Rails Kits: Software as a Service Made Easy
Ok, well, maybe not easy -- you do still have to build the software. But Rails Kits has created a software as a service "starter kit" that provides a pain-free way to add subscription management, recurring billing, and credit card management functionality to any Rails app. At the Web 2.0 Expo this week, software as a service was a major trend, enough so that Tim O'Reilly included the SaaS trend in his latest definition of the "Web 2.0" term.
Rails Kits is the brainchild of Ben Curtis, who pulled the code for the SaaS kit from his team recruiting tool Catch the Best. The kit is a collection of premade Ruby on Rails files that can plug into an app and handle things like account creation, management, billing (via the Braintree gateway), trials, and user management.
As Curtis says, Rails Kits are more than just plugins, they are complete code bases that can act as the foundation of an application. The SaaS kit is the first kit that Curtis is offering, though others are planned.
With more and more companies transitioning their software to online web apps and charging for them as a service, simplifying that process was bound to happen. The next step? We're sure it will be to offer Curtis' kit (or something like it) as a service itself. Yes, that's right, that would be Software as a Service as a Service. Makes sense, though, right?
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I saw this on RubyFlow and personally I'm not liking it. I've not looked at what's included in their SaaS Rails kit but looking at the features page, all it is is a bunch of Rails Plugins/Gems bundled with unit test codes + some amount of code that ties everything together.
But my point is, if you are taking Open source contributes and putting together something, you would want to give back to the community by open sourcing at least a significant portion of it. Think Fedora and Redhat Enterprise.
Khang, I can appreciate your opinion on the matter, but that "some amount of code", as you say, is a non-trivial amount of work. If you want to spend the time that I did to repeat the work that I did and release it as open source, feel free -- that's your prerogative.
Please appreciate, though, that it is my prerogative to charge for the work that I did that adds value to the impressive work already done by others whose code I'm using. You'll find (as others have found) that the asking price is well worth it, considering the quality of the code you're getting and the time you'll save in not having to write it yourself.
Either way, you are also welcome to continue to use the Rails plugin directory and the OpenID sample application that I provide at no cost to you. :)
Well .. @Khang.. its true.. its a take it or leave it style..
But look out for my open source plugins based on the same work Benjamin has used... that will be much more impressive , cause I will open the code up for the world to see and use freely.
@Benjamin.. agreed it is your prerogative to attempt to make money off of building on top of others work, as this is a relevant model. Much luck.
@Ben: Sure, you are free to do whatever you want, but my point is your SaaS paradigm threatens the very motion of the Open Source community. Just as Restful Authentication, it is a great plugin, it worked well. Again if Rick had gone taken your approach ... imagine the damage that would have put on the Rails Community.
I can only cross my fingers that we don't see more of the "for-sale" Rails plugins amongst the Rail community.
@cease: I'll be waiting for your awesome plugin.
Peace out :)
@khang,
The reason why this is different from Restful Authentication (and the other 10 authentication plugins) is that billing is hard. Very hard.
People get pissed when your billing messes up. You want something that works, will work 100% of the time, and has been previously tested. Billing is sort of a black box on the internet. Can you name one other rails plugin that provides billing support? I don't mean ActiveMerchant either, I'm talking the full feature set that Ben's code provides.
You can't, because there isn't any. Why? Because it's mostly proprietary code for non-open source projects that are clouded with IP issues etc. Having a kit like this available is fantastic for everyone using rails to build revenue generating products.
If you don't think you won't get $250 worth of value out of this kit, even if it's just by "seeing what someone else has done previously", you're nuts.
If the "open source community" sees this as a threat, that's just stupid. Ben is providing real value to people that value their time. How much do you charge per hour? If you're not "billing yourself" that same hourly amount (or more) for the time you spend on your money making projects (after all, why would you be building a billing system if you didn't plan on making money on it?) then you're not serious about building a revenue generating product. Take the amount of time it'd cost you to roll your own, then look at Ben's price. I'm sure you can figure the rest out.