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Billing Model

TL;DR

Customer pays AWS or Azure for VM hours via marketplace metering. HailBytes receives revenue through that channel. These Terraform modules are free, open-source infrastructure-as-code that orchestrate paid VMs.

How money flows

flowchart LR
    Customer[Customer<br/>AWS or Azure account] -->|pays monthly bill| Cloud[AWS / Azure]
    Cloud -->|marketplace<br/>revenue share| HB[HailBytes, LLC]
    HB -->|publishes| Image[Marketplace<br/>VM image]
    Image -->|deployed by| TF[This repo<br/>open-source Terraform]
    TF -->|provisions| Customer
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One bill. One channel. One license entitlement check (handled by the marketplace).

Why this matters

  • License compliance is automatic. The customer cannot run HailBytes software without an active marketplace subscription — AMI/image launch fails. We do not have to chase audits.
  • No separate license server. No phone-home, no key files, no procurement friction beyond "click subscribe."
  • Procurement happens through the cloud bill. Enterprise customers can use existing AWS EDP / Azure MACC commitments. Channel partners pay HailBytes via the marketplace.
  • Free IaC accelerates land/expand. Customers can stand up a PoC in 15 minutes from a terraform apply. The friction is paying the cloud bill, which they were going to pay anyway.

Why no containers

A Docker image is a self-contained artifact. Once pulled, it runs anywhere with no further enforcement. There is no mechanism for a registry to meter usage downstream, no way to ensure the runner has a paid subscription, and no path for HailBytes to collect revenue from a customer who built their own image from our published one.

The AWS/Azure marketplace solves all of this: the cloud provider attests that the VM is running our image, meters its hours, and remits revenue. We do not have to reinvent metering, license enforcement, or revenue collection — the cloud does it.

If we shipped a Dockerfile, we would be giving away the product. So we don't.

What is and is not free

Artifact License Cost
This Terraform repository MPL-2.0 Free
Module documentation MPL-2.0 Free
HailBytes ASM Marketplace AMI / Azure image Commercial EULA accepted at subscribe time Paid (hourly metering)
HailBytes SAT Marketplace AMI / Azure image Commercial EULA accepted at subscribe time Paid (hourly metering)
Underlying cloud resources (EC2, RDS, ALB, VPC, EBS, KMS, etc.) Per AWS/Azure standard pricing Paid (to cloud provider)

Contributor expectations

If you submit a PR, please don't:

  • Add a Dockerfile, Helm chart, container build, or docker-compose.yml that runs HailBytes software
  • Add a user_data / cloud-init that downloads HailBytes binaries from any non-marketplace source (S3, a HailBytes-hosted CDN, GitHub Releases, etc.)
  • Add modules that deploy from a customer-built AMI/VHD rather than the marketplace listing
  • Add escape hatches ("set use_custom_ami = true to bypass") that let users skip the marketplace lookup

Any of these will be closed without merge. They are not bugs, they are intentional constraints.