E3: Building & Scaling MongoDB

Adoption vs Monetization

Max Schireson, former CEO of MongoDB, highlights the delicate balance between adoption and monetization in open-source models. He explains that while developers often prioritize adoption, a strategy for monetization is crucial to sustain the business. Schireson emphasizes the importance of creating a popular database that users love, with a compelling set of paid features to ensure a sustainable revenue stream 1.

The adoption first view, I think, was closer to right than the monetization first view, but we still needed to think about monetization, at least some, and have a strategy for that.

--- Max Schireson

He also discusses the trend of early-stage open-source companies focusing on cloud products as a means of monetization, suggesting that while open source is a great way to gain wide adoption, cloud-based offerings can also achieve this goal 2.

   

Quality Assurance

Quality assurance in open-source software presents unique challenges compared to commercial products. Schireson notes that open-source products require more careful quality control because bugs can affect a vast number of users before they are detected. Unlike commercial products, where customers can be directly contacted to apply patches, open-source users are often anonymous, making it difficult to address issues promptly 3.

If we put a bug in MongoDB, hundreds of thousands of people have downloaded it before we know it and they're using it for who knows what and we don't have a good way to contact them.

--- Max Schireson

He also discusses the challenges of providing technical support for sophisticated users, which required building a highly skilled support team to handle complex issues independently of the engineering team 4.

   

Licensing Challenges

Open-source licensing plays a crucial role in protecting intellectual property and maintaining competitiveness against cloud providers. Schireson explains that MongoDB adopted the AGPL license to prevent cloud providers from offering commercial services without contributing back to the community. This license required any modifications made for cloud services to be open-sourced, thus closing a loophole in the GPL license 5.

The AGPL license effectively considered offering the product as a service to be a form of distributing that modified product, and therefore those cloud services would have to open source what they did to make things work in that cloud environment under the license.

--- Max Schireson

Despite some friction in adoption due to licensing restrictions, MongoDB successfully navigated these challenges, demonstrating that a strong product experience can drive growth even with licensing hurdles.