Licensing is packaging
A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation on X with Chef co-founder Adam Jacob about software packaging. I was explaining how going source-available had driven Keygen Cloud's 2x growth over the last year. Adam argued that the growth probably wasn't due to becoming source-available but rather the change in packaging, specifically around offering a freemium self-hosted variant of Keygen.
He suggested that staying closed-source would have yielded the same success. I disagreed. My lived-experience of running a closed-source software company for 7 years before going source-available let me see first-hand the key role that licensing plays in packaging.
Packaging is how a software business communicates its product's value and positions itself in the market — through brand, features, pricing, distribution, and yes — licensing.
All of these are levers that let you control where you sit in the market; at the end of the day, it's all about directing how customers perceive your product and ultimately how customers use your product.
