4 ms·

Translation: Companies are pissed that the free software gravy-train is over and how they actually have to start paying for it. This is the way it should have b

by zcw100 7y ago

Translation: Companies are pissed that the free software gravy-train is over and how they actually have to start paying for it. This is the way it should have been for the past decade.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Those SaaS companies are probably not paying for the free software they're using though. Internal costs (people wrangling free/open source/homegrown software) have just become external costs (credit card charges of SaaS businesses doing the same). The more things change, the more they stay the same. I suppose if folks are getting to capture more dollars for the value they deliver, that's always a good thing. Better to own your own biz versus being a cog in someone else's machine (IMHO).
- brongondwana 7y ago
  SaaS companies are more likely to be contributing back to open source software than individual Enterprise users though.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    I would like to see proof of this assertion. PRs are one thing, dollars are what matter. You can't eat code commits.
    - brongondwana 7y ago
      Citation: I run a SaaS company which contributes PRs, in kind contributions and dollars to key open source projects that we use.
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        I genuinely appreciate this as a Fastmail customer and JMAP enthusiast! Are SaaS companies more nimble in their ability to provide this type of support? Most certainly. I'm just uncertain it applies broadly to SaaS companies in general.
        brongondwana 7y ago
        It's more likely that something like Cyrus or Perl will be a key part of the business at Fastmail than at some random similarly sized shop where email is something they use rather than a key part of the business, and hence worth spending time/money on. And there's economies of scale. A few cents from the payment by each of our customers adds up to a decent amount of money to spend on an open source project.
duxup 7y ago
Was there a free software gravy-train? I don't remember many enterprises that relied on large scale free software that was anything like SaaS products today... they were spending plenty on software...
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Java, PHP, MySQL, Postgresql, OpenSSL, Linux come to mind.
  - duxup 7y ago
    Did something change with those? I feel like this narrative is still apples to oranges and the concerns expressed are more about managing the costs all the SaaS products, not having to pay...
  - mm89 7y ago
    Perhaps this is an effect of learning to program in the 2010s, but paying for a programming language (Java, PHP) sounds crazy to me. Do people actually do this?
    - mattmar96 7y ago
      MatLab
    - tombert 7y ago
      It's not terribly common anymore, but people used to pay for the Coldfusion programming language...well at least a compiler/interpreter for it. Outside of some third-party things like OpenBluedragon and Railo, if you wanted to deploy Coldfusion in any capacity, you had to pay Macromedia/Adobe for a license. I don't know of any companies that are still using Coldfusion and I haven't had to touch it since 2012 (thank god), but it certainly was a common thing for awhile.
    - rstupek 7y ago
      Yes you used to have to pay for your development tools (borland was a big player in the space). Even microsoft tools weren't free
jcrawfordor 7y ago
What free software that enterprises were using has been replaced by SaaS?
- humblebee 7y ago
  IRC for Slack was one that happened at a company I worked at.
  - amelius 7y ago
    You can still use IRC.
  - jcrawfordor 7y ago
    There were still internal costs related to running IRC though, assuming you weren't paying some provider to do it for you... not large internal costs, but I don't think on a radically different scale from Slack considering that you could also view a Slack subscription as covering a client with a lot more features than a typical IRC setup (sure you could run a web client, bouncers, services, but that's all increasing your internal costs). I guess my point is that I feel like what GP refers to as "free" is actually just "developed/operated/maintained internally"... these commercial services are still by and large based on free software but you're paying someone else to do the work your internal IT capability used to do. This couples with a general trend I've observed of organizations shifting their IT workload from inside to outside via PaaS/SaaS providers. This could be viewed as a form of outsourcing... in the '90s enterprises were moving their IT functions to India. Now they're moving them to a hundred different contractors, each supporting one system.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      Paying some provider to run a standard FLOSS service based on your needs is going to be a hell of a lot cheaper than some bespoke SaaS solution. And Matrix gives you those "rich client features" anyway, with a broad choice of client-side software - so it's a better comparison than IRC.
planetzero 7y ago
I'm going to use the same argument used about copying/pirating proprietary software: They wouldn't have paid for it in the first place, so you can't count it as lost revenue.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  That's not totally true, I used to see my desktop software revenue fall off after a pirated version was published. Not only that but the people using the pirated version would still contact me for support. Even worse were customers who would buy once license but use the software across their organisation. As soon as I dealt with that those customers started buying more licenses.

by zcw100 7y ago

Translation: Companies are pissed that the free software gravy-train is over and how they actually have to start paying for it. This is the way it should have been for the past decade.

toomuchtodo 7y ago

Those SaaS companies are probably not paying for the free software they're using though. Internal costs (people wrangling free/open source/homegrown software) have just become external costs (credit card charges of SaaS businesses doing the same). The more things change, the more they stay the same. I suppose if folks are getting to capture more dollars for the value they deliver, that's always a good thing. Better to own your own biz versus being a cog in someone else's machine (IMHO).

brongondwana 7y ago
SaaS companies are more likely to be contributing back to open source software than individual Enterprise users though.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  I would like to see proof of this assertion. PRs are one thing, dollars are what matter. You can't eat code commits.
  - brongondwana 7y ago
    Citation: I run a SaaS company which contributes PRs, in kind contributions and dollars to key open source projects that we use.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      I genuinely appreciate this as a Fastmail customer and JMAP enthusiast! Are SaaS companies more nimble in their ability to provide this type of support? Most certainly. I'm just uncertain it applies broadly to SaaS companies in general.
      - brongondwana 7y ago
        It's more likely that something like Cyrus or Perl will be a key part of the business at Fastmail than at some random similarly sized shop where email is something they use rather than a key part of the business, and hence worth spending time/money on. And there's economies of scale. A few cents from the payment by each of our customers adds up to a decent amount of money to spend on an open source project.

duxup 7y ago

Was there a free software gravy-train? I don't remember many enterprises that relied on large scale free software that was anything like SaaS products today... they were spending plenty on software...

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Java, PHP, MySQL, Postgresql, OpenSSL, Linux come to mind.
- duxup 7y ago
  Did something change with those? I feel like this narrative is still apples to oranges and the concerns expressed are more about managing the costs all the SaaS products, not having to pay...
- mm89 7y ago
  Perhaps this is an effect of learning to program in the 2010s, but paying for a programming language (Java, PHP) sounds crazy to me. Do people actually do this?
  - mattmar96 7y ago
    MatLab
  - tombert 7y ago
    It's not terribly common anymore, but people used to pay for the Coldfusion programming language...well at least a compiler/interpreter for it. Outside of some third-party things like OpenBluedragon and Railo, if you wanted to deploy Coldfusion in any capacity, you had to pay Macromedia/Adobe for a license. I don't know of any companies that are still using Coldfusion and I haven't had to touch it since 2012 (thank god), but it certainly was a common thing for awhile.
  - rstupek 7y ago
    Yes you used to have to pay for your development tools (borland was a big player in the space). Even microsoft tools weren't free

jcrawfordor 7y ago

What free software that enterprises were using has been replaced by SaaS?

humblebee 7y ago
IRC for Slack was one that happened at a company I worked at.
- amelius 7y ago
  You can still use IRC.
- jcrawfordor 7y ago
  There were still internal costs related to running IRC though, assuming you weren't paying some provider to do it for you... not large internal costs, but I don't think on a radically different scale from Slack considering that you could also view a Slack subscription as covering a client with a lot more features than a typical IRC setup (sure you could run a web client, bouncers, services, but that's all increasing your internal costs). I guess my point is that I feel like what GP refers to as "free" is actually just "developed/operated/maintained internally"... these commercial services are still by and large based on free software but you're paying someone else to do the work your internal IT capability used to do. This couples with a general trend I've observed of organizations shifting their IT workload from inside to outside via PaaS/SaaS providers. This could be viewed as a form of outsourcing... in the '90s enterprises were moving their IT functions to India. Now they're moving them to a hundred different contractors, each supporting one system.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    Paying some provider to run a standard FLOSS service based on your needs is going to be a hell of a lot cheaper than some bespoke SaaS solution. And Matrix gives you those "rich client features" anyway, with a broad choice of client-side software - so it's a better comparison than IRC.

planetzero 7y ago

I'm going to use the same argument used about copying/pirating proprietary software: They wouldn't have paid for it in the first place, so you can't count it as lost revenue.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
That's not totally true, I used to see my desktop software revenue fall off after a pirated version was published. Not only that but the people using the pirated version would still contact me for support. Even worse were customers who would buy once license but use the software across their organisation. As soon as I dealt with that those customers started buying more licenses.