Business models for open source
Open-core: you give the community edition away for free and sell licences for the enterprise features. Hosted: you give the software away and sell the managed service as a subscription. You bill these customers in the same way as a SaaS company. See the Dutch BV for SaaS. Support and guarantees: you sell service level agreements (SLAs), security response and long-term versions to companies that use the free code in production. Most lasting businesses combine two of these three models.
The licence design
Contributors sign an agreement in which they transfer their contributions to the BV or give it a broad licence. The BV owns the trademark, and this is your main protection. Anyone may copy and change the code, but only you can sell it under the name. Choose the public licence that suits the business model. If you want many users, choose a permissive licence. If cloud providers could compete with you, choose copyleft or a source-available licence. You can only change the licence later if the BV owns the contributions. See IP licensing from a Dutch BV.
Do you want to set up a Dutch BV from abroad? See setting up a BV in the Netherlands for the costs, the steps and the timeline. We arrange the notary and the KVK registration for you.
Tax benefits for open source development
Under the WBSO, you pay less payroll tax on the development work. See the WBSO credit for R&D. Qualifying profit is taxed in the innovation box at the 9% rate. Both are part of the standard setup. Decide in which company of the group you hold the trademark and the contributor agreements. See the holding structure for startups.