There are more and more open source DevTools startups. I’ve interviewed dozens. But I am still confused about open source licenses. So I decided to ask questions to two people who actually understand them: my friends Eric and Matt - founders of open source background jobs tool Trigger.dev.

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

What we discuss:

• Two Key Questions for License Selection
• What are the benefits of permissive licenses?
• What are the main licenses?
• Why shouldn’t you write your own (open source) license?
• What is Copyleft?
• Post Open Source" Movement

• (00:50) - Open Source Licensing
• (18:18) - Protective Licensing
• (23:12) - Copy Left Concept
• (43:30) - Wordpress

Trigger:

• Eric Allam - https://x.com/maverickdotdev
• Matt Aitken - https://x.com/mattaitken
• Trigger.dev https://trigger.dev/
• JSON Hero https://jsonhero.io/

Licenses

• MIT License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License - Matt’s “most permissive license”
• Apache-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_License - “Like MIT but with trademarks”
• FSL / Fair Source License https://fair.io/ - created by Sentry
• Heather Meeker - Open Source Licencing expert https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathermeeker/
• A practical guide to Open Source Licencing https://www.amazon.co.uk/Open-Source-Business-Practical-Licensing/dp/1544737645

References

• Sentry https://sentry.io/welcome/
• Redis https://redis.io/
• Valkey https://valkey.io/
• Clickhouse https://clickhouse.com/
• Background to Continue.dev and PearAI https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/30/y-combinator-is-being-criticized-after-it-backed-an-ai-startup-that-admits-it-basically-cloned-another-ai-startup/

John O'Nolan is the Founder and CEO of Ghost.org. Ghost is an open source blog & newsletter platform. We use them for the Scaling DevTools' blog.

Note: this episode was recorded on 17th October 2024.

We talk about:

• How to communicate the benefits of Open Source to non-developers
• How Ghost manages to align open source and money making
• John's thoughts on the Automattic/Wordpress drama
• Advantages and disadvantages of VC funding and open source
• What would John do with VC dollars

Resources:

• Ghost https://ghost.org/
• John's website https://john.onolan.org/
• The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/07/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/
• Indie Hackers podcast https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/139-john-onolan-of-ghost
• Cursor cursor.com
• Ben Thompson's blog https://stratechery.com/

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.

Gonto (Martin Gontovnikas) was the 6th employee at Auth0 and helped them grow fast and sell for $6.5billion to Okta.

Now he is the founder of Hypergrowth Partners and helps DevTools grow fast.

We discuss:

• What Auth0 did to become so valuable so fast
• What the best founders do (Guillermo Rauch)
• Different is better than better
• People follow people not brands
• Why bleeding edge matters

Resources

• Why Technical SDRs are the Future of DevTools
  https://playbooks.hypergrowthpartners.com/p/product-advocates-technical-sdrs
• Gonto's website https://gon.to/
• Gonto's Twitter https://twitter.com/mgonto
• Hypergrowth Partners https://www.hypergrowthpartners.com/
• Code to Market https://codetomarket.fm/
• Guillermo Rauch https://x.com/rauchg

This episode is brought to you by WorkOS. If you're thinking about selling to enterprise customers, WorkOS can help you add enterprise features like Single Sign On and audit logs.