Balancing Profit and Principles: Building a Software Business Without Exploiting Open Source

Sat, 31 Aug 2024 23:37:00 -0600

I spend a lot of time thinking about where open source helps a software business — and where companies use the label while extracting more than they return. Building SpartanAuth has made that less abstract for me. I care about doing right by developers, and I also need a business that can sustain the work through Masonite Studios.

One quick boundary, because accuracy matters: SpartanAuth the service is not open source. What is open source is the login widget library, and I am proud of that. The rest of this post is about industry patterns I see, not a claim that my whole stack is OSS.

Service

Not open source — commercial product

Widget

Open source login library

In software, open source has been a powerful force for innovation and collaboration. As more companies embrace it, though, some adopt strategies that are profitable while undermining the spirit of the commons.

One common pattern is dual licensing with the AGPL (Affero General Public License). On the surface it can look community-friendly: a free OSS edition plus a paid proprietary license. In practice, some companies lean on AGPL’s legal ambiguity to push larger organizations toward the paid license, contribute little back, and treat “open source” mainly as marketing.

AGPL theater

When “open” is mostly a funnel into the paid license

If you want to build a software business without sliding into open-washing, there are better postures than “free core as a lead magnet you secretly hope enterprises are afraid to touch”:

True open source with support and services
Offer paid support, consulting, and custom development around software that is honestly open. This respects the community while funding the maintainers.
Open components, clear product boundary
Open the pieces developers need to inspect and embed (for me: the login widget), and be honest about what is a hosted/commercial product. Clarity beats pretending everything is free forever.
Community-driven work with sponsorship
Invite contributions and use sponsorship platforms so users who rely on the work can fund it directly.
Ethical productization
Pair strong engineering with values customers actually pay for — privacy, operational reliability, sane defaults — without bait-and-switch licensing.
Certification and compliance services
Help companies adopt the software effectively and legally through training, audits, or certification, without locking the ecosystem behind artificial scarcity.

5 postures

Ways to fund software without open-washing the commons

I do not pretend there is one pure model. I do think transparency beats theater. When a company says “open source,” I want to know what is open, what is paid, and who is obligated to whom.

Clarity > theater

Say what is open, what is paid, and who owes what to whom

For SpartanAuth, my current line is intentional: open widget library, commercial auth service I run for real apps (including several of my own), and this blog as the place I explain the tradeoffs in plain language. If that resonates, I would love for you to look at the product — and hold me to the standard of saying what is open and what is not.

business on SpartanAuth Blog

Balancing Profit and Principles: Building a Software Business Without Exploiting Open Source