Open source everything, and sell the customised, tested, maintained build

Everything the company builds is open source, with no proprietary layer; what the customer buys is a build for them, sometimes with fewer features and so less attack surface, tested on their target, maintained as models, connectors and threats change, with someone accountable for it, and cheaper through you than doing it themselves. Not a donation, and not a licence that gives you a reason to make the free version worse. In the article's simulation, customised builds for companies cover one project's long-tail cost in 94% of draws, donations in 24%, and about £1.80 a machine a year from individuals covers it in half the draws with typical conversion; no price reaches nine in ten.

Decided by. Nobody yet: a candidate for Dinis to read, comment on and decide (keep, rewrite, merge, cut, article first, later, not doing it).

Note. The article says the model is a model, not a forecast, and that the three assumptions that move it most (how many machines are out there, willingness to pay, the share on the long tail) are not well measured in public data. Quote worth keeping: 'The value is the support, not the code, so the code can stay open.' The ten-questions article calls the moat 'delivery, maintenance and trust', not lock-in.

Where it comes from

Open source is not free What this says; Five ways to pay for the long tail, simulated; What price pays for the long tail? (newsroom)
Ten hard questions for RiskMandate, answered 3. Can policies be tailored to my stack, and what am I paying for?, What you pay for (newsroom)

What it answers in the 2018 book

Open Source answered written, MVP for Gen Z Dev
Be a founder answered written, Life Patterns

Where it goes

Chapter Open source, part Build it without a server (drafting); topic Open source: contribute, fork, and why it protects everyone.

Other ideas proposed for the same chapter: Open source means nobody can lock you in: the fork next door, Your first pull request: open source is still the newcomer's best door, Open source, community and OWASP: working and getting hired in the open, with the names behind it, Open source is why it is easy to throw your own technology away, Open source as a constraint: all of it, or it is an evaluation version with a better name, Open source is not free: somebody pays, and the people who get the value have no easy way to.

Node idea:sell-the-build-not-the-code in graph.json; see it in the graph. Source: admin/content/graph/ideas.json.