4 ms·

AWS started offering SaaS products based on open source software without contributing anything back to the original projects. Combined with that, and wholesale

AWS started offering SaaS products based on open source software without contributing anything back to the original projects. Combined with that, and wholesale cloud adoption over the last decade, revenue streams for "enterprise" editions, services have dried up. In the 90s and 2000s, OSS project were more grass roots efforts. In the past decade, there have been a series of primarily commercial OSS projects like Redis and ElasticSearch that have gained a fair bit of traction. They really aren't grass roots efforts, don't have a lot of volunteers, and have seen their business model gutted by AWS.

zapita 8y ago
> there have been a series of primarily commercial OSS projects like Redis and ElasticSearch that have gained a fair bit of traction. They really aren't grass roots efforts I think that's very unfair. Both Redis and ElasticSearch are definitely grassroots projects - both Salvatore (Antirez) and Shai worked on their projects for years, with minimal support from the outside world, grew their community organically, and managed to build something useful for thousands of grateful developers. Later, they looked for ways to make a good living while continuing to invest in the success of their projects. In the process they built (or joined, in the case of Salvatore) businesses dedicated to supporting the development of their project. There is no perfect solution, but in both cases I would say that they succeeded - they are making a good living, and their projects have continued to grow and make many users happy, in great part thanks to them and the business they work with. To use that success as an argument against them - to present their business efforts as opposite to their community efforts is just not true, and I think it’s harmful. It punishes them, the creators and maintainers of a great and useful project, for wanting fair compensation for their efforts, and making the effort to give back in the process - when so many others profit from their work, and give back nothing, or the bare minimum to make themselves look good.
- pdonis 8y ago
  > both Salvatore (Antirez) and Shai worked on their projects for years, with minimal support from the outside world, grew their community organically, and managed to build something useful for thousands of grateful developers. Later, they looked for ways to make a good living In other words, making a good living from the product was an afterthought. So they shouldn't be surprised that they're not getting as much value for themselves out of the product as they would have if making a good living from it was a fundamental part of the project from the beginning. That's not to say that there aren't ways to monetize open source products, just that doing it as an afterthought isn't one of them. If it's a business, it's a business, and you have to treat it that way from day one. Otherwise you will be out-competed, as a business, by others who do.
  - zapita 8y ago
    > That's not to say that there aren't ways to monetize open source products, just that doing it as an afterthought isn't one of them. Says who? You are entitled to your opinion on the matter, but this is a very contested issue and your opinion is just one of many. If you’re going to argue that Redis and Elastic are “doing open-source monetization wrong”, maybe you should back up your claim with arguments. > If it's a business, it's a business, and you have to treat it that way from day one. Otherwise you will be out-competed, as a business, by others who do. You seem very knowledgeable about what is and is not a good monetization strategy for open-source. What do you propose as an alternative to what Elastic and Redis are doing?
    - pdonis 8y ago
      > If you’re going to argue that Redis and Elastic are “doing open-source monetization wrong”, maybe you should back up your claim with arguments. I did. Did you read my post? > What do you propose as an alternative to what Elastic and Redis are doing? As an alternative now? I'm not sure there is one. Their products are already out there being monetized by others. As an alternative back when they started? They could have let everyone know that they were aiming to monetize their products as a business from the beginning. Then they would have been taking on for themselves the business risks that cloud providers, for example, took on by building infrastructure using their products and trying to sell it to users.
- halbritt 8y ago
  We may disagree as to whether they are or are not "grass roots" which is subjective in any case. Both Elastic and Redis Labs were formed relatively early on and are the primary contributors to both projects. There's not a great diversity of contributors as there are on other projects. That said, I never made the argument that their business efforts were a bad thing nor opposed to community efforts, though certainly others have in this context. Personally, I believe that both commercial entities are entitled to compensation. One of the points that I was attempting to make is that AWS nearly killed their respective businesses by reselling the product of their efforts while making no contribution back to either project.

zapita 8y ago

> there have been a series of primarily commercial OSS projects like Redis and ElasticSearch that have gained a fair bit of traction. They really aren't grass roots efforts I think that's very unfair. Both Redis and ElasticSearch are definitely grassroots projects - both Salvatore (Antirez) and Shai worked on their projects for years, with minimal support from the outside world, grew their community organically, and managed to build something useful for thousands of grateful developers. Later, they looked for ways to make a good living while continuing to invest in the success of their projects. In the process they built (or joined, in the case of Salvatore) businesses dedicated to supporting the development of their project. There is no perfect solution, but in both cases I would say that they succeeded - they are making a good living, and their projects have continued to grow and make many users happy, in great part thanks to them and the business they work with. To use that success as an argument against them - to present their business efforts as opposite to their community efforts is just not true, and I think it’s harmful. It punishes them, the creators and maintainers of a great and useful project, for wanting fair compensation for their efforts, and making the effort to give back in the process - when so many others profit from their work, and give back nothing, or the bare minimum to make themselves look good.

pdonis 8y ago
> both Salvatore (Antirez) and Shai worked on their projects for years, with minimal support from the outside world, grew their community organically, and managed to build something useful for thousands of grateful developers. Later, they looked for ways to make a good living In other words, making a good living from the product was an afterthought. So they shouldn't be surprised that they're not getting as much value for themselves out of the product as they would have if making a good living from it was a fundamental part of the project from the beginning. That's not to say that there aren't ways to monetize open source products, just that doing it as an afterthought isn't one of them. If it's a business, it's a business, and you have to treat it that way from day one. Otherwise you will be out-competed, as a business, by others who do.
- zapita 8y ago
  > That's not to say that there aren't ways to monetize open source products, just that doing it as an afterthought isn't one of them. Says who? You are entitled to your opinion on the matter, but this is a very contested issue and your opinion is just one of many. If you’re going to argue that Redis and Elastic are “doing open-source monetization wrong”, maybe you should back up your claim with arguments. > If it's a business, it's a business, and you have to treat it that way from day one. Otherwise you will be out-competed, as a business, by others who do. You seem very knowledgeable about what is and is not a good monetization strategy for open-source. What do you propose as an alternative to what Elastic and Redis are doing?
  - pdonis 8y ago
    > If you’re going to argue that Redis and Elastic are “doing open-source monetization wrong”, maybe you should back up your claim with arguments. I did. Did you read my post? > What do you propose as an alternative to what Elastic and Redis are doing? As an alternative now? I'm not sure there is one. Their products are already out there being monetized by others. As an alternative back when they started? They could have let everyone know that they were aiming to monetize their products as a business from the beginning. Then they would have been taking on for themselves the business risks that cloud providers, for example, took on by building infrastructure using their products and trying to sell it to users.
halbritt 8y ago
We may disagree as to whether they are or are not "grass roots" which is subjective in any case. Both Elastic and Redis Labs were formed relatively early on and are the primary contributors to both projects. There's not a great diversity of contributors as there are on other projects. That said, I never made the argument that their business efforts were a bad thing nor opposed to community efforts, though certainly others have in this context. Personally, I believe that both commercial entities are entitled to compensation. One of the points that I was attempting to make is that AWS nearly killed their respective businesses by reselling the product of their efforts while making no contribution back to either project.