4 ms·

How do you feel about non-profit startups developing pure Open Source software and services in exchange for donations, in the interests of bettering the ecosyst

by avaer 10y ago

How do you feel about non-profit startups developing pure Open Source software and services in exchange for donations, in the interests of bettering the ecosystem itself? Could a nascent Mozilla be a YC nonprofit?

mceoin 10y ago
Or perhaps they could pre-mine a coin they would be paid in: https://startupboy.com/2014/04/01/the-fifth-protocol/ https://startupboy.com/2014/04/01/the-fifth-protocol/
- geofft 10y ago
  This is probably off-topic, but this proposal seems dystopic and anti-disruptive. The ability to mine coins is proportional to current ownership of capital (i.e., ability to calculate proof-of-work). You "eliminate" spam by allowing the richest to send you emails. You charge for DDoS attacks. Uber and Lyft get traffic signal priority over individual drivers, and that's assuming that Uber and Lyft could even get started in a world where taxi medallion holders could just buy all the green lights and resell them to everyone other than Uber and Lyft. And if you can bid on computing capacity itself with proof-of-work, you're well on your way to a Yudkowskian horror story of sentient Ethereum smart contracts buying computer factories for themselves. If I'm trying to write open source outside the confines of traditional capitalism, the last thing I want to do is require that people's usage of it is proportional to their riches.
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thejohnhenry 10y ago
I'm extremely interested in this, as the current funding model for startups restricts new technology to companies that are fiduciarily compelled to monopolize their market, siphoning user data and (potentially) damaging civic society in the process. Startups are still a very good vehicle for most problems, but for certain classes of problems, sometimes make things worse, and I'm curious if YCombinator is interested in helping out with those types of initiatives.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  To be clear: YC accepts non-profits each round. www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/ The question of whether open-source producing non-profits fit into YC is still a good one. I couldn't find an info on whether they have already accepted such non-profits, but the incubator Fast Forward has: > Intelehealth built an open-source intelligence engine for assessing primary care conditions https://qz.com/792685/silicon-valley-wants-to-save-the-world-by-investing-in-nonprofits-like-startups/ https://qz.com/792685/silicon-valley-wants-to-save-the-world...
  - thejohnhenry 10y ago
    Sure, and I'm aware of the non-profit initiatives. I don't think many people have considered producing actual software under a not-for-profit (except for Khan Academy?), probably because it's insanely expensive. Would YCombinator help facilitate funding a fully open Facebook or Twitter clone, for instance? It sounds outlandish to consider, but it seems equally outlandish to consider the 2020 election happening over essentially the same social stack & people will just be okay with that. (Obviously, a clone itself wouldn't suffice, you'd need to start with federated identity, and....)
    - nostrademons 10y ago
      FWIW, YCombinator has funded a fully open, federated Facebook clone: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/diaspora#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/diaspora#/entity It didn't work out so well, mostly because a.) actually cloning Facebook is pretty hard and b.) users don't seem to want to switch to fully-open Facebook or Twitter clones.
      - thejohnhenry 10y ago
        Haha, interesting, I didn't know they went through YC at some point. I'm making a strong bet that people do want to switch to fully-open social clones, because it's hard for me to imagine citizens of 2024 or 2028 conducting an effective political system using today's monolithic social technology. But the current ecosystem sucks for it.
philip1209 10y ago
This is interesting. I think there's still a deeper question of how to fund open-source technologies. Patreon seems to put the burden on individuals rather than companies. Maybe the answer is non-profits.
brudgers 10y ago
The nascent Mozilla was Netscape and a well funded company that achieved a multi-billion dollar exit (final valuation $10 Billion per Wikipedia)[1]. As a commercial operation it was able to hire a significant engineering staff to work heads down on browser development over a sustained period. In contrast most non-profits have to hire for and focus on donor development and don't have a period of massive commercial growth fueled by venture capital. The Mozilla Foundation has a wholly owned for commercial entity, the Mozilla Corporation. [1] If there was a nascent non-profit in the chain that led to Mozilla, it would be NCSA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercompu...] where Andreesen was developing Mosaic.
- avaer 10y ago
  > In contrast most non-profits have to hire for and focus on donor development and don't have a period of massive commercial growth fueled by venture capital. Everyone has to pay for marketing, and I'll give you the part about growth. But is this because something inherent in a nonprofit stops it from growing? Is it that there are fewer nonprofits to sample wins from? Or is that venture capital is simply not structured to consider the upside of funding anything other than a bet on a huge exit?
  - brudgers 10y ago
    I'm not sure. What I was trying to think about was 'what is a nascent Mozilla?' and the conclusion I came to is that it would have to look more like a fully formed organization or a commercial entity than something that would be obviously nascent and non-profit. Thinking a bit more, big software related non-profits appear to be spin-offs from industry (Eclipse Foundation, Linux Foundation) or academia (Apache Foundation also from NCSA). In each case, the software came first as was the case with Mozilla and the funding followed because corporations found they had an interest in the software's continued development. On the other hand, OpenAI might be a counter example where the money is coming to support research so that's a possible case where YC has funded a 'non-profit' at scale...though the model was recruitment rather than application.

by avaer 10y ago

mceoin 10y ago

Or perhaps they could pre-mine a coin they would be paid in: https://startupboy.com/2014/04/01/the-fifth-protocol/ https://startupboy.com/2014/04/01/the-fifth-protocol/

geofft 10y ago
This is probably off-topic, but this proposal seems dystopic and anti-disruptive. The ability to mine coins is proportional to current ownership of capital (i.e., ability to calculate proof-of-work). You "eliminate" spam by allowing the richest to send you emails. You charge for DDoS attacks. Uber and Lyft get traffic signal priority over individual drivers, and that's assuming that Uber and Lyft could even get started in a world where taxi medallion holders could just buy all the green lights and resell them to everyone other than Uber and Lyft. And if you can bid on computing capacity itself with proof-of-work, you're well on your way to a Yudkowskian horror story of sentient Ethereum smart contracts buying computer factories for themselves. If I'm trying to write open source outside the confines of traditional capitalism, the last thing I want to do is require that people's usage of it is proportional to their riches.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

thejohnhenry 10y ago

I'm extremely interested in this, as the current funding model for startups restricts new technology to companies that are fiduciarily compelled to monopolize their market, siphoning user data and (potentially) damaging civic society in the process. Startups are still a very good vehicle for most problems, but for certain classes of problems, sometimes make things worse, and I'm curious if YCombinator is interested in helping out with those types of initiatives.

jessriedel 10y ago
To be clear: YC accepts non-profits each round. www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/ The question of whether open-source producing non-profits fit into YC is still a good one. I couldn't find an info on whether they have already accepted such non-profits, but the incubator Fast Forward has: > Intelehealth built an open-source intelligence engine for assessing primary care conditions https://qz.com/792685/silicon-valley-wants-to-save-the-world-by-investing-in-nonprofits-like-startups/ https://qz.com/792685/silicon-valley-wants-to-save-the-world...
- thejohnhenry 10y ago
  Sure, and I'm aware of the non-profit initiatives. I don't think many people have considered producing actual software under a not-for-profit (except for Khan Academy?), probably because it's insanely expensive. Would YCombinator help facilitate funding a fully open Facebook or Twitter clone, for instance? It sounds outlandish to consider, but it seems equally outlandish to consider the 2020 election happening over essentially the same social stack & people will just be okay with that. (Obviously, a clone itself wouldn't suffice, you'd need to start with federated identity, and....)
  - nostrademons 10y ago
    FWIW, YCombinator has funded a fully open, federated Facebook clone: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/diaspora#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/diaspora#/entity It didn't work out so well, mostly because a.) actually cloning Facebook is pretty hard and b.) users don't seem to want to switch to fully-open Facebook or Twitter clones.
    - thejohnhenry 10y ago
      Haha, interesting, I didn't know they went through YC at some point. I'm making a strong bet that people do want to switch to fully-open social clones, because it's hard for me to imagine citizens of 2024 or 2028 conducting an effective political system using today's monolithic social technology. But the current ecosystem sucks for it.

philip1209 10y ago

This is interesting. I think there's still a deeper question of how to fund open-source technologies. Patreon seems to put the burden on individuals rather than companies. Maybe the answer is non-profits.

brudgers 10y ago

The nascent Mozilla was Netscape and a well funded company that achieved a multi-billion dollar exit (final valuation $10 Billion per Wikipedia)[1]. As a commercial operation it was able to hire a significant engineering staff to work heads down on browser development over a sustained period. In contrast most non-profits have to hire for and focus on donor development and don't have a period of massive commercial growth fueled by venture capital. The Mozilla Foundation has a wholly owned for commercial entity, the Mozilla Corporation. [1] If there was a nascent non-profit in the chain that led to Mozilla, it would be NCSA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercompu...] where Andreesen was developing Mosaic.

avaer 10y ago
> In contrast most non-profits have to hire for and focus on donor development and don't have a period of massive commercial growth fueled by venture capital. Everyone has to pay for marketing, and I'll give you the part about growth. But is this because something inherent in a nonprofit stops it from growing? Is it that there are fewer nonprofits to sample wins from? Or is that venture capital is simply not structured to consider the upside of funding anything other than a bet on a huge exit?
- brudgers 10y ago
  I'm not sure. What I was trying to think about was 'what is a nascent Mozilla?' and the conclusion I came to is that it would have to look more like a fully formed organization or a commercial entity than something that would be obviously nascent and non-profit. Thinking a bit more, big software related non-profits appear to be spin-offs from industry (Eclipse Foundation, Linux Foundation) or academia (Apache Foundation also from NCSA). In each case, the software came first as was the case with Mozilla and the funding followed because corporations found they had an interest in the software's continued development. On the other hand, OpenAI might be a counter example where the money is coming to support research so that's a possible case where YC has funded a 'non-profit' at scale...though the model was recruitment rather than application.