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> Together, we’re announcing that we’ve raised $4.5 million in seed funding, led by A.Capital Ventures and OSS Capital. VCs fund startups which has the potenti

> Together, we’re announcing that we’ve raised $4.5 million in seed funding, led by A.Capital Ventures and OSS Capital. VCs fund startups which has the potential to 100x their returns right? How is that going to work here? How will they monetize a javascript library? Will we have an IPO for a javascript library? Or are they betting on a big tech company to acquire a Javascript library for 100s of millions of dollars? I am confused.

ruffrey 5y ago
Healthy skepticism is good. Dev tools are hard. There are hundreds of open source companies - many making gobs of money. Not all - many fail. This team has name recognition and a few successful projects already - Babel and yarn. I can see it working out. JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages. Millions of developers. With solid execution, there are monstrous markets here.
- throwaway91_82 5y ago
  this team also has had at least one example of unilateral non-open source decisionmaking https://www.vice.com/en/article/pawnwv/open-source-devs-reverse-decision-to-block-ice-contractors-from-using-software https://www.vice.com/en/article/pawnwv/open-source-devs-reve...
  - vosper 5y ago
    Is it a given that because the software is open-source, the decision-making will be, too? Almost seems there should be a separate set of claims for what the decision-making process will be (like how there are various software licenses).
    - ipsum2 5y ago
      From the article: > Eric Raymond, the founder of the Open Source Initiative and one of the authors of the standard-bearing Open Source Definition, said Kyle’s decision violated the fifth clause of the definition, which prohibits discrimination against people or groups.
      - spenczar5 5y ago
        Okay, so the issue wasn't decision-making, then, and you agree with the parent comment that open source need not have open decision-making?
  - sebastianmck 5y ago
    The Rome license will stay MIT.
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    Linus is probably a tie-breaker, and thus a unilateral decision maker for Linux when necessary too. What's the problem?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  > There are hundreds of open source companies - many making gobs of money. [citation needed] It seems there may be many open source companies with tons of users, but they seem to struggle with monetization and turning those users into paying users. Redhat which used to be the epitome of a company making money from open source got acquired by IBM. A lot of other open source companies are switching to non-open source licenses.
  - ttul 5y ago
    Even though a company's software might be open source, the company does own the intellectual property of the open source project. It chooses what license under which the software should be offered and has the freedom to commercially exploit the software in ways that nobody else can. That being said, a compiler toolchain is not so easily monetized as something like Grafana, which has obvious enterprise features that need filling in and which can be hosted as a cloud service, generating revenue that way. I imagine the team has ideas for monetization, otherwise they would not have raised $4.5M from some top shelf venture capitalists. I would like to know what those ideas are.
  - Aken 5y ago
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/glennsolomon/2020/09/15/monetizing-open-source-business-models-that-generate-billions/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/glennsolomon/2020/09/15/monetiz...
  - gjhr 5y ago
    34 billion dollars doesn't count as gobs of money?
  - javamonn 5y ago
    OSS Capital, which participated in the Rome Tools, Inc round, has compiled a list which includes commercial open source companies, revenue estimates, and how much VC raised: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17nKMpi_Dh5slCqzLSFBoWMxNvWiwt2R-t4e_l7LPLhU/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17nKMpi_Dh5slCqzLSFBo...
- m463 5y ago
  > Dev tools are hard. That's true. The market is small and price-sensitive.
amasad 5y ago
It's not a "JavaScript library" it's an entire toolchain. In the same way that `git` generated billions of dollars worth of value in the form of companies and productivity, Rome will do the same. Possibly even bigger.
- ehutch79 5y ago
  git doesn't make linus torvalds money though. People used git because it was mandated for linux kernel work.
  - jakeva 5y ago
    To your second point, I remember when git was announced. I remember it was such a breath of conceptual fresh air over what I had been using (svn, mercurial) for me. I use it because it makes a lot more sense to me and how I work, and I've never worked on the linux kernel.
    - nytgop77 5y ago
      never used it, but afaik mercurial is basically git's doppelgannger - functionally they are identical. Am I wrong here?
      - arthurcolle 5y ago
        No, doppelganger seems like a pretty incorrect term to choose here. http://www.rockstarprogrammer.org/post/2008/apr/06/differences-between-mercurial-and-git/ http://www.rockstarprogrammer.org/post/2008/apr/06/differenc...
- blocked_again 5y ago
  I have no doubt that Rome will massively increase the producitvity of thousands of companies and developers. But the hard thing in open source is how will you capture some portion of that value. The vast majority of libraries, toolchains and other open source projects out there which has massively increased the developer producitivty are underfunded let alone generate millions of dollars in sales. Rome not only has to find a sustainable way for funding the project as well as figure out a way to 100x the returns of VCs? How is Rome planning to do that?
yawnxyz 5y ago
I really hope they don't start charging $1 for every time I install Babel through npm.....
Philip-J-Fry 5y ago
Compiler As A Service obviously. I'm half joking.
polote 5y ago
> In order to support the open source project, we’ll be building supplemental products and services. This aligns our incentives with the community and our open source users, with a focus on interoperability, performance, and usability. like every open source company, they will sell additional services to companies. When you have millions of users you always find a way to monetize it, even if you think you are just a "javascript library". Redis is just a database, Word is just a text processor, ...
lhorie 5y ago
Over at r/javascript, Sebastian mentioned the business model would be based on providing services. He mentioned things like code quality monitoring and remote cache, so it sounds like it's up the alley of CI/CD cloud platform offerings. Does seem like quite a departure from the original premise of Rome, but it seems like a sensible strategy. FWIW many companies easily spend 6-7 figures on CI/CD per year, so there's definitely room to carve out a niche there.

ruffrey 5y ago

Healthy skepticism is good. Dev tools are hard. There are hundreds of open source companies - many making gobs of money. Not all - many fail. This team has name recognition and a few successful projects already - Babel and yarn. I can see it working out. JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages. Millions of developers. With solid execution, there are monstrous markets here.

throwaway91_82 5y ago
this team also has had at least one example of unilateral non-open source decisionmaking https://www.vice.com/en/article/pawnwv/open-source-devs-reverse-decision-to-block-ice-contractors-from-using-software https://www.vice.com/en/article/pawnwv/open-source-devs-reve...
- vosper 5y ago
  Is it a given that because the software is open-source, the decision-making will be, too? Almost seems there should be a separate set of claims for what the decision-making process will be (like how there are various software licenses).
  - ipsum2 5y ago
    From the article: > Eric Raymond, the founder of the Open Source Initiative and one of the authors of the standard-bearing Open Source Definition, said Kyle’s decision violated the fifth clause of the definition, which prohibits discrimination against people or groups.
    - spenczar5 5y ago
      Okay, so the issue wasn't decision-making, then, and you agree with the parent comment that open source need not have open decision-making?
- sebastianmck 5y ago
  The Rome license will stay MIT.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  Linus is probably a tie-breaker, and thus a unilateral decision maker for Linux when necessary too. What's the problem?
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
> There are hundreds of open source companies - many making gobs of money. [citation needed] It seems there may be many open source companies with tons of users, but they seem to struggle with monetization and turning those users into paying users. Redhat which used to be the epitome of a company making money from open source got acquired by IBM. A lot of other open source companies are switching to non-open source licenses.
- ttul 5y ago
  Even though a company's software might be open source, the company does own the intellectual property of the open source project. It chooses what license under which the software should be offered and has the freedom to commercially exploit the software in ways that nobody else can. That being said, a compiler toolchain is not so easily monetized as something like Grafana, which has obvious enterprise features that need filling in and which can be hosted as a cloud service, generating revenue that way. I imagine the team has ideas for monetization, otherwise they would not have raised $4.5M from some top shelf venture capitalists. I would like to know what those ideas are.
- Aken 5y ago
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/glennsolomon/2020/09/15/monetizing-open-source-business-models-that-generate-billions/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/glennsolomon/2020/09/15/monetiz...
- gjhr 5y ago
  34 billion dollars doesn't count as gobs of money?
- javamonn 5y ago
  OSS Capital, which participated in the Rome Tools, Inc round, has compiled a list which includes commercial open source companies, revenue estimates, and how much VC raised: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17nKMpi_Dh5slCqzLSFBoWMxNvWiwt2R-t4e_l7LPLhU/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17nKMpi_Dh5slCqzLSFBo...
m463 5y ago
> Dev tools are hard. That's true. The market is small and price-sensitive.

amasad 5y ago

It's not a "JavaScript library" it's an entire toolchain. In the same way that `git` generated billions of dollars worth of value in the form of companies and productivity, Rome will do the same. Possibly even bigger.

ehutch79 5y ago
git doesn't make linus torvalds money though. People used git because it was mandated for linux kernel work.
- jakeva 5y ago
  To your second point, I remember when git was announced. I remember it was such a breath of conceptual fresh air over what I had been using (svn, mercurial) for me. I use it because it makes a lot more sense to me and how I work, and I've never worked on the linux kernel.
  - nytgop77 5y ago
    never used it, but afaik mercurial is basically git's doppelgannger - functionally they are identical. Am I wrong here?
    - arthurcolle 5y ago
      No, doppelganger seems like a pretty incorrect term to choose here. http://www.rockstarprogrammer.org/post/2008/apr/06/differences-between-mercurial-and-git/ http://www.rockstarprogrammer.org/post/2008/apr/06/differenc...
blocked_again 5y ago
I have no doubt that Rome will massively increase the producitvity of thousands of companies and developers. But the hard thing in open source is how will you capture some portion of that value. The vast majority of libraries, toolchains and other open source projects out there which has massively increased the developer producitivty are underfunded let alone generate millions of dollars in sales. Rome not only has to find a sustainable way for funding the project as well as figure out a way to 100x the returns of VCs? How is Rome planning to do that?

yawnxyz 5y ago

I really hope they don't start charging $1 for every time I install Babel through npm.....

Philip-J-Fry 5y ago

Compiler As A Service obviously. I'm half joking.

polote 5y ago

> In order to support the open source project, we’ll be building supplemental products and services. This aligns our incentives with the community and our open source users, with a focus on interoperability, performance, and usability. like every open source company, they will sell additional services to companies. When you have millions of users you always find a way to monetize it, even if you think you are just a "javascript library". Redis is just a database, Word is just a text processor, ...

lhorie 5y ago

Over at r/javascript, Sebastian mentioned the business model would be based on providing services. He mentioned things like code quality monitoring and remote cache, so it sounds like it's up the alley of CI/CD cloud platform offerings. Does seem like quite a departure from the original premise of Rome, but it seems like a sensible strategy. FWIW many companies easily spend 6-7 figures on CI/CD per year, so there's definitely room to carve out a niche there.