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Open-core and\nco-ops in the land of the future

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\n2023/02/15\n

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\nCan we build an equitable tech business that aims to liberate without\nbeing hypocrites?\n

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Open-core

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I want to start this article by first talking about open-source code.\nThere are many reasons why organisations keep code private, some more\nvalid than others, and I am not here to cast shame. But I do want to\nhighlight the various degress of success that many organisations have\nreached with what is called the “open-core” model.

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The “open-core” model essentially means that a business’ core value\nproposition does not come from licensing a carefully-protected product\nbut from the expertise in supporting other organisations using a freely\navailable one. The tech world is full of companies like this: GitLab,\nDocker, Elastic, Redis, just to name a few. They create free and\nopen-source technology and then host it on managed cloud infrastructure\nfor paying customers and provide support and training consultancy. This\ngives people the choice to use the technology for free, but spend time\nlearning and managing it, or to pay for a simpler, managed experience.\nIt is this business model that we are planning to implement around our\nopen-source technologies.

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This sounds pretty great but it can be taken a step further. These\ntech companies are (mostly) still under the control of shareholders and\ndirectors, giving decision-making power that affects vast swathes of\npeople to just a few. We then have to hope that they remain virtuous and\ngracious in their actions. What happens when a large institution wants\nto buy the technology? Typically, shareholders are in it for profit and\nso they jump at the opportunity to sell. Ideally, people using a\ntechnology should have a say in its direction and how it can be used for\nprofit.

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For these reasons commercialisation of Shineponics technology is\nbeing very carefully considered. Companies registered in Germany for\nexample must have a certain percentage of board members be workers, I\nhave a friend implementing a setup like this for a community-land trust.\nI am also very intrigued by the idea of a co-operative platform for many\nof the aforementioned reasons but there is still much to learn. I hope\nyou are interested in following along with the journey.

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