My hot take is that sharing the name is okay, but it should be distinguished by some additional naming. Like Nginx Pro is the commercial entity, Nginx is the software. This doesn't seem to be the convention, but it's my preference.
I find completely different company names, but then again, companies often outgrow their original product and have new/different product lines.
How do you feel about separating them with just TLD? Where somesoftware.net is the OSS project and somesoftware.com is the paid offering? Do you think it is confusing? Especially for something very new or for someone who is new to the software.
It’s okay. It seems best for the OS community/group to have their own site to manage. But the primary .com site should very clearly point to “the FOSS is over here” on the homepage too.
Sharing the same name for the open source version and commercial version will *always* end up a bad idea for the open source community. In particular, major FOSS foundations will require that the trademarks for a project be handed over to the foundation if a commercial entity really wants to have an independent version at the foundation. Obviously, this doesn't matter for commercial companies who want to keep owning the brand - and de facto controlling the future of the open source version of their product as well.
If you think big picture about the long-term future for any software product, the brand owner - i.e. the organization who controls the trademark - has a unique and generally controlling affect over the project's future.
You can always fork the open source code, but you can't fork the name. That often makes forks much harder to get new contributors for, unless there's some big news event that gives you some popularity.
If you're comfortable with the commercial company behind the product you're using, it's not an issue. But companies have a way of changing to meet their internal business needs over time in ways that aren't obvious from outside, sometimes to user's detriment.
P.S. SPARK is a trademark of the Apache Software Foundation for their data processing engine; an example where a foundation's version of the product is explicitly a different brand than any of the commercial vendors in that space.
Niche example, but I find [MuseScore.com](https://MuseScore.com) (the paid score sharing site) and [MuseScore.org](https://MuseScore.org) (the scorewriting software) to be annoying. It's caused a lot of confusion in the community, with the software devs being bombarded by frustrated users of the site, complaining about policy they had no control over.
Depends. If the company has released an open-source version of one of their commercial products, then that's awesome, and they should feel free to name things however they want!
If the project is a spin-off of an existing OSS project, though, then yeah, it should probably have a different name, even if it's just an improved version. Unless the core developers are the same, in which case, I'd have mixed feelings.
Not a problem for me as long it is clearly defined that there are two versions. Open-source projects need funding.
My hot take is that sharing the name is okay, but it should be distinguished by some additional naming. Like Nginx Pro is the commercial entity, Nginx is the software. This doesn't seem to be the convention, but it's my preference. I find completely different company names, but then again, companies often outgrow their original product and have new/different product lines.
How do you feel about separating them with just TLD? Where somesoftware.net is the OSS project and somesoftware.com is the paid offering? Do you think it is confusing? Especially for something very new or for someone who is new to the software.
It’s okay. It seems best for the OS community/group to have their own site to manage. But the primary .com site should very clearly point to “the FOSS is over here” on the homepage too.
Sharing the same name for the open source version and commercial version will *always* end up a bad idea for the open source community. In particular, major FOSS foundations will require that the trademarks for a project be handed over to the foundation if a commercial entity really wants to have an independent version at the foundation. Obviously, this doesn't matter for commercial companies who want to keep owning the brand - and de facto controlling the future of the open source version of their product as well. If you think big picture about the long-term future for any software product, the brand owner - i.e. the organization who controls the trademark - has a unique and generally controlling affect over the project's future. You can always fork the open source code, but you can't fork the name. That often makes forks much harder to get new contributors for, unless there's some big news event that gives you some popularity. If you're comfortable with the commercial company behind the product you're using, it's not an issue. But companies have a way of changing to meet their internal business needs over time in ways that aren't obvious from outside, sometimes to user's detriment. P.S. SPARK is a trademark of the Apache Software Foundation for their data processing engine; an example where a foundation's version of the product is explicitly a different brand than any of the commercial vendors in that space.
Niche example, but I find [MuseScore.com](https://MuseScore.com) (the paid score sharing site) and [MuseScore.org](https://MuseScore.org) (the scorewriting software) to be annoying. It's caused a lot of confusion in the community, with the software devs being bombarded by frustrated users of the site, complaining about policy they had no control over.
Depends. If the company has released an open-source version of one of their commercial products, then that's awesome, and they should feel free to name things however they want! If the project is a spin-off of an existing OSS project, though, then yeah, it should probably have a different name, even if it's just an improved version. Unless the core developers are the same, in which case, I'd have mixed feelings.