PikaPods

PikaPods runs open-source applications — a workflow automator, a photo library, a budgeting tool — as managed instances, sized by CPU, memory and storage and billed by the hour. Part of the revenue goes to the projects being hosted, which is a more honest arrangement than most companies built on other people’s software manage.

Fails criterion 1. What is bought is a running copy of somebody else’s application, not somewhere to put code the customer wrote and can change. That is the same ruling as Ghost Pro, and it is about the shape of the product rather than its quality.

The line is worth stating precisely, because it is not about open source. A server where those applications could be installed would be in the register. Choosing one from a catalogue and having it kept updated is a different purchase, and the register would stop meaning anything if it covered both.