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Companies that Inspire Us

There are several companies that we look up to and hope to emulate at Yew Search. These companies are selected mostly because of their approach to being open source / source available companies and how they divide their commercial product from their community products. They allow individuals to self host their products while still maintaining a clear value to larger companies and organizations.

  • GitLab (Community Edition) – MIT + proprietary dual-license model

    • GitLab CE is open source under MIT. GitLab EE adds proprietary features under a commercial license.

    • Restriction: enterprise features, scalability features, and some integrations are not open source and require an enterprise license.

    • Core idea: open core model; individuals and small teams can use CE freely, but businesses needing enterprise functionality must pay.

  • n8n – Sustainable Use License (SUL)

    • Source-available license intended for “fair-code.”

    • Restriction: you may not offer n8n as a hosted service or make it available to third parties as part of a commercial offering. Internal use inside companies is allowed.

    • Individuals retain near open-source freedoms; commercial SaaS competitors are blocked.

  • Mattermost – Mattermost Source Available License (MSAL)

    • Source-available. Development and testing use is free.

    • Restriction: production use requires a commercial enterprise license. Certain features are entirely proprietary and ship only in the EE build.

    • Hybrid open-core: some features remain MIT-licensed; enterprise features remain proprietary.

  • MongoDB – Server Side Public License (SSPL)

    • Source-available license derived from AGPL.

    • Restriction: if you offer MongoDB as a service, you must release all source code used to operate the service under SSPL. This effectively blocks commercial SaaS competitors.

    • Internal use, on-premise hosting, and self-hosted deployments are allowed without restriction.

  • Elasticsearch / Kibana (Elastic) – Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2)

    • Source-available license allowing use, modification, and self-hosting.

    • Restriction: prohibits providing Elasticsearch or Kibana as a managed service. Cloud vendors must acquire a commercial license.

    • Apache-licensed forks (e.g., OpenSearch) were created as a result of this licensing shift.

  • Airbyte – Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2)

    • Source-available ingestion/sync platform.

    • Restriction: cannot offer Airbyte as a competing managed service. Most users are unaffected.

    • Airbyte Cloud is closed-source and paid.

  • HashiCorp stack (Terraform, Vault, Consul, Nomad, etc.) – Business Source License 1.1

    • Source-available. Internal commercial use permitted.

    • Restriction: you may not create “competitive offerings” – meaning hosted services or commercial products that compete with HashiCorp’s own offerings.

    • Code converts to MPL 2.0 after four years.

  • Sentry (and Codecov after acquisition) – Functional Source License (FSL)

    • Source-available. Users can run and modify locally.

    • Restriction: prohibits “Competing Use” such as offering a hosted error-monitoring service based on Sentry.

    • Reverts to Apache 2.0 after a set delay (e.g., two years).

  • TimescaleDB (Community Edition) – Timescale License (TSL)

    • Hybrid model: core PostgreSQL remains open source, TimescaleDB Community features are under TSL.

    • Restriction: cannot offer TimescaleDB Community as a hosted DBaaS.

    • Individual users and companies running the database internally are unaffected.

  • Nango – Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2)

    • Source-available unified OAuth + API integration manager.

    • Restriction: may not offer Nango or derivatives as a hosted SaaS competing with the vendor.

Honorable Mention​

Home Assistant is a huge inspiration to us but is not a company we plan to emulate. It is a true open-source product and not fair-code like Yew Search is. However, without Home Assistant and Nabu Casa we would not have the daringness to have started Yew Search.

  • Home Assistant – Apache License 2.0 (core) + proprietary cloud services

    • Home Assistant Core is fully open source under Apache 2.0.

    • Restriction: none at the software license level; commercial use, modification, and redistribution are permitted.

    • Cloud offering (Home Assistant Cloud / Nabu Casa) is proprietary and paid, but optional.

    • Core idea: fully open-source self-hosted platform, monetized via an optional proprietary SaaS service rather than license restrictions.