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Interesting take. For every star we had on GitHub we did 21 cents in monthly revenue for (around $1300). We needed to turn Fathom into a viable competitor to Go

Interesting take. For every star we had on GitHub we did 21 cents in monthly revenue for (around $1300). We needed to turn Fathom into a viable competitor to Google Analytics. We can't do that if we are working a few hours a week on it, we needed to be full time. Here's a comparison I've always looked at. Here are 2 solid database tools: Table Plus - https://tableplus.com/ https://tableplus.com/ SQLite Browser - https://sqlitebrowser.org/ https://sqlitebrowser.org/ Table Plus is about 3 years old, SQLite is 6 years old. I have used both but Table Plus is 10000x better and more popular. Everyone talks about it and they innovate fast. They work full time on it too, $59 a license. They are so active, and have so many great features. Full time salaries help with that. SQLite has $102 in Patreon support. Table Plus makes that in 2 sales. Look at Sequel Pro. One of the best products in the game but it never built a sustainable business model and it wasn't economically viable to continue, and look at it now. I'm happy to say that we're achieving our goal every day. Our goal is to build a sustainable, profitable business (profitable businesses don't typically close down) that we can we can work full time on every day, moving people away from Google Analytics. For every 1 negative comment we get, hundreds / thousands of people signing up for Fathom. We've spoken about it here too: https://usefathom.com/podcast/opensource https://usefathom.com/podcast/opensource

justinclift 6y ago
> For every star we had on GitHub we did 21 cents in monthly revenue ... Who gives a crap? You guys started out as OSS and said it would continue to be. That turned out to be bullcrap, just looking for exposure. > I have used both but Table Plus is 10000x better and more popular. sigh Table Plus supports many different types of database. If people are looking for a macOS specific solution that does that, Table Plus might be a decent choice. "SQLite Browser" on the other hand is specific to a single database. Though is cross platform and fairly popular in it's niche. That being said, where are you getting "more popular" for Table Plus from though? Measured by what things? > SQLite is 6 years old Huh? > SQLite has $102 in Patreon support. You seem to be meaning DB Browser for SQLite. Do we seem like a commercial project to you? We recently added a Patreon link to our download page, after forgetting to put it out there much. The Patreon was originally created to cover our server costs (about US$75/mo from memory) some years ago, a goal we reached in 3 days. That being said, we're trying out various things for a SaaS model as well because - like yourselves - we recognise success there will help with sustainability. But we're sure as hell not going to bait and switch anyone. > Look at Sequel Pro. ... and look at it now. Seems like a commercial product whose organisation went broke, released the software as OSS, and couldn't get traction for that either? People do appear to have picked up the project again recently, in an attempt to move it forwards: https://github.com/sequelpro/sequelpro/issues/3679#issuecomment-643049522 https://github.com/sequelpro/sequelpro/issues/3679#issuecomm... > Our goal is to... Sure. You guys started out by bullshitting people. Unfortunately, the lack of integrity doesn't seem to be directly hurting. :( One can hope it'll mean missed important opportunities for yourselves later, but who knows. You seem to be really leaning into the sales thing here on HN though. > We've spoken about it here too ... With an established history of lying, who cares?
- JackWritesCode 6y ago
  We are 2 indie developers trying to build a sustainable business. We are trying to compete against Google. The idea that the open-source package is responsible for our success is ludicrous. Our success came from thousands of hours of work. You’ll believe the narrative you choose. You’re entitled to that. We will always be “liars” to you because we chose to spend our time building up the paid service. You feel like we should open source all of our code, that’s fine. This conversation isn’t productive, and you seem spiteful, so I’m retiring. And I hadn’t realized that you were the creator of DB browser, that was just a recent example I’d been discussing with friends. Good luck with your chosen path. Please hug your family and take some time to relax.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    I'm still trying to understand why your current "production" (eg SaaS) version of Fathom can't also be FOSS. Other places (eg Redash) do so, and are doing extremely well. The change from FOSS to non-FOSS, especially throwing away the goodwill you'd started out with... makes no sense. :( Popularity of DB Browser for SQLite wise, you might want to check our stats page: https://sqlitebrowser.org/stats/ https://sqlitebrowser.org/stats/ We're doing decently well, and our GitHub organisation has more active developers now than ever before. :)
  - arp242 6y ago
    I think the biggest peeve people have isn't so much that Fathom v2/PRO is closed source, but rather the "we'll open source it soon" kind of "dangling the carrot" stuff. In the GitHub issue you mentioned "since people are confused [..]", but people are confused because your communication has quite frankly not been very good. Even today just looking at the Fathom README it's not at all clear that Fathom v2 (or "PRO") is an entirely different codebase/product which merely shares the name and branding, and not much else, and it's not clear that the "Lite" version is essentially unmaintained either.
    - JackWritesCode 6y ago
      We're going to make our stance clear with our next release of Lite. We definitely made some mistakes with regards to V2. Originally we had planned to open-source it, but then we decided against it.

justinclift 6y ago

> For every star we had on GitHub we did 21 cents in monthly revenue ... Who gives a crap? You guys started out as OSS and said it would continue to be. That turned out to be bullcrap, just looking for exposure. > I have used both but Table Plus is 10000x better and more popular. sigh Table Plus supports many different types of database. If people are looking for a macOS specific solution that does that, Table Plus might be a decent choice. "SQLite Browser" on the other hand is specific to a single database. Though is cross platform and fairly popular in it's niche. That being said, where are you getting "more popular" for Table Plus from though? Measured by what things? > SQLite is 6 years old Huh? > SQLite has $102 in Patreon support. You seem to be meaning DB Browser for SQLite. Do we seem like a commercial project to you? We recently added a Patreon link to our download page, after forgetting to put it out there much. The Patreon was originally created to cover our server costs (about US$75/mo from memory) some years ago, a goal we reached in 3 days. That being said, we're trying out various things for a SaaS model as well because - like yourselves - we recognise success there will help with sustainability. But we're sure as hell not going to bait and switch anyone. > Look at Sequel Pro. ... and look at it now. Seems like a commercial product whose organisation went broke, released the software as OSS, and couldn't get traction for that either? People do appear to have picked up the project again recently, in an attempt to move it forwards: https://github.com/sequelpro/sequelpro/issues/3679#issuecomment-643049522 https://github.com/sequelpro/sequelpro/issues/3679#issuecomm... > Our goal is to... Sure. You guys started out by bullshitting people. Unfortunately, the lack of integrity doesn't seem to be directly hurting. :( One can hope it'll mean missed important opportunities for yourselves later, but who knows. You seem to be really leaning into the sales thing here on HN though. > We've spoken about it here too ... With an established history of lying, who cares?

JackWritesCode 6y ago
We are 2 indie developers trying to build a sustainable business. We are trying to compete against Google. The idea that the open-source package is responsible for our success is ludicrous. Our success came from thousands of hours of work. You’ll believe the narrative you choose. You’re entitled to that. We will always be “liars” to you because we chose to spend our time building up the paid service. You feel like we should open source all of our code, that’s fine. This conversation isn’t productive, and you seem spiteful, so I’m retiring. And I hadn’t realized that you were the creator of DB browser, that was just a recent example I’d been discussing with friends. Good luck with your chosen path. Please hug your family and take some time to relax.
- justinclift 6y ago
  I'm still trying to understand why your current "production" (eg SaaS) version of Fathom can't also be FOSS. Other places (eg Redash) do so, and are doing extremely well. The change from FOSS to non-FOSS, especially throwing away the goodwill you'd started out with... makes no sense. :( Popularity of DB Browser for SQLite wise, you might want to check our stats page: https://sqlitebrowser.org/stats/ https://sqlitebrowser.org/stats/ We're doing decently well, and our GitHub organisation has more active developers now than ever before. :)
- arp242 6y ago
  I think the biggest peeve people have isn't so much that Fathom v2/PRO is closed source, but rather the "we'll open source it soon" kind of "dangling the carrot" stuff. In the GitHub issue you mentioned "since people are confused [..]", but people are confused because your communication has quite frankly not been very good. Even today just looking at the Fathom README it's not at all clear that Fathom v2 (or "PRO") is an entirely different codebase/product which merely shares the name and branding, and not much else, and it's not clear that the "Lite" version is essentially unmaintained either.
  - JackWritesCode 6y ago
    We're going to make our stance clear with our next release of Lite. We definitely made some mistakes with regards to V2. Originally we had planned to open-source it, but then we decided against it.