open core

English

Noun

open core (uncountable)

1. A business model for software whereby the core is open-source and free, while closed-source add-ons are available for purchase.
   • 2012, Simon Phipps, Open Source Strategies for the Enterprise‎^[1], O'Reilly Media, →ISBN:

     We deliver a fully functional product with our community edition. You can download it under a GPL v3 license. But, additionally, we provide enterprise features only if you pay for them. It's open core.

   • 2018, Gordon Haff, How Open Source Ate Software […] , Apress, →ISBN, page 109:

     In part because the upsell features are often not clearly partitioned off from the core project, many open core products require their contributors to sign a contributor license agreement (CLA), which assigns rights to the commercial owner of the product.

See also

• open source
• freemium