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It’s a tale as old as open source commercialization: A promising project builds momentum through community collaboration, only to systematically dismantle the very freedoms that fueled its growth. This cynical pattern—dubbed the "rights-ratchet" model—remains devastatingly effective, with SugarCRM’s 2008-2018 evolution serving as its archetype.

The Seven Clicks of the Trap

At its core, the rights-ratchet is a calculated business strategy disguised as open source evangelism. Its phases unfold with grim predictability:

  1. Community Capture: Launch under a permissive license, leveraging open source’s network effects to attract users and contributors. The unspoken truth? The company wouldn’t operate under this license themselves—they control the copyright.
  2. Copyright Consolidation: Require contributor agreements (CLAs) that centralize intellectual property control. This lets the company sidestep the license’s reciprocity when convenient.
  3. Monetization Pivot: Introduce a proprietary "open-core" tier or SaaS offering. Scarcity is manufactured—functionality deliberately withheld from the community edition to drive subscriptions.
  4. Degradation of Community Value: Gradually starve the open source version, transforming it into a mere "free trial" for the paid product. Community input becomes irrelevant unless it generates revenue.
  5. Rhetorical Gaslighting: Intensify "open washing" rhetoric while attacking organizations like OSI or FSF as "gatekeepers" for pointing out eroding freedoms. Commercial necessity becomes the justification for betrayal.
  6. License Weaponization: Change licensing terms to further restrict usage or compatibility, often while misleadingly implying the project remains "open."
  7. Community Abandonment: The open source project withers as resources shift entirely to proprietary development. What began as collaboration ends as a vendor lock-in play.

Why Developers Should Recognize the Pattern

"I have yet to meet a sole-maintainer open source company following this model that demonstrates belief in any open source benefit apart from driving adoption," observes the original analysis. Once adoption peaks, contributions become transactional.

This isn’t just philosophical—it’s practical. Engineers investing time in these ecosystems face:
- Sudden Licensing Shifts: Your infrastructure could become non-compliant overnight.
- Wasted Integration Effort: Features you depend on may vanish into paid tiers.
- Broken Trust: Communities fracture when collaboration is replaced by extraction.

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The tragedy lies in the model’s effectiveness. By the time a project reaches Phase 7, its community—once a vibrant source of innovation—is reduced to a customer segment. The caged bird of paradise, now just a sales asset. For developers, vigilance is key: when "community" starts sounding synonymous with "customer base," the ratchet has already begun turning.

Source: Meshed Insights