Nginx Plus
I fully appreciate the need for the developers of nginx to make money and I can understand that moving to what essentially is open-core is probably the only way for them to actually make money out of nginx (the thing works so well that selling support contracts probably won't do).<p>But open-core shifts motivation of the developers away from something the community at large can profit. Whenever a new feature is debated internally, it will have to be placed in the closed or open bracket. The more complicated the feature, the more likely it's going to be closed. The more time spent on closed features, the less time is available for open ones.<p>Worse, when people want to submit patches (it's still open source after all), their patches aren't just vetted for quality and whether they fit the overall product vision. They are now also vetted against an internal roadmap of planned commercial features, making it impossible or highly unlikely for a feature on the internal roadmap to ever by accepted from outside sources.<p>This has a huge potential to diminish the product as it's available for the community at large.<p>Combine this with the fact that purchasing the pro version isn't really possible without talking to sales (heck - it's not even possible to learn the price without talking to sales), the full product won't even be available for most of us (unwilling to deal with sales people) which makes this even more painful.<p>I'm not saying I'll be looking to move away quickly, but I think it might be time to start evaluating possible alternatives as they come along.<p>edit:<p>To add something constructive: I would have much preferred them to move into a service business based on their knowledge about nginx and do something like a cloud flare competitor or other stuff related to serving HTTP, so basically anything they are now using as arguments for buying the pro version, but as a service.<p>They would still be able to a) use their good name related to the backend technology and b) profit from their huge know-how of the internal workings of nginx to create patches and features for internal use. That would still drain some development time, but it wouldn't be wasted on polish and UI which is needed in this open-core case. :-)