Open Core

Open Core is a licensing and business model used by many commercial open source companies. The model relies on the creation of two products. One product is the open source core project typically given away freely and the other is a closed source paid for product likely built upon the open source project.

A real world example of the problems with open core software

A real world example of what Tarus Balog from OpenNMS has been banging on about recently with his critique of open core or fauxpen source as Tarus calls it. A product manager who has an open product and a closed product plainly has a decision to make over which features go into which product. Give too much away and the value add of the closed enterprise product is insufficient to warrant the licence fees.