4 ms·

On the other hand, I understand why most developers wouldn't pay "even the price of a Starbucks coffee" for the product: because paying anything as a developer

by rspeer 10y ago

On the other hand, I understand why most developers wouldn't pay "even the price of a Starbucks coffee" for the product: because paying anything as a developer is hard. It requires making the case for why you need it to other people in the company. Developers aren't usually in a position to make financial decisions on a whim, especially those where the cost will probably grow in the future.

mikekchar 10y ago
I think this is right on the money. As a vendor, you have to understand who your users are and who your customers are. In this space, they are different. Just look at the number of developer tools that are "free for non-commercial use". Developers don't pay for tools. Companies pay for tools that they are convinced they can't get any other way. They didn't have a poor market; they didn't have any market at all. If I'm the CTO of XYZ, explain to me what I'm buying. I hate to keep coming back to it, but that's what Cygnus did so brilliantly: "You need an embedded development system. The existing solutions do nearly what you want. Pay us slightly less, and we will make GCC do exactly what you want." I know what I'm paying for. "Build it and they will come" does not work in the open source space -- because if you have already built it, they don't need to pay you. And if you haven't, then they don't want it. Now, if they had built a DB similar to Mongo and then sold a service that migrated people off of failing Mongo installations and onto RethinkDB, then they would be on to something. Tired of having your DB chew your data for breakfast? Want to have your reports finished the same day you ran them? For the price of a single developer, we will fix all your problems by migrating you to RethinkDB. That's something that will make money. But who wants to charge for services? How will we get our multiples if we only charge once for our work? That's just folly!

by rspeer 10y ago

mikekchar 10y ago

I think this is right on the money. As a vendor, you have to understand who your users are and who your customers are. In this space, they are different. Just look at the number of developer tools that are "free for non-commercial use". Developers don't pay for tools. Companies pay for tools that they are convinced they can't get any other way. They didn't have a poor market; they didn't have any market at all. If I'm the CTO of XYZ, explain to me what I'm buying. I hate to keep coming back to it, but that's what Cygnus did so brilliantly: "You need an embedded development system. The existing solutions do nearly what you want. Pay us slightly less, and we will make GCC do exactly what you want." I know what I'm paying for. "Build it and they will come" does not work in the open source space -- because if you have already built it, they don't need to pay you. And if you haven't, then they don't want it. Now, if they had built a DB similar to Mongo and then sold a service that migrated people off of failing Mongo installations and onto RethinkDB, then they would be on to something. Tired of having your DB chew your data for breakfast? Want to have your reports finished the same day you ran them? For the price of a single developer, we will fix all your problems by migrating you to RethinkDB. That's something that will make money. But who wants to charge for services? How will we get our multiples if we only charge once for our work? That's just folly!