasts was a game changer for RoR...

​Cheers

,
---
Richard Sazima
+61 467 236 945

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "play-framework" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/play-framework/59hG-w6nKI4/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to play-framewor...@googlegroups.com.