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In 2020, a company that provides a product for free without a standard business model will be met with skepticism: not just from investors, but from users. How
by speedplane 7y ago
In 2020, a company that provides a product for free without a standard business model will be met with skepticism: not just from investors, but from users.
How is jit.si able to do this for free where many other companies charge? Are they monetizing user data? Or trying to upsell some parent company services? Is this an honest-for-goodness non-profit because someone was fed up with video conferencing?
None of these are potentially deal-breakers, but they need to be transparent about why they are doing this for free and what they are getting out of it. In 2020, the understanding of "free" is much more sophisticated than it was in say 2010.
- Vinnl 7y agoI wondered about this too. Luckily, they are transparent, in their FAQ: https://jitsi.org/user-faq/ https://jitsi.org/user-faq/ > If Jitsi doesn’t make any money, how can it continue to support the project? > We are fortunate that our friends at 8×8 fully fund the project. 8×8 uses Jitsi technology in products like Virtual Office. The open source community and meet.jit.si service help to make Jitsi better, which makes 8×8 products better, which helps to further fund Jitsi. This virtuous cycle has worked well in the past and should continue to for many years to come.
- saghul 7y agoHey there, Jitsi dev here. Great questions, let me try to clarify. Jitsi is now owned by 8x8, which has a clear business model. We recently launched 8x8 Meetings, which is a rebranded Jitsi Meet with a few extra bells and whistles. We (Jitsi) have remained Open Source while navigating through 2 acquisitions (Atlassian and 8x8) and being Open Source is in our DNA. Thus, remaining in this state was always a non-negotiable item during acquisition talks.