 Hello everyone and a warm welcome to all of you in today's panel discussion. Our topic for today is open code to open source building a business model. My name is Gandhali Samant and I lead the developer ecosystem and market engagement charter at GitHub. As you all know, open source is everywhere. There is hardly any industry where open source adoption or penetration hasn't happened yet. According to a survey conducted in 2017, 99% of organizations use open source in some format. And then there are organizations who have gone ahead and built their entire business model around open source. In today's panel discussions, we are going to talk to founders or co-founders or for such organizations who have built thriving businesses around open source. So without further ado, let's get introduced to our panel today. We will start with Neha Gupta, who is the co-founder of Keploi and open source API testing platform. She has been in product development for around seven years. She has also contributed to open source projects like XWiki, Genkin X, etc. And she knows to mentor students in different programs such as Google Summer of Code, GCI and Outreach. Welcome Neha. Thank you. We are very happy to have you here. Next we have Pranav Raj Sripparan, who is the co-founder and CEO of Chatwin. He's a source enthusiast and he's passionate about building developer communities. Welcome Pranav. Hey, thanks for having me here. I'm excited to be here. Our third panelist for the day is Harini Janki Ram. Harini is the co-founder and CEO of Roy.io, a low code platform to build your product back in minutes all in the browser. Prior to this, Harini was a VP of engineering at BlackRock and also a partner at an early stage VC. She's an advocate of open source software as well as women in pink. She holds a master's degree in computer engineering from University of Texas at Austin. Welcome Harini. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. And our fourth panelist is Rushabh Mehta, founder of Frappe and ERP Next. His passion is to revolutionize business software by building a high quality, free and open source ERP. ERP Next is a fully featured platform and can be used by teams in many different domains. Rushabh likes to be personally involved in all the activities right from software development to team building and does many different roles at his organization. Welcome Rushabh. Thanks. Thanks. I'm really great to be here. Okay. So as our topic suggests today, we are going to talk about open source to open core building business model. So my first question is to you, Neha. How do you differentiate between open source and open core? Okay. Okay. You know, since open source is now very ubiquitous and widely adopted. So everyone is pretty aware that it's really available software, right? But I want to start licensing that a true open source license or a platform is something that is allowing its users or anyone to use, edit, or even redistribute or sell to their heart's desire. And when it comes to open core, on the other, it's more like to me, it's a business model to monetize the open source software. So, you know, the idea is simple that build an open source product, but offer an additional premium functionality, which is under a commercial license that, you know, restricts the modification and redistribution of that. So that's according to me is a core difference in open source and open core. Thanks, Harini. Pranav, would you like to add anything to it? Yeah, I think so to me, like, you know, there is always a community as well as like, you know, a business for an open source based businesses, right? Like, for example, like, you know, as if you take an example of chat, we have a larger community who actually uses our open source product, which is, which has like, you know, most of the features, but like, you know, it doesn't have a set of features which might not be relevant for smaller users or smaller businesses. So I think the community, like to build the community, we need manpower, we need the capital, we need more and more people to get involved. So what I feel is like, so as a distinction, and as a difference between open source and open core, what I see is like, you know, to build the larger community, we need some way to capitalize the existing product. And so they're like, you know, we have some features which will be restricted under a certain license. So like, you know, at Chatwood, what we are building is like, you know, we have open source product, which is in MIT license. And there is a set of features which is under enterprise license, which has like, you know, which needs a license to, you know, use. So yeah, I think like, you know, like, for me, the difference is like, you know, open core actually like, you know, helps to build open source communities. Thanks, Pranavani. I think, I think it gave us good clarity about how to differentiate between open source and open core. My next question is for you, Rishabh. How do you build an open core business model? What is the thought process behind it? So, you know, we actually are fully open source, we are not in the open core side of things. And, you know, we decided that so open core and open source, you know, like Pranav said that there is a lot of good reason, right? I mean, you have to sustain your business at some level and open core is a great way to identify features. I come from a slightly different perspective that, you know, I mean, there is like, where do you draw the line? Ultimately, right? I mean, that is a very difficult question that people need to ask that. Ultimately, if you're going to ask your users to, if you're going to position your product as an open source product, you know, users do expect that, you know, your product is, you know, really free and open source, right? And for us, you know, we really monetize from hosting and services, you know, that's our model. So we kind of come from the, you know, maybe the outlier in this group here. Well, Outliers is good because you told us about how your open source business model works. Harini, would you like to add is your model open source or open core? Yeah, I can talk about our approach to open core or what we like to call commercial open source model as well. That's kind of prevalent right now. So we have a base open source model that's completely free. The code base, you can self host or you can, we also have a hosted version that's also free. And we have a paid model that we actually still launching soon. That gives you access to pro features that in addition to the base open source version gives you things that are dependent on more infrastructure or things that need you to maintain things that typically a one person or a team using the open source model might not need. So logically, it makes sense that those kind of features go into the hosted pro paid features. So that's how we are approaching the open core business model. Thanks Harini. So as we see, there is this trend today, right? It's growing to be open source or open core based organization. So my question is for you Pranav. Why did you decide to be open core based organization? So yeah, I think like, you know, before coming to that, I would like to answer like, you know, why it is open source. So like there is like, if you look at the regulations right now, right, like in GDPR or CPR or any data regulation, which is coming up in the world. Companies are moving towards having like, you know, their own infrastructure, like, you know, the managed infrastructure for their customers, so that they don't transfer data to their party. So at that point, it makes sense to have a self hosted, you know, kind of a software. And open source actually like, you know, helps us to do that in a pretty good way. And like when we actually like, you know, thought about making it open source and building a business out of it, there were a couple of options for us. One was, you know, we completely open source it and then build a cloud version of the software just like, you know, Russia was doing. Or we could actually like, you know, build the entire thing as open source and use support subscriptions from that. And the third thing was, which was proven and like, you know, which has a lot of potential was that like, you know, you have a base model where which is used by larger community and you have a set of features which is restricted to a set like to like, which will be used by either larger companies or like, you know, people who wanted customized features. So we figured that building larger businesses requires this kind of approach. And hence, we actually like, you know, went into being an open core company rather than like, you know, adopting other funds. Thanks, Rana. Rushabh, would you like to tell us why did you decide to be an open source based organization? So we started way back, right? I mean, we started in 2008, when there was very little awareness of open source business models and the prevalent thinking in 2008, 2009. I mean, 10 years ago was that only red hat makes money from open source, right? Nobody else does. I mean, today we are in a very different market, very different scenario where you have a whole bunch of open source companies, commercial open source companies that have come out. And I mean, it's essentially due to the rise of the cloud. I mean, once once the cloud became the de facto deployment model for software, you know, the whole movement to distribute software and cloud became open source and developers started taking more decisions. And, you know, the best way to get pro developer is through an open source. So it's just a very new thing that we have seen, you know, obviously, you know, the MongoDB going public and, you know, the acquisition of GitHub by Microsoft, right? These were very, very important events for the whole ecosystem to shift to a pro open source model. I mean, this wasn't there 10 years ago. 10 years ago, nobody would touch open source. We have seen like a whole tectonic shift in this business. I mean, we come from a more traditional mindset. I mean, I, you know, my business model was essentially what WordPress was that, you know, we will provide the software for free, but we will provide hosting. Currently, we don't distinguish between the software and it does give us some disadvantage. But I think in the long run, we do believe that there is, there will be enough proprietary or there will be enough, you know, services, commercial services that we will be able to build around hosting and around, you know, building a network and around the delivering services that, you know, we will be able to sustain even without going open core. We've stuck to it. I mean, our license has been GNU, GPL, V3 from the get go and I don't, and we don't intend to change it now. If I were to start today, maybe I don't know. See, so all of us know that I would say the success of open source projects are dependent on, is dependent on the number of people are contributing it or using it, right? So adoption is the key here. So my question is to you, Harini, how do you drive adoption of your platform? Yeah, so we focus on a couple of things to drive adoption. First through awareness where we are, you know, trying to talk about what the project does and how it can help other people build their products easily through, you know, various things like content videos and easy to use templates that people can really fork and get started. And then we have like significant emphasis on growing the community via contributions and conversations and also integrations with other tools in the platform that we can, you know, collaborate with. So it's not like we are building in isolation. We are collaborating with other open source project creators and the community. We're also working on engagement at a community level by, you know, being proactive and addressing various issues, PRs and like discord messages, because I think at a core level, open source is basically community. So engaging with the community, keeping it thriving is one of our core goals as well. Thanks, Harini. Neha, would you like to add your thoughts to it? How do you guys drive adoption at Keploid? Yeah, I mean, we're still very early state, so I don't have much to add, but we've been getting a lot of traction from, you know, social channels like discussing on subreddit or of Go community developer communities. And these are helping us with, you know, getting a lot of feedback. And, you know, spreading the word throughout the community, people talking about Keploid in different blog posts, that is a major channel. And so since, you know, Keploid is an API testing platform which captures data in a very intensive manner. So to be 100% open source and that adoption to be present within the developer community was something that was our strategy to, you know, drive adoption amongst developers. Thanks, Neha. Thanks for sharing that with us. So my next question is actually open for all four of you. You know, I would like to, I would like each of you to kind of answer this. So what are some of the advantages as well as disadvantages that you have encountered of being an open source or an open core based organization? So Pranav, do you want to go first? Yeah, sure. So I think advantages are obvious. You get a lot of traction from an adoption from open source community. You have, you'd be able to build a good community of product enthusiasts without, like without much effort. So I guess that actually adds to the effort required for you to build such a community if you are a close source product is much high, that being open source reduces that. And on the flip side of it, it also like add a much more like, you know, I would say like, you know, not a disadvantage but like, you know, it gives you much distraction in terms of like, you know, people might want different things. How do you prioritize these different requests? Like, you know, how do you prioritize your product roadmap? How do you prioritize the requests which are coming in? So it's just that, like, you know, it's in the open, you need to build a process to get a handle on that. So I think like, you know, being open source is always an advantage because people can see the code. It helps you in sales because, you know, people can just test out the open source product and then, you know, reach out to you if it is interesting. And yeah, I mean, again, like, plus a good advantage is that, like, you know, you have a good community of product people, like people who love the product. Thanks for now. Harini, do you want, have you seen any disadvantages as well of being, you know, an open core based organization? Yeah, I mean, you know, there, as you as Prana mentioned, a lot of advantages, but in terms of disadvantage, it kind of adds another layer of complexity to a product that you're already building, essentially, because, you know, every feature or anything in your roadmap that you're thinking about, you need to think about where it fits, whether it fits logically in the open source, or it has to be in your kind of hosted, or like the paid version, and how do you actually then deploy it to the community in a way that is transparent, because, you know, the advantages of open source is also that you are maintaining a level of transparency for people. So essentially, you know, deploying different features in a more reliable and consistent manner across your open source and the close source kind of proprietary core model that you're building on top of it. So that's something that could be a disadvantage for your community. Thanks. Thanks, Harini. Rishabh, any other thoughts since you said you are in a little bit of outlier here, what are your experiences? I mean, if you, I mean, I, yesterday I was at a discussion with students about, you know, building businesses around open source. And I mean, so building a business is hard. Building a good product is even harder. And building a good product and a business and giving it away for free is like you're just, you know, just adding all the, all the difficulties, right? This is the most difficult part in a way, right? Because you are giving away a product for free. You are, you know, building, you're building something good first, right? Because open source and open core, whatever you want to call it is essentially brutally meritocratic. I mean, just because you're giving away your stuff for free doesn't mean people are going to use it. They want it to be as good as consumer-grade software. So that's the expectation. They want it free, right? And then it comes with a lot of expectations from the community. It comes with, you know, a lot of entitlement. You know, it's communities are not kind. I mean, you know, if you're giving away something for free doesn't mean that they'll always love you for it, right? They will expect more. They'll expect you to build features. Even contributors, right? I mean, you know, I mean, I see some early-stage projects, right? I mean, early-stage projects love contributors, right? But once you hit a point, you know, you don't want contributors because you realize that contributors are not here for long, right? Especially people who are just going to contribute one thing and then go away and then leave it to you to maintain their contribution. So you really want to build a community that's long-lasting, you know, that has a long-term perspective are going to be around for a long time. So I think there are a lot of disadvantages in building this model. The big advantage is obviously that, you know, you get distribution from a business perspective. You get marketing and distribution for free. But yeah, it's a very hard business to be very honest. Thanks, Rishabh. Nihar, do you have anything else to add to what all the other three panelists say? Yeah, I mean, majorly, I agree with the advantages that there is unlimited potential in terms of getting feedback from the community. Since there is mutual transparency, you know, you can talk about and mutually bring it on with upcoming mature bugs, fixes, you know, community likes and dislikes and the community support. It only gets trickier or confusing, you know, as a disadvantage. Sometimes you get an overwhelming input from the community on various topics. For example, this recently happened that we wanted to add product telemetry to the open source Kiploy platform and 90% of the users are okay with it. But there are, you know, 5 to 10% which are very highly vocal when they are against something or they do not like something. And this kind of situations create a confusion with the direction sometimes. And it is not just with a, you know, a simple feature it can get into and even to the technical architecture and different things. So, yeah, that's something that where it gets to gear. Thanks, Neha. So you and Rishabh both brought out aspects of community in this whole process, right? So my next question and again, I'm from Github. So our focus is all around developers. So I really want to know what has been an experience for each of you to target this developer audience via open source using your platform. So again, Neha, maybe we'll just start with you and go around the clock. Sure. I mean, we generally, you know, talk to developers and STTs in the Go community, the channels since Kiploy currently supported Go. We talked to developers on Github around, you know, those discussions, what could be added more or not. And even when we changed our Kiploy logo, we took leverage of Github community and the, you know, sources that we have. And it really helps us with coming up different aspects of seeing a feature or our user experience and taking into actions. So that way, you know, it is really helping us to target developers and take feedback from them and, you know, reiterate the loop. Thanks, Neha. Pranav, what has been your experience? Yeah, I think the reason why we started open source and like, you know, targeted developers was that during our, like the place where I worked last, like, you know, we have this internal tool which we used for customer support and all the customer data. Like it's generally like, you know, not the actual business. It's actually like, you know, kind of an internal tool. Most people don't like it. And it's always standard. There might be a little bit, a small element which you want to tweak, you want to update. And for that reason, you might be like, you know, building the entire thing from scratch. So we wanted to avoid that. We wanted to give people a base platform where they can build, they can build their tools, like, you know, to organize their customer data to organize their support request and stuff like that. So what we have provided is like, you know, we build a platform where we can, like developers can build on their own integrations and their own extensions on top of chat boot. And so far we have seen quite a lot of things which we couldn't even imagine if we are doing it as a as a flow source product. So I think like, you know, being being direct to a developers and like, you know, getting their attention is really important to us. Thanks. Thanks for now. Rishabh, anything that you want to add here since you have been doing this for a very long time. And also, you know, if you have seen any change in last few years. Yeah, I mean, so we actually learned two large projects. One is ERP next, which is like, which is targeted to almost every business out there because it does financial accounting. And there we are not mostly there the kind of developers we are dealing with are mostly freelancers. You know, so some company wants an ERP next implementation, they'll get hold of a freelancer. And then, you know, that freelancer may or may not continue to contribute in the community that and out of that, you know, we've probably able to identify four or five really good long term contributors through the community, right. And the other big project we run is Frappist framework, which is essentially the tool that we used to build ERP next. And it's kind of a low code rapid application development. You know, that's what it used to be called before the term low code was, you know, I've seen I believe through both of those cycles. So it's a rapid application development tool, low code framework in these days. And that is more targeted to developers, though we haven't really been out there promoting Frappe as much as ERP next. And you know, our experience is, is, you know, I mean, it really depends on the quality of software you're, you're giving out right. I mean, you know, we are software wasn't that great for many years, you know, now it's reasonably, reasonably good. I would say it's acceptable. So, so, you know, the kind of software you put out is, you know, the kind of developers you attract. So it's very brutally meritocratic out there. So yeah, I mean, that's Thanks. Thanks, Rishabh Harini. Do you want to add anything to this last question? Yeah, I mean, so if you're building like a product that's for targeted non developers audience like marketing or operations, then open source is possibly like, you know, some not something they're mainly looking for. They're looking for something that solves their problem and they don't care if the product is open source or not. Whereas like, if you're focusing on building a developer tools product, which is what we are doing with the Dev tool, and I can speak for myself or like how other developers feel. If there's a completely closed source option, and there is an open source option, I tend to gravitate towards the open source because, you know, if you hit some feature limit or something like that, you can continue to extend at a core and contribute back. And so with Roy, we are building like a no code platform that basically allows you to get started like a no code, but then you can continue to extend at a core level anytime you need. And our experience with, you know, seeing how developers are extending it in different scenarios has been really interesting various kind of use cases and that's has been a really good learning experience for us. Thanks. Thanks so much, Harini. So I think we are on time and this brings us to the close off today's panel discussion. Thanks a lot, Neha, Pranav, Harini and Rishabh for, you know, sharing your journey, your experiences of building your organizations. I think this is a growing trend today. So your experiences will help a lot of, you know, new startups and organizations who are going in the same directions as each of you did. So with that, thanks a lot once again. And I would hope to talk to you all off soon.