Top all-time · #3552
Open Core Ventures
Company blog · opencoreventures.com/blog · on HN as sytsestartupsbusiness
Open Core Ventures is the company blog at opencoreventures.com, writing about startups and business. Since 2022, 22 different Hacker News readers have linked it 44 times, most often “Open core is a misunderstood business model”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Open Core Ventures' blog for posts on open source licensing and commercial open source business models, often as background for debates about open core and AGPL.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
We turn open source projects into durable, venture-scale opportunities.
Most-linked posts?
- Open core is a misunderstood business model5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-07-15
- The Red Hat model only worked for Red Hat3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-04-15
- AI weights are not open “source”3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-05
- Technical founders need a demand-focused co-founder from the start2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-08-13
- RedHat found a way to get around GPLv2 intention with contract law2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-04
- /blog/agpl-license-is-a-non-starter-for-most-companies2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-04-09
- Founder-compensated startups are default dead2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-16
- The Rise of Observability (O11y)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-08-01
- Open core split should be based on features, not on code base2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-20
- OCV's new source available license is an alternative to closed-source licenses2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-13
What Hacker News says?
Yes, that's the MongoDB variant which codifies it directly, and SF Conservancy and other legal entities promotion FOSS licenses states that the network stack contagion concern does not actually apply for the AGPL. But because AGPL doesn’t dig into the definition of "access", simply defining it as “users interacting with it remotely through a computer network”, nor define clear boundaries for how the "contagious" par…
Comment linking /blog/agpl-license-is-a-non-starter-for-most-companies
on “Liquibase continues to advertise itself as "open source" despite license switch”Submitted Preventing the bait and switch by open core software companies as a story · 68 points
HN discussionI’ve had a few HN posts reach the front page and they’ve enabled me to make many tens of thousands of dollars just this year. How? Well my penchant for yak shaving SOMETIMES produces interesting projects —- so now people and companies pay me to do interesting work/experiments/writing with their software (or software we both like). Some recent examples: - https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2022-06-rise-of-o11y/ - http…
Comment linking /blog/2022-06-rise-of-o11y/
on “Ask HN: What HN post made you money?”Submitted RedHat found a way to get around GPLv2 intention with contract law as a story · 22 points
HN discussionLooks really great! But regarding monetization, one word of caution that other commenters haven't mentioned so far: make sure you have a really good understanding of the licensing concerns before proceeding. Initial disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Your project is using AGPL, without a CLA, and you have third-party contributors. If I understand correctly, this essentially prevents anyone f…
Comment linking /blog/agpl-license-is-a-non-starter-for-most-companies
on “Show HN: DrawDB – open-source online database diagram editor (a retro)”Submitted AI weights are not open “source” as a story · 13 points
HN discussionI fell in love with this article at this sentence: > Still. Many in the open source community have interpreted Red Hat’s decision for what it really was: A dick move. I've had a short essay in draft for a while about the difficulty of a small business trying to make money using The Red Hat Model ( https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2023-04-red-hat-model-only... ). Red Hat seem like an outlier who're doing well with t…
Comment linking /blog/2023-04-red-hat-model-only-worked-red-hat/
on “The Insecurity of Debian”Submitted The Rise of Observability (O11y) as a story · 5 points
HN discussion>Thats why RedHat is a business. They're not selling Linux, they're selling the reliability, longevity, services, support etc. >In truth the license doesn't matter. It's funny to bring that up in the context of Red Hat who have started to circumvent the GPL by terminating their relationship with anyone who tries to actually make use of the rights granted by it. "The license doesn't matter" because they've found a lo…
Comment linking /blog/2023-08-redhat-gets-around-gplv2-license-intention-with-contract-law/
on “Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech”Submitted Phaser creator Richard Davey launches Phaser Studio to modernize browser games as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDISCLAIMER: I do some paid work with with Open Core Ventures[0] and I've been a GitLab fan for a while so I'm quite biased. Just tried to use some GitLab repos I have and ran into a well specified 503 error page: > We are splitting our database into Main and CI! > > For more information about what we're up to, you can check out our blog article. For progress updates, please check our status page. https://about.gitla…
Comment linking /
on “We are splitting our database into Main and CI”Submitted Open core split should be based on features, not on code base as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDisclaimer: I’ve been paid to write and do experiments/devrel for OCV and portfolio companies in the past People seem to be complaining about the business model here, but that can be tweaked or changed literally at will (and by negotiation for maintainers). As for intent, at this point I don’t think it makes sense to consider Sid’s intent nefarious —- look at how Gitlab is run. Speaking of the disclaimer, we tried t…
Comment linking /blog/2022-03-someone-has-to-pay-for-the-domino/
on “Preventing the bait and switch by open core software companies”Submitted Open core is a misunderstood business model as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWrote an article about this recently for Open Core Ventures: https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2022-03-someone-has-to-pay... Obviously OCV is partial to open core, but the idea of open source that can win in the traditional business sense is being pushed forward by innovative companies (ex. Supabase) and YC itself at this point via the investments they make. It’s not all doom and gloom out there. That said, library…
Comment linking /blog/2022-03-someone-has-to-pay-for-the-domino/
on “The Flossbank Attempt”Submitted AGPL license is a non-starter for most companies as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGreat point in the article. In https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2023-06-27-ai-weights-are-... I propose a framework to solve the confusion. From the post: "AI licensing is extremely complex. Unlike software licensing, AI isn’t as simple as applying current proprietary/open source software licenses. AI has multiple components—the source code, weights, data, etc.—that are licensed differently. AI also poses socio-eth…
Comment linking /blog/2023-06-27-ai-weights-are-not-open-source/
on “LLaMA2 isn't “Open Source” – and why it doesn't matter”Submitted HashiCorp switching to BSL shows a need for open charter companies as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThanks for your response, I appreciate it. One thing that is a big risk to the optimum is open core companies relicensing the open source code after the project becomes popular, to prevent this some of our companies are set up as public benefit companies https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2022-11-introducing-authen...
Comment linking /blog/2022-11-introducing-authentik-security/
on “Free and open source software projects are in transition”Submitted Open core is a misunderstood business model as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI assume you mean my VC fund, Open Core Ventures https://opencoreventures.com/ that starts new companies around existing open source projects. We believe that open core companies need to give back and the open source code base should be better off because the open core company exists. Features that appeal most to individual contributors should be open source https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2023-01-open-core-standa…
Comment linking /blog/2023-07-open-core-is-misunderstood-business-model/
on “Free and open source software projects are in transition”Submitted OCV's new source available license is an alternative to closed-source licenses as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI'm not sure if I understand your point. OSS != FOSS https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2023-07-open-core-is-misun...
Comment linking /blog/2023-07-open-core-is-misunderstood-business-model/
on “Infisical – open-source HashiCorp Vault alternative”Submitted New source available license is a simple alternative to closed-source licenses as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThere is no limits for the usage of any open source feature. There are limits for some enterprise-level features. The fact that there are some features behind the license doesn't make the rest of the codebase less "open source" Read this interesting blog by Sid from GitLab about this: https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2023-07-open-core-is-misun...
Comment linking /blog/2023-07-open-core-is-misunderstood-business-model/
on “Show HN: Infisical – open-source secret management platform”Submitted Technical founders need a demand-focused co-founder from the start as a story · 1 points
HN discussionWhile it’s great to see more high profile deployments of Matrix, this is another instance of the failure mode described at https://matrix.org/blog/2022/12/25/the-matrix-holiday-update... where an organisation with massive funds depends on an open source project like Element and Matrix for critical infrastructure… but doesn’t contribute a cent to the underlying development (yet, at any rate). As a result, Matrix fund…
Comment linking /blog/2023-04-red-hat-model-only-worked-red-hat/
on “Polish Army Uses Matrix”Submitted Technical founders need a demand-focused co-founder from the start as a story · 1 points
HN discussion"Inevitable end for every open source company since the free money ended." I think the only way to prevent this is changing the company charter https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2022-10-preventing-the-bai... "Then after 2 years Terraform Cloud catches up" Really good point, company scopes change.
Comment linking /blog/2022-10-preventing-the-bait-and-switch-open-core/
on “HashiCorp Adopts Business Source License”Submitted Don't listen to feedback from VCS who pass on investing as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
