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I have become exactly like this. My experience with free (as in beer) software and services is that it's usually offered as a "strategic offering", maybe as an

I have become exactly like this. My experience with free (as in beer) software and services is that it's usually offered as a "strategic offering", maybe as an attempt to commoditize your complement(?) but I'm speculating here. The downside is that the wider business does not care that much about your software. It needs to work, but just enough that customers don't use your complement. And critically, when it comes to prioritization of resources (especially the most senior people who could mentor you), they would rather put their best people in other parts of the business. I've become of the mindset that if you want to build best-in-class software with a best-in-class team, you should see if you can draw a direct line from the product to the revenue, or at least the core mission of the business.

heimatau 6y ago
Preface: Might be easier to read my comment withOUT the parenthesis. Then go back and read with them. I fully agree with you guys on a macro-scale. I didn't have this position years ago but now it's a firm position. But my observation is that no one (read: a significant majority) is financially sovereign (FS), therefore they mis-calculate the time/labor costs and it's economic value/costs. To think of this another way, if your (financial/material/etc) lives depended the Amish's* jam or chairs (or anything else they make). You can depend on their work, up to a certain scale. But even most software projects don't have this dependability because software is generally repackaged to fit a narrow use-case. Iff (if and only if) the Amish were to embrace the automation technology, then you could depend on the Amish scaling for whatever you need. Financial sovereignty is very powerful but the drawbacks are that the team, to do all the needed work, might not be FS. (Hence why I mention the Amish) This FS doesn't scale (this could with the Amish; if they wanted to provide jam to everyone, etc) with the complexity of the problem nor the robustness of the problem being solved. Another important drawback is that those that are FS tend to be myopic to those that aren't (i.e. their market/customers). This problem is pretty big as well. To find a product/service that solves all these criteria is immense and dare I say, improbable, hence my agreement to the two comments above. The simple solution is to try and align with the better alternative that have a positive feedback loop (i.e. monetary gain to improve the work). * Note: I do understand that Amish charge money for jam/chairs/etc but the cost is tends to be nominal/small.
- gumbo 6y ago
  Just candid feedback here, I think you are being downvoted because your comment is actually quite hard to digest. And here, not event blaming it on the parentheses.
  - najarvg 6y ago
    Agreed. Took me a couple of passes to understand the point being made but makes solid sense and a viable rejoinder to the parent comment.
    - heimatau 6y ago
      Thanks for the feedback! I was going to edit it but looks like I can't. Regardless, the main idea is that I support greed as a motivator because financially sovereign teams don't exist nor scale enough to support a given cause (especially if it's a very difficult problem).

heimatau 6y ago

Preface: Might be easier to read my comment withOUT the parenthesis. Then go back and read with them. I fully agree with you guys on a macro-scale. I didn't have this position years ago but now it's a firm position. But my observation is that no one (read: a significant majority) is financially sovereign (FS), therefore they mis-calculate the time/labor costs and it's economic value/costs. To think of this another way, if your (financial/material/etc) lives depended the Amish's* jam or chairs (or anything else they make). You can depend on their work, up to a certain scale. But even most software projects don't have this dependability because software is generally repackaged to fit a narrow use-case. Iff (if and only if) the Amish were to embrace the automation technology, then you could depend on the Amish scaling for whatever you need. Financial sovereignty is very powerful but the drawbacks are that the team, to do all the needed work, might not be FS. (Hence why I mention the Amish) This FS doesn't scale (this could with the Amish; if they wanted to provide jam to everyone, etc) with the complexity of the problem nor the robustness of the problem being solved. Another important drawback is that those that are FS tend to be myopic to those that aren't (i.e. their market/customers). This problem is pretty big as well. To find a product/service that solves all these criteria is immense and dare I say, improbable, hence my agreement to the two comments above. The simple solution is to try and align with the better alternative that have a positive feedback loop (i.e. monetary gain to improve the work). * Note: I do understand that Amish charge money for jam/chairs/etc but the cost is tends to be nominal/small.

gumbo 6y ago
Just candid feedback here, I think you are being downvoted because your comment is actually quite hard to digest. And here, not event blaming it on the parentheses.
- najarvg 6y ago
  Agreed. Took me a couple of passes to understand the point being made but makes solid sense and a viable rejoinder to the parent comment.
  - heimatau 6y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! I was going to edit it but looks like I can't. Regardless, the main idea is that I support greed as a motivator because financially sovereign teams don't exist nor scale enough to support a given cause (especially if it's a very difficult problem).