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I always see FOSS to get super fast traction (Elastic) and userbase - hey, because its free - and then later the same people complain that their lunch got stole

I always see FOSS to get super fast traction (Elastic) and userbase - hey, because its free - and then later the same people complain that their lunch got stolen. Elastic could have grown (or not) organically with closed source software but that's hard without community help and being able to hire top developers to build your product. FOSS seems like a great way to market/PR your name out there because free is popular. I compare this, perhaps not perfect analogy, to Uber. Offer cheap rides, gain popularity while burning investor cash and wipe out existing industry/competition. Then, investors complain they can't monetize it. No shit! In the case of Elastic, the rest of the world benefited from it atleast.

tschellenbach 6y ago
Algolia is doing just fine. Open source contributions by volunteers are typically very small compared to the work done by the corporations behind the open source projects. At least for the vast majority of projects.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I actually love Algolia. They know they're good and they charge a pretty penny for it. Excellent.
BossingAround 6y ago
> Elastic could have grown (or not) organically with closed source software but that's hard without community help and being able to hire top developers to build your product. Yea I don't know. If I saw claims made at [1] by a startup that made proprietary SW, I'd think "yea right". [1] https://www.elastic.co/elasticsearch/service https://www.elastic.co/elasticsearch/service