BoxyHQ pledges to keep our core open-source code open

As long-time users and contributors to the open-source ecosystem, we want to do the right thing for the community. That means we will make sure that our core open-source code stays open. We will also strive to use open standards where possible. We want to collaborate with the community to build towards our vision to make security, compliance and privacy easy for developers so they can focus on their core product while being compliant.

BoxyHQ will need to have a viable way of making money soon since we are a commercial company at the end of the day. But we’d like to do this without having to do things that alienate our community, like removing or blocking previously free and open features. We will separate the Enterprise features from the open features with intentionality, transparency and community inclusion in our decision-making logic – focused on building Enterprise products that are built to address complex, production-sensitive requirements, and keeping the vast majority of end-user empowering capabilities in the upstream open-source project. We will also do our best to be transparent about which features are free and open source, and which are not.

Of course, open-source code sometimes becomes obsolete. So, it can stay open source but not viable. If we ever need to stop maintaining a release of our open-source code, we will work with the community to transition it to another maintainer. But in any case, we won’t stop maintaining our open-source code without giving the community reasonable notice of the transition. And we will do our best to maintain backward compatibility for our enterprise features for a reasonable lifespan.

We hope this pledge will give you peace of mind when using our technologies. We do not want to put you at risk of becoming locked in with us. We instead want you to happily and thoughtfully choose to join our community, contribute to our projects, use our technologies, and also buy from us in the future because of the value we provide and not out of compulsion because you were left with no other choice.

Sincerely,

The BoxyHQ Team

* Inspired by Ferymon
* Thanks to JJ and Heather from OSS Capital for reviewing drafts of this post