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It seems to me companies should instead invest in open source alternatives. They could pay less, funding the development of open source alternatives and everyon

It seems to me companies should instead invest in open source alternatives. They could pay less, funding the development of open source alternatives and everyone wins. Blender is a good example of this.

amelius 7y ago
Yes, commoditize your complement.
- greenshackle2 7y ago
  There's no reason to think most of the SaaS tools being bought are complementary to the products and services they are being used to produce. For example, if I'm a car manufacturer using software tools for engineering, sales, inventory management, payroll, etc., the software tools are not a complement to what I sell, they are just a production cost.
lapnitnelav 7y ago
That's the exact thought that has crossed my mind a few weeks ago. I was more focused on the specific of advertising / marketing given the amount of open source solutions available nowadays. The second benefit being that they'd own the underlying data rather than yet another tech giant. So hopefully better for privacy.
theturtletalks 7y ago
Yes there are so many open-source alternatives to popular SaaS nowadays and more are popping up. The barrier of building a great application has gone down significantly the past 4-5 years. I'm work on building an extensive alternatives list here: https://opensource.builders https://opensource.builders. Which commercial product is Blender an open-source alternative to?
- robotnikman 7y ago
  Autodesk 3ds Max comes to mind
paxys 7y ago
Just doing the math, telling your engineers to spend $10 worth of their time every month contributing to an open source alternative is worthless. Building something reasonable is going to be a lot more expensive than what they currently spend on the software.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  That's enough time to put some proof-of-concept code online ("scratch your itch"), which is how successful FLOSS projects tend to start. It would be largely self-sustaining going from there.
2ion 7y ago
"Invest" is the correct word. You take on a complex software with zero guarantees, zero support, outdated documentation and basically have to do it all yourself: analyzing the quality of the thing, making it seaworthy by developing a deployment if needed, testing it, migrating it, etc etc. The boss's boss's eyes glazed over when I said free and open source but he got a reality check when I told him no, significant cost accrues elsewhere.

amelius 7y ago

Yes, commoditize your complement.

greenshackle2 7y ago
There's no reason to think most of the SaaS tools being bought are complementary to the products and services they are being used to produce. For example, if I'm a car manufacturer using software tools for engineering, sales, inventory management, payroll, etc., the software tools are not a complement to what I sell, they are just a production cost.

lapnitnelav 7y ago

That's the exact thought that has crossed my mind a few weeks ago. I was more focused on the specific of advertising / marketing given the amount of open source solutions available nowadays. The second benefit being that they'd own the underlying data rather than yet another tech giant. So hopefully better for privacy.

theturtletalks 7y ago

Yes there are so many open-source alternatives to popular SaaS nowadays and more are popping up. The barrier of building a great application has gone down significantly the past 4-5 years. I'm work on building an extensive alternatives list here: https://opensource.builders https://opensource.builders. Which commercial product is Blender an open-source alternative to?

robotnikman 7y ago
Autodesk 3ds Max comes to mind

paxys 7y ago

Just doing the math, telling your engineers to spend $10 worth of their time every month contributing to an open source alternative is worthless. Building something reasonable is going to be a lot more expensive than what they currently spend on the software.

zozbot234 7y ago
That's enough time to put some proof-of-concept code online ("scratch your itch"), which is how successful FLOSS projects tend to start. It would be largely self-sustaining going from there.

2ion 7y ago

"Invest" is the correct word. You take on a complex software with zero guarantees, zero support, outdated documentation and basically have to do it all yourself: analyzing the quality of the thing, making it seaworthy by developing a deployment if needed, testing it, migrating it, etc etc. The boss's boss's eyes glazed over when I said free and open source but he got a reality check when I told him no, significant cost accrues elsewhere.