Why I'm introducing a paid licensing model #960
Replies: 16 comments 45 replies
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Thanks for sharing your eye-opening journey. Even if we are good at something, we can be kicked out anytime. I really hope Laragon will bring you success. 👍 |
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@leokhoa Many of us have been there - sometimes life is very unfair, and employment is almost certainly one of the most unfair parts of society. I was made redundant in the 1990s (entirely fairly done - no gripes) and went self employed for 15 years. Then a recession loomed and I went back into employment and got very unfairly treated (to the point I was off sick with stress for more than 6 months). Then I ran a successful small business for 8 years. So I can attest to self-employment being a happier place for me (and many other people). However, when you are employed, it can be very very hard to leave the safety of a guaranteed monthly income for the uncertainties of up-and-down sales from your own product. So perhaps being let-go is a good thing as now you have the time and are committed to making Laragon a financial success (as well as a technical success). As Husnil says, most of us here support your goal to make a living from Laragon - and I believe that it is possible to be successful with this if you get things right, but it equally can be a disaster if you get them wrong. And right now many of us think you are getting them wrong. The one point I have previously made elsewhere but which is even more relevant in the circumstances you have just shared with us (very bravely I might add), is that by setting the price so high for non-commercial users you are losing out on a LOT of initial revenues, and it seems to me that this is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT at this crucial point where your new-born means increased expenses but you no longer have a steady income. My own experience of redundancy 30 years ago was also that savings do not last long when you suddenly don't have a monthly income but you still have all your normal monthly expenses (which were likely not that much less than your monthly income). So I urge you again to rethink URGENTLY your market segmentation, pricing and user engagement strategies in order to improve your short term sales. Alexander, Husnil and I (and almost certainly others) stand ready to give you input and / or act as sounding boards for your own ideas in order to help you make better strategic and tactical decisions - but you need to open up to allow us to help you (and so far your openness has extended only as far as to thanking me for my insights and not to engaging in a dialogue or making any changes of direction!!) |
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Thank you for all you've done. I've been happy to support you for the free version, and totally get the need to move to a paid version. When will it be live & what is the licensing model? |
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Welp, it's already live, from Laragon 7 and above will need to obtain a license to use it. 6 and below are free to download and use. |
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Ah ok I didn't see any pricing on the website. Thanks for letting me know, we'll grab the new version soon. |
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I wish I could find out how much the license for 7 is without installing it. Sorry to hear about your situation, life is rough. |
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Moving to a different country is never a cheap option even if the cost of living once you have moved is cheaper. That said, if your employer was sponsoring you for a visa, it is possible that losing your employment may in the end result in not having a choice about relocating back to Asia. But at the moment that does not seem to be the immediate problem. |
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It is cheaper if he backs to his country. I'm pretty sure, with his profile, very easy to get a job. And his wife and kids will feel better. Euro is not for everyone. |
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I don't think we are in the position to give advice for more than Laragon, especially not to suggest a family to leave their home. Europe is not for everyone? Please delete your GitHub account. |
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100% agree. |
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Laragon was one tool that didn't suck like big names like xampp, mamp and what not. Wish you best of luck and making it free :) |
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Consider relocating to a country with a low tax rate or no tax, such as Monaco, near Spain. Also, consider moving back to Vietnam, the place you are most familiar with. It is not the right way trying to justify how much other need to pay you, based on your personal/family situation, unless you go for the donation path. When we go for job interview, we can't secure a job by saying I need XXX per month in order to support my family. The same applies when we try to sell a product/service to the market. We can only ask for the amount by justifying the value we provide to the employer/client. When you go for job interview, you need to know what kind of problems/challenges/visions the company are having, what kind of skillsets/resources you are having, and how your skillsets/resources can provide value to the company by handling their problems/challenges/visions. When you try to sell a product/service, you also need to know what kind of problems/challenges/desires/pain-points your target customers are having, how much and how fast can your product/service can help them resolving those problems/challenges/desires/pain-points. What are the things you have that make a difference from other related products/services in the market (your unique selling points). It is OK to charge a fee for Laragon, but the direction must be right.
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🤦🏻♂️ |
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I agree entirely - the suggestion about uprooting your family and breaking all your local ties to return to a country with a lower cost of living is putting things entirely back to front. Leo needs to work out how he can earn enough to support his family - and absolutely not how to disrupt his family, his children's education, the stable family life he has by moving back to a country he may have ties to but the rest of his family may not. These suggestions by @trananhmanh89 and @ppfoong are just crass and insensitive. |
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His 3rd paragraph starting with "I am living in Spain..." has provided enough information that worth a consideration. "Consider" means you need to have the if-then-else thinking in your mind to evaluate the possible branches, and apply the knowledge you learnt in discrete maths to find the next path that you feel is most suitable for you. I don't know how you interpret it as "suggestion", so I talk in IT language now, perhaps easier for you to understand. |
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@ppfoong Sorry - but you need to have more empathy. Leo has enough on his plate with 1) a new baby and 2) losing his job and income and 3) trying to switch to a chargeable product to get some income without thinking about adding another massive upset to his life by moving. He needs to get this project going in a way that will generate an income, and you get an income by providing a product/service that meets the needs of your customers (functionality, support, price) and NOT a product or service which meets your needs as a developer. So if Leo is going to focus on something it needs to be that and NOT relocation. |
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May I remember everybody that some folks here wanted an explanation and Leo now followed this wish by giving insights, making his decision transparent. @ppfoong There's absolutely no justification to give any advice how to plan his life. If you want to pay with your time using XAMPP, MAMP or anything else instead of your money, it's your choice. If you can't buy a license key unless it's clear what's part of it, go ahead. You are right. But it doesn't justificate to suggest considerations about anybody's life in Spain or elsewhere. |
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I don't know where Leo got the idea that it would be good to have a paid license for a project that uses Open Source Software, it seemed like a nice project and that people would make contributions to the project, fix bugs and even donate to the maintainer. But paying a license for this seems like an abuse and lack of respect to the other contributors of the open source software that make up this project, therefore if this project does not return to its origins I withdraw my support and recommendation and proceed to uninstall it from my teams. |
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The type of license of Laragon itself remains unclear until today. It never mentioned to be open source, nor its source code opened to public. Even if v7 going for commercial approach with licensing fee, the "license" itself remains unclear, there is no black and white on its terms and conditions, yet. Anyhow, Laragon makes use of open source components including Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc. and should abide to the terms and conditions of all those open source components in order to package them in Laragon and redistribute them. Basically, just to mention/acknowledge those open source components, their license (Apache, GPL, MIT, ...), and some need to attach their full license terms. There is no issue having paid license for open source software, or software that contain open source components. Most Linux distros have dual licenses -- the commercial license and the open source license, such as RedHat & Fedora, Ubuntu Community & Ubuntu Pro, SuSE Enterprise & OpenSuSE, etc. Docker is also open source, and it has multiple licenses including the free Docker Personal, and the paid Pro, Teams, Business. Kubernetes is open source, and there are commercial forks such as D2iQ. The current issue is, the Laragon license is still unclear. It was not an issue in the past, being a hobbyist project that shared out to the public, as downloaders are thinking that it is "download and use at own risk, with no string attached, and no obligation from the developer". When it becomes a chargeable product, proper license is crucial as people will start asking "what am I paying for?" and the next question will be "am I willing to pay for the amount in return to get what am I paying for?" |
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I can only speak for myself, but as far as I know, there should be a license though there doesn't have to. In Germany, it's the Urheberrecht and other laws to which everything defaults if there is no further information. I bet other EU countries have similar laws. And as Laragon is made in Spain, that is it. Don't think that complicated: if it's not Open Source, then it's not Open Source. If it's not MIT, then it isn't. I also don't know why people would ask "what am I paying for?" when people know exactly, what they pay for. Maybe you don't know it, but others do. That said, @leokhoa needs to improve and it looks that he is willing to do so. Give this man and his family some patience, he's neither Microsoft, nor Oracle, nor any other big tech company. |
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I also live in Spain and I am one of many self-employed people who pays 45% of the little they earn in taxes. What is annoying and that we have already seen in many projects that begin their journey as free or open source, is that they take advantage of the Fomo of the community to grow, improve and contribute when it is allowed, and then when they grow they move to paid models when you have the entire system set up around a project, and then they coerce you with a payment to update or have to change everything to another Stack. It would seem good to me if you put a link for Donations and that everyone contributes what they can to help you, or that you make public the control panel code, which is the only thing you have and that the community can help you maintain the code or contribute to improve the design, operation, etc... I and other communities to which I belong would be willing to support the project and spread it to grow the image and talent of this developer as a person, and that he is worth much more than what he can earn by charging a license now. For me and many more colleagues in the sector, all credibility has been lost, and of course, I stop recommending Laragon in my reviews, I even removed the star from the repository and stopped recommending it. This practice bothers me enormously. I love donating and contributing to open source projects to value the work of developers and help them improve, but I hate being imposed a price or license. |
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Yes - ok - a small charge of say $20 or $30 for a license is going to be a minor annoyance, but it is so small you are just going to pay it and move on. As soon as it gets more than this, especially when it is 500% times this, people don't just pay it and move on, they start to think about whether it is value for money and what the alternatives are. Maybe they will pay it, maybe stick with Laragon v6, maybe decide that they won't see updates in v6 and move to something else. BUT IN THE END, they will have lost their enthusiasm for Laragon and the PR and community spirit which comes with that - and once that has gone you will NEVER get it back. And Leo is burning through this goodwill at a pretty good rate and soon it will be all gone. |
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@leokhoa Mình thấy tạo ra 1 phiên bản và thu phí nó thì không có gì là sai cả , nhưng bạn nên suy nghĩ lại giá trị ban đầu của laragon là gì , giá đã hợp lý chưa ? và tại sao không có bản free song song cùng bản thu phí ? |
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though i cannot buy version 7.0 right now, but i can help u get a domain and offer you free hosting for one year.....hope it may help our brother in worries...u can contact me any time and i will buy the domain and provide u free hosting for 1 year instantly....love laragon and appreciate your effort brother |
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I am sure that Leo will appreciate the offer, however several of us have already made the same offer and he has not taken us up on it. |
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NO problem..sharing is caring...every one offers what is in their domain.....May he succeed in his goals...anyways i will be buying version 7 soon as laragon is working very well with vs code especially without any difficulty |
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There is likely to be a revised pricing model soon. |
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@leokhoa So, while i understand the need to make an income, I am struggling a bit to understand what enhancements are being added to justify the cost. Other than keeping the various components up to date, which most users can do themselves if they need to. I really dislike subscriptions, and your software was liked because it was free, and fairly easy. Laravel HERD is recently introduced for a subscription with less functionality. (as far as mysql and other services are concerned.) Which is why I came back to laragon for my new machine. Only to get hit with this licensed version for v7. Obviously, I'll just go back to v6. But again, what am I even paying for for v7? You might need to separate products if you do this. I have no idea what goes into programming something like Laragon, but if its just keeping things updated, vs adding extra features, they really need to be defined better. And keep in mind, $50 a year may be a bit much for hobbiest or people who are just getting started. There is a point where a lower price point might generate a higher return, as more people would be open to buying in. If the price goes too high, fewer people will use the service. Sell 100 licensees at $50, for $5000, or sell 1000 at $10 for $10k. I dont know what the magic number is, but personally, $50 a year would make me look for an alternative solution, or just sticking with v6. But $10 a year, or maybe even $20 if the features are substantial enough, I'd do it. |
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@jcc5018 you can now see what is planned for active support by @leokhoa for 7.1 here: https://github.com/leokhoa/laragon/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+milestone%3A%22Laragon+7.1%22 |
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@jcc5018 Jon
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I agree with jcc5018. |
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@Sheldon-Monk I agree with this strategy - I used it with my own (non-IT) business where we opened with a special offer £7/day price with a plan to increase it a bit after an opening offer period and then increase it again annually and within 5 years once we had regular clients we were charging £15 a day for the same service. That said, for $15 you cannot afford to provide formal support - and commercial customers where time is literally money want to know that they will get prompt and professional support and are prepared to pay something for it. Commercial customers can also put a value on the cost of creating and supporting e.g. their own development environments, and if Laragon can provide it at a fraction of this cost, then perhaps $100+ is a reasonable amount - so you need to assess what the value of your software is and also what the competition charge (with free V6 being a competitor). BUT the only way to find out is to ask a bunch of existing commercial customers i.e. do some market research - and (@leokhoa take note) the risk of pricing yourself too high is that your existing customers cease being enthusiasts that recommend the software to others and indeed cease being users altogether and you kill off your own market before you get going. |
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@Sheldon-Monk A gross and incorrect generalisation based on non-knowledge resulting in a libel (if I could be bothered to take action which I can't).
So I suggest that you stop criticising others (and libelling them) based on a wrong interpretation of public facts and a wrong guess about what is being said privately. |
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Leo, how can I contact you personally, please? I may have an idea for you. Thanks. |
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@Benoit1980: Sure, here is my personal email: [email protected] |
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Thanks Leo, email sent. Hope it is not in your spam. |
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Hello, I understand and have no trouble with a paid Licence, nothing can be free for ever. I am surprised of the price and i will explain why: A freelance might find usefull the portable version to show a single customer where he is up to and eventually runs at Home Laragon. 50$ can seem to be a fair price for such a tool. For companies or skilled professionals, i have no idea if they do use Laragon.? For me, as a faux debutante, i will stick to the version 6.0 which runs fine for me. I would have paid to contribute for the later versions if the price was not that high for me. This is just my thoughts and i might be totally wrong. I wish you the best and to your family too. |
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Thanks for the info. I think this project needs to decide what it is - either purely commercial or an open source community. If the former, close / lock the repo. If the latter, embrace what open source means and allow people to contribute by means that are not just financial and reward them by access to the software for testing and personal use - just as thousands of very successful projects do. For me, I'll uninstall and find an alternative. |
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@dcog989 : Well said. I uploaded the portable version of Laragon to GitHub so everyone can download, fork, and create their own variants with ease. I never intended for this to become a source of drama. Sorry, but I can no longer dedicate my time to developing Laragon for free. |
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I am a passionate advocate of open source, but in this specific case I can actually see a way for Laragon to be chargeable, earn Leo a living and yet still have a lot of the qualities of open source in terms of harnessing the enthusiasm and synergies of a non-commercial community who get a great product at a cheap price and respond by contributing back to make it a better and better product that can get more and more users. Leo could if he wanted work WITH the community, whereby he focusses on the commercial side and on developing the UI and the coordinating functionality that can only be handled inside the executable - whilst the community handles a lot of the more peripheral development of scripts and configuration files for installing and configuring individual services to keep up to date with technical advances and to make configuring these services easier and easier. The result could be a fantastic tool that looks great and is leaps and bounds ahead of both v6 and the competition and which would deliver so much value that people won't think twice about paying for a license. This is my vision, and inside my head I have a lot of the ideas fleshed out, waiting for the opportunity to synergise them with others in the community and for the opportunity to have Leo listen to these ideas (which will be given for free for him to consider even if he ultimately decides otherwise). As I say, I don't see any real conflict between having a chargeable product which is part proprietary and part the result of community contributions where these are both developed in a cooperative approach. But this is NOT what is happening right now - rather than getting the best of both worlds, we currently appear to be seeing the worst of it. The enthusiastic community had already waited two years for a major upgrade to a free tool and instead received a minor upgrade and huge bill. And instead of developing and selling a compelling vision of future enhancements that would justify people spending a large sum on a minor technical upgrade, instead he wants to shut out most of the community that he genuinely needs in order to make this a success whilst focussing only on pricing and on fixes to minor technical issues. As Leo has just said, this shouldn't have become a source of drama - and unfortunately it has unfortunately become a drama - but in my view it has NOT become a drama solely because it has become a chargeable license [1] , but rather because of the way it is being pitched which is lacking in the vision, professionalism and engagement that is needed to justify the large commercial license fees being demanded. [1] It is easy to prove that this is a value-for-money and professionalism issue by looking at edge cases: Even if the commercial license were $10 per seat, IMO it would be highly unlikely that any significant enterprise would consider purchasing a license.
On the other hand, do we really think that any user non-commercial, small-commercial or enterprise is genuinely worried (given the power of today's computers) about whether the executable has "a core binary size around 2MB and RAM usage around 4MB" rather than 200MB and 400MB? Seriously???? Come on??!! As you can see, literally none of these issues are technical - they are almost all about professionalism and communication. |
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@leokhoa - I didn't intend for this to be "drama"! Just offering my perspective - which I think will be very common. Lots of people are hobby / fun coders and will not give out their credit card, especially just to try something. You then lose all those people from growing the project. Consider that I knew nothing about the project, I found https://laragon.org/ (the org strongly suggesting open source), there's no mention anywhere on the site of payment required, I download and install, start the app - and only then discover I'm getting redirected to 'lemon' and asked for money! It has 'Nigerian Prince' vibes!! I use / contribute to many OS projects, and many of them are financially successful for the developers even though the software is free (for non-commercial use / reduced feature set). Premium features for the commercial release? Market your skills to companies for consultancy? |
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Or take a commission on relevant (for web dev) paid software that Laragon facilitates the purchase and download of. But for that you need a BIG base of non-enterprise customers. (And you need to stop being unreasonably worried about keeping your executable memory usage below 10MB!!) Or offer to add specific relevant (for web dev) functionality for enterprise customers (if you ever get them) - if an enterprise customer wants specific support for (say) a beta release of PHP or e.g. Apache Netbeans they could pay for a few days work to have it added for them. Or ... But all of these ideas require a customer base with either a large base of non-commercial and small commercial licenses or a large base of enterprise customers, and to get that you need to get your marketing spot on!! |
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Hi all, I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for Leo and the incredible product he's built. It's clear how much time and effort he's poured into this, and it's made a huge difference for all of us for many years. I believe it's important to respect Leo's vision for his product and his right to make decisions about its future, including how it's commercialized. Let's remember to show Leo the appreciation he deserves. |
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Thanks for letting me know, we'll grab the new version soon. As a student I want support to What is lifetime pricing. |
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Hi Leo, |
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Dear @leokhoa |
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If Laragon is now paid software. So what does it look like with support and invoice? When will we get the right license? |
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I want to share a bit of my story with you.
A few years ago, with my expertise in Cloud Computing and programming, I played a key role in transforming my boss's SaaS into a multi-million-dollar enterprise. I spearheaded the development of a cutting-edge global platform built on Kubernetes, designed to be fast, highly scalable, secure, and consistently reliable. The platform operates like Laragon (tailored for production) – runs smoothly yet remarkably efficient. Thanks to its robust architecture, we achieved near-zero downtime while seamlessly supporting thousands of enterprise clients. As a thank-you, he sponsored me and my family to move to Ibiza, Spain. Everything was good... until my boss sold the company, and the new owners decided I, a former member in the management team, was "high-profile and expensive", they kicked me out. It was a sad time. They don't care that I contributed a lot to the business and will have a baby. I don't want to recall that.
I am living in Spain, a foreign country, with my wife and three kids, including our newborn baby girl. Spain is nice, but the taxes are high. Add a mortgage, bank loans, and the fact that my wife doesn't allow to work because of her visa (she's on a Non-Lucrative Visa), and it adds a lot of pressures on me. Outside of work, I share the responsibility of caring for our children with my wife. My oldest son is only 7. Our Spanish isn't fluent, which adds to the challenges of living in a foreign country. However, despite the difficulties, I don't want to complain or give up. In fact, I truly enjoy spending time with my sons.
Therefore I thought a lot about Laragon, the software I love. I created it to be free forever because I genuinely believe it can help people. But here's the truth: free doesn't pay the bills. I've been taking on jobs to stay afloat, but those jobs eat up my time and my energy, leaving little to no space to grow Laragon.
The skills required for my job were vastly different from the technical expertise needed to develop something like Laragon. If I focus on my job, Laragon stalls. If I focus on Laragon while offering free, my family struggles.
It's been tough. That's why I'm introducing a paid licensing model. It wasn't an easy decision, but it's one I believe in. With your support, I can dedicate more time to Laragon, make it better, while keep my family afloat.
I hope you'll understand and join me on this journey. Laragon is my passion, and with your support, I believe I can make Laragon greater.
Thank you for everything.
If you wish to continue using a free version, Laragon 6 remains free and available. In my situation, I want you to understand that I can't offer you both time to improve Laragon and free. You can explore other softwares but you may face a lot of headaches and they will have the same financial issue.
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