Bitbucket.org

[Paul R]

On Fri, 1 Aug 2008 10:51:04 +0200, Jesper Noehr <jesper at noehr.org> said:
Paul> So maybe you can develop on : "Why do you beleive your incomes
Paul> are more guaranteed if you don't share the program ?"

Jesper> Because if we release the source, nothing keeps other people
Jesper> from launching their own Bitbucket instance and charging lower
Jesper> fees (or doing it for free, for that matter.)

As you previously said, hardware and employees are not free of charge.
So I doubt somebody else can provide BitBucket service with the same
quality for free.

Jesper>  I'm a firm believer in open source, and I would like to
Jesper> release the source to the public, but there are certain
Jesper> aspects to that which would make it a bad decision. 

You are probably aware of the Affero GPL [1]. If BitBucket software
became public, using such a licence would ensure your company, Jesper,
would benefit from any work done on the software by an external
contributor, be him an individual or a company. In such a model,
AvantLumiere would concentrate its business on hosting and integration
to provide the best experience.

Jesper> That being said, there is possibility that we will release the
Jesper> source later on, after we have (hopefully) gained some
Jesper> marketshare, and don't have to struggle to be noticed.

One of the known way to gain publicy and market shares is to
distribute the program so that lowly skilled system administrators can
install it and play with it. Then you offer the best paid hosting
available, and companies with serious requirements but bad (or no)
system administrators buy it. A free plan on your hosted service also
serves that purpose pretty well, indeed.


[1] http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

-- 
  Paul