Open Source at Candid Development

The world runs on Open Source Software (OSS)–software released under permissive licenses that allow anyone to use, modify, or distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. We are no exception, our products wouldn’t be possible without Open Source Software.

Challenges

Open Source Software (OSS) comes with challenges around funding and monetization. Most Open Source Software lives off of donations or corporate goodwill, or is part of a customer-hostile growth strategy called open core–release just enough functionality as open source to hook customers, and charge obscene amounts to those who grow beyond.

At Candid Development, we are in the business of selling software. At this time, that means our products are not open source–we can’t survive if folks can use (or even sell) our software for free.

We’ve reviewed different open source and source available license models, and they all come down to how much time/money/effort we want to spend on enforcing/suing those in breach of the license. At this time, being closed source is simply less risk for a business like us.

Benefits

We believe there are benefits to Open Source Software beyond being free: the ability to audit the code, dependency inspection, transparent development, and contingencies to prevent abandonment. These benefits are something we try to provide while remaining closed source:

Code Audits We are able to provide code inspection for customers on a case-by-case basis. Please contact us if you are interested.

Dependency Inspection All of our products ship with a list of Open Source Software in use, including links to the repositories and their licenses.

Transparent Development All of our products are developed using public roadmaps and issues.

Open Source Contingency

A common fear with software is neglect and abandonment. Abandoned software, especially closed source software, becomes useless or insecure quite quickly, and users are left with no recourse other than replacement. We recognize this fear, and we want our customers to feel confident that our products will exist as long as they are in use.

All of Candid Development’s products carry an Open Source Contingency:

If it has been more than six months since the last release of a Candid Development product, the product's source code will be released publicly as Open Source Software under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL-2.0).

In the future, we hope to partner with an open source foundation who will become the maintainer of the software if it becomes open source. Please contact us if you’re interested in fulfilling this role.