11 ms·

Selling my own GPL software, part 1: a lot of hurdles

147 points by jandeboevrie 5y ago

pabs3 5y ago
The software sounds a bit like nagstamon.
lukaszwojtow 5y ago
I would by this!
thepete2 5y ago
Cool. I suspect this model will mostly work, but only if the price of the app is low enough to not justify a lot of inconvenience by compiling it yourself or maybe getting it from f-droid. I like this model a lot, apps like OsmAnd do the same.
- ralmidani 5y ago
  It’s tempting to think you can price GPL software at some “sweet spot” where customers think it’s worth it and you recoup your development costs. But then someone who hasn’t incurred your development costs can undercut you, even while offering the same or better service.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    At least with AGPL software, if this happens, it will force those competitors to release their secret sauce, too. Those competitors will have to open source all of their changes, meanwhile as the copyright holder, you're able to release proprietary modules or changes at any time, and those competitors are out of luck if they want to use them. Should they attempt to compete on feature parity, their additions will need to open source.
    - jefftk 5y ago
      In this case, we are talking about client side software. It runs locally on the device. This means that the distinction between the GPL and the AGPL is not really relevant. And any competitor preparing modified binaries would also need to release their source.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sscarduzio 5y ago
I highly recommend you go for an open core model: gpl core + commercial proprietary add-ons. From direct experience, selling GPL code rarely works. And when it does, you know you're leaving a ton of money on the table (for no reason).
- jacobmartin 5y ago
  Honest question (I am totally ignorant about these things): If you did this, would you be able to accept patches from the community on the open core? Or would releasing your proprietary code violate the GPL of the coder who sent the patch?
  - orangeshark 5y ago
    You usually require them to assign copyright back to you so you can still use it in your proprietary version.
    - jacobmartin 5y ago
      Ah, makes sense. Thanks!
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    You'd only accept contributions under a CLA that assigns copyright to you or your company, allowing you to distribute the code and its derivatives in any manner, and under any license, you want.
    - jacobmartin 5y ago
      That makes sense. Thanks!
    - hakre 5y ago
      Only to yourself with all rights reserved to yourself, too. You then transfer the license to an oversea entity that then licenses back to your majority owned company. This is the professional business with software licenses as there is no physical good to ship, it is in principle a good way to transfer money accepted as a common business transaction (paying licensing fees), supported by tax laws for international trade (e.g. often various tax exemptions).
vegetablepotpie 5y ago
> People have asked me what I think of the fact that other people can then also redistribute the source code, or compile a binary and provide that for free. I'm fine with that, as said, I'm a firm believer in open source / free software. What??? They’ve admitted to a flaw in their method to get income, which is that they’re making it trivial for competitors to offer the same product. Their response is that they’re a believer. I would have appreciated a response like dual licensing, or going into consulting for their app, or using trademark to enforce ownership over their version.
- geoah 5y ago
  Textual is a good example of this working IRL for me. Their app is one of the best IMO IRC clients on MacOS, is open source [1] and is also sold on the App store and their site. 1. https://github.com/Codeux-Software/Textual#original-limechat-license https://github.com/Codeux-Software/Textual#original-limechat... 2. https://www.codeux.com/textual https://www.codeux.com/textual
  - vegetablepotpie 5y ago
    So in the case of Textual, it’s a convenience for the user to download from the App Store than to clone and compile and get through code signing. If I’m broke, have a MacBook, and know how to build and modify a project, I can get textual for free, which is a nice option to have. On platforms with app stores I can see this being viable for developers. I am aware of VLC being removed from the iOS App Store years ago because the license agreement for the App Store said that developers had to have sole control over the source code. I’m wondering if this requirement was removed, which would allow Textual to exist on the platform with its licensing. I can see licensing an open source project, for profit, as BSD being riskier than GPL because I could take their project, add my own additions, publish the product on the App Store (under a different name and branding) and never release the source code. At least with GPL, I would be required to share my modified versions of the source code with users of the product, which could be reintegrated into Textual.
  - crazysim 5y ago
    Pixen was the opposite. It was open source and sold on the App Store but then people just took the code and put their own low effort Pixen-likes on the App Store. No more OSS Pixen.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
> Consider sponsoring me on Github. It means the world to me if you show your appreciation and you'll help pay the server costs. >You can also sponsor me by getting a Digital Ocean VPS. With this referral link you'll get $100 credit for 60 days. Asking people for money right at the top and putting referral links to help pay for server costs does not generate much confidence that selling GPL software is a viable business model.
- Blackthorn 5y ago
  It's a default paragraph on literally all of his/her blog posts.
- toastal 5y ago
  Patronage is like the new normal for supporting people creating things online. My only rub is I don't need a VPS and I'm sure as heck not going to support anyone through a Microsoft-owned venture. Payments don't need to be tied to corporations but a lot of people hate crypto (and the exchanges take a substantial cut). At least Liberapay is open, low-fees, not trying to be a loss-leader start-up, and not trying to be a social network.
- meetups323 5y ago
  Selling GPL software is objectively a terrible business model. If the entire proposition behind buying your software is "it'd be a pain to build this myself so I'll pay someone to compile the binary then give it to me", the only thing I can infer is that you have an unnecessarily painful build process. Supporting GPL software, on the other hand, can be very viable. Another good option is licensing data to be interpreted/rendered/whatever by your GPL software. End of the day, people don't buy software. They buy solutions to business problems. If the business problem can be solved for free by building the FOSS software yourself, there's no reason to pay the creator. On the other hand, if the creator sells "I will solve X business problem for you, this is an example of some of the FOSS software I will use to do so, but in the event this software is unable to properly solve the problem I will take whatever steps are needed to ensure it is solved to your satisfaction", it makes darn good sense to pay that creator to solve that problem.
eminence32 5y ago
If Paul Davis is around, I'd be interesting in hearing their take on the subject given their experience with Ardour (which is open-source GPL, but official binaries cost money). As far as I know, Ardour has done this for at least a decade, so I assume it's been reasonably successful. Edit: it occurs to me that Paul is probably asked about this frequently, and maybe has already said some words about this, so any relevant links would be useful too
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  He's around though! No particularly good links, and your summary almost says it all anyway. When I started working on Ardour, I didn't need to make any money from it. By 2009, it started to seem clear that I did, and fortunately Radiohead had just released "In Rainbows" using their "pay tunnel" approach (can't get it unless you pay but what you pay is up to you). I wasn't a Radiohead fan but I thought there was something interesting in the idea. Ardour has remained GPL (v2+) licensed, so the current situation is this: * you can get the source without charge (github or our own tarball) * if you want a prebuilt binary, we ask you to pay something (any amount above US$1) We set the "default" price (the one in the price box, that can be edited) based on your IP address and OECD data about the cost of a mid-priced meal for 2 without alcohol in (roughly) your (apparent) location. We also added subscriptions, not like Adobe etc., but just regular periodic payments, mostly because they help smooth out the income flow between releases. They are available at the US$1, 4 and 10 per month, to try to cater to the wide variety of incomes worldwide. There's a huge churn in Windows-based subscribers (e.g. 10 cancellations a day, 10 new ones). You get free upgrades as long as your subscription is active (and obviously for a GPL project, there are no other consequences to it ending - the software keeps working as ever). We have on the order of 6000 subscribers these days (with the aforementioned high rate of churn). Linux distributions are obviously free to distribute it as they wish. There are one or two resellers on ebay etc. also, who I just try to ignore. During COVID our total monthly revenue grew as high as US$20k/month, and have settled back to about US$17k/month. The income is divided between two full time developers (I'm one of them) and we've built an "escrow" account of more than US$60k over the last two years. Some of this currently being used to pay someone I discovered on HN to rebuild our website, and we hope to pay for more development work next year. AFAIK, we are one of the most successful "user-funded" GPL projects in the world. Blender has way more revenue, but AFAICT, most of it is not from users.
cozzyd 5y ago
Is it still illegal to put GPL software in the app store? (Obviously can be worked around with dual licensing here)
pserwylo 5y ago
I'm in a fortunate enough position that the day job pays the bills and I enjoy it, such that I don't need income from my open source efforts. However, about a year ago I did two things: - Enabled sponsorship through GitHub and Liberapay. - Put my GPL apps (freely available on FDroid) on GPlay for $1. Since then, I've made a fun amount of ~$300 in little donations (a combination of one off and recurring sponsorships). Although a tiny amount of income in the scheme of things, it is still thrilling each time someone kicks a small donation my way even though there is no obligation to do so. Itis a nice pat on the back for things I do for free anyway. Also, given that I do zero self promotion and very minimal nagging (just in some of my release notes), and given I spend probably less than a total 7hrs a week on all of my projects combined, it makes me think that this could be ramped up if I was to dedicate more time to it. Some things I try to do with each project to help gain traction: - Release often, so it appears at the top of the FDroid front page regularly. - Take i18n seriously so that people around the world can benefit from the apps. - Foster a sense of community and inclusion in any discussions (e.g. GitHub issues and PRs). I also try to add new apps whenever a new idea comes along. Hopefully a large diverse range of apps will find use with more people. Hopefully in the future that $300 will grow to $500, $1000, or even more.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
Go and look at simple mobile tools. This person is selling Foss apps on google play store pro version but pro version is also on f droid for free and github. Look at the downloads of pro versions and tell me if they haven't found it sucessfull
andris9 5y ago
I’m selling an AGPL licensed app that allows to access IMAP/SMTP accounts over REST (https://emailengine.app https://emailengine.app). At first I sold it in a way where AGPL version was completely free and public, but you could pay to get the same thing with a MIT-license. Turned out that no-one cared about the license, everyone was happy to use the free AGPL thing, so I changed it in a way where the app is dual licensed under AGPL and proprietary license and you need a “license key” to fully unlock it. As it’s AGPL with source code available from Github you can freely remove that license key check, just a 1-line change. It’s still a big enough of a hurdle that I’ve actually gotten some customers.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I've been obsessed with those kinds of strategies for (A)GPL software lately. If it's true, like the critics say, that customers like locked-down, dumbed-down software, there's no reason we can't do that with GPL stuff - even though it can be easily bypassed in then source, and other distributors can sell clean versions, plenty won't. GPL software should use the same predatory tactics as proprietary, and trend chase. Focus primarily on trend-chasing and marketing, focus on getting cash by any means necessary other than not making the source available. Market hard, dual license. Dropping a license check in (as long as it's not obfuscated or intentionally confusing) is very cool in my opinion, and I wish you luck. Thanks for adding to the commons.
  - wott 5y ago
    > GPL software should use the same predatory tactics as proprietary, and trend chase. Focus primarily on trend-chasing and marketing, focus on getting cash by any means necessary other than not making the source available. Market hard, dual license. I'd rewrite this as "People who want to make money from GPL software should ...", because GPL software in general doesn't have to have a commercial goal.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    >the same predatory tactics >trend chase >getting cash by any means necessary >Market hard I think you have a distorted view of the commercial software world. Of course you can find some bad apples but the majority just isn't like that.
AussieWog93 5y ago
I run a pretty decently-sized OSHW project that sells both b2b and b2c, and the biggest hurdle I can see is that this guy really likes making hurdles for himself. Literally every single one of the "business hurdles" can be either trivially solved or ignored completely. Payment processing takes 5 minutes to set up through PayPal or Stripe, and invoices can be generated manually for the few customers that actually ask for them through free online software like this: https://invoice-generator.com/ https://invoice-generator.com/ The rest literally don't matter at all, at least not until you're selling >$1k worth of software a month. I don't mean just practically, I mean legally, at least under Australian law. If things are significantly different in the UK or NL, I'd be very surprised! (I wouldn't call "Marketing" a hurdle either - it as much work as writing the software and requires as much skill!) Of the technical hurdles, the only one that is an actual that needs to be solved in order to release an MVP is "Website with payment processor and downloads". Set up a $5 Wordpress droplet on DigitalOcean, install WooCommerce and spend an afternoon customising things. Go Shopify and eat the comission if you want to make things even easier. The rest can come later, once you've validated that a market for your product exists at all!
- amelius 5y ago
  > (I wouldn't call "Marketing" a hurdle either - it as much work as writing the software and requires as much skill!) It can be a psychological hurdle for people who hate and haven't accepted the concept of marketing.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    You could say the same about writing code. Getting over the mental hurdle is just the first step on a journey, though, not "job complete".
- arka2147483647 5y ago
  I think you are being too harsh. If you have never run a business there are a lot of things to learn and get right.
- mpol 5y ago
codethief 5y ago
On an unrelated note: I accidentally opened the OP in another browser where I don't have uOrigin and PrivacyBadger etc. installed and it's so full of ads one can barely read the article. Why would anyone put that many ads on their personal blog?
- GreenWatermelon 5y ago
  My God you weren't kidding... It's hovering around unreadable, and certainly not something I like to scroll through. It reminds me of Newspaper websites these days. I think this is a statement about the current state of the web.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
open-source-ux 5y ago
This article highlights the contortions developers go through when trying to "sell" their open source product. The GPL family of open source licences let you charge for the distribution of the source code. The oft-repeated suggestion of selling support for your open source product is probably the least attractive option to solo developers or small teams. An alternative is the 'source only' option. It's not open source but it gives your customers the ability to adapt the source code to their circumstances. If you are creating a B2B product (i.e. selling to profit-making businesses), the 'source only' option let's you do the one thing GPL licences forbid: charge for the source code. For some open source advocates the term 'source only' is a dirty word. It's up to you to decide whether it suits your product. I posted an 'Ask HN' question on this topic the other day: Ask HN: What are you thoughts on 'source only' software products? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29676321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29676321
nanodano 5y ago
> Payment providers wont do business with private (personal) accounts, so you need a business bank account Eh, I don't know where you've looked, but Stripe is one of the biggest around and you don't need a business bank account..

147 points by jandeboevrie 5y ago

pabs3 5y ago

The software sounds a bit like nagstamon.

lukaszwojtow 5y ago

I would by this!

thepete2 5y ago

Cool. I suspect this model will mostly work, but only if the price of the app is low enough to not justify a lot of inconvenience by compiling it yourself or maybe getting it from f-droid. I like this model a lot, apps like OsmAnd do the same.

ralmidani 5y ago
It’s tempting to think you can price GPL software at some “sweet spot” where customers think it’s worth it and you recoup your development costs. But then someone who hasn’t incurred your development costs can undercut you, even while offering the same or better service.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  At least with AGPL software, if this happens, it will force those competitors to release their secret sauce, too. Those competitors will have to open source all of their changes, meanwhile as the copyright holder, you're able to release proprietary modules or changes at any time, and those competitors are out of luck if they want to use them. Should they attempt to compete on feature parity, their additions will need to open source.
  - jefftk 5y ago
    In this case, we are talking about client side software. It runs locally on the device. This means that the distinction between the GPL and the AGPL is not really relevant. And any competitor preparing modified binaries would also need to release their source.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sscarduzio 5y ago

I highly recommend you go for an open core model: gpl core + commercial proprietary add-ons. From direct experience, selling GPL code rarely works. And when it does, you know you're leaving a ton of money on the table (for no reason).

jacobmartin 5y ago
Honest question (I am totally ignorant about these things): If you did this, would you be able to accept patches from the community on the open core? Or would releasing your proprietary code violate the GPL of the coder who sent the patch?
- orangeshark 5y ago
  You usually require them to assign copyright back to you so you can still use it in your proprietary version.
  - jacobmartin 5y ago
    Ah, makes sense. Thanks!
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  You'd only accept contributions under a CLA that assigns copyright to you or your company, allowing you to distribute the code and its derivatives in any manner, and under any license, you want.
  - jacobmartin 5y ago
    That makes sense. Thanks!
  - hakre 5y ago
    Only to yourself with all rights reserved to yourself, too. You then transfer the license to an oversea entity that then licenses back to your majority owned company. This is the professional business with software licenses as there is no physical good to ship, it is in principle a good way to transfer money accepted as a common business transaction (paying licensing fees), supported by tax laws for international trade (e.g. often various tax exemptions).

vegetablepotpie 5y ago

> People have asked me what I think of the fact that other people can then also redistribute the source code, or compile a binary and provide that for free. I'm fine with that, as said, I'm a firm believer in open source / free software. What??? They’ve admitted to a flaw in their method to get income, which is that they’re making it trivial for competitors to offer the same product. Their response is that they’re a believer. I would have appreciated a response like dual licensing, or going into consulting for their app, or using trademark to enforce ownership over their version.

geoah 5y ago
Textual is a good example of this working IRL for me. Their app is one of the best IMO IRC clients on MacOS, is open source [1] and is also sold on the App store and their site. 1. https://github.com/Codeux-Software/Textual#original-limechat-license https://github.com/Codeux-Software/Textual#original-limechat... 2. https://www.codeux.com/textual https://www.codeux.com/textual
- vegetablepotpie 5y ago
  So in the case of Textual, it’s a convenience for the user to download from the App Store than to clone and compile and get through code signing. If I’m broke, have a MacBook, and know how to build and modify a project, I can get textual for free, which is a nice option to have. On platforms with app stores I can see this being viable for developers. I am aware of VLC being removed from the iOS App Store years ago because the license agreement for the App Store said that developers had to have sole control over the source code. I’m wondering if this requirement was removed, which would allow Textual to exist on the platform with its licensing. I can see licensing an open source project, for profit, as BSD being riskier than GPL because I could take their project, add my own additions, publish the product on the App Store (under a different name and branding) and never release the source code. At least with GPL, I would be required to share my modified versions of the source code with users of the product, which could be reintegrated into Textual.
- crazysim 5y ago
  Pixen was the opposite. It was open source and sold on the App Store but then people just took the code and put their own low effort Pixen-likes on the App Store. No more OSS Pixen.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

> Consider sponsoring me on Github. It means the world to me if you show your appreciation and you'll help pay the server costs. >You can also sponsor me by getting a Digital Ocean VPS. With this referral link you'll get $100 credit for 60 days. Asking people for money right at the top and putting referral links to help pay for server costs does not generate much confidence that selling GPL software is a viable business model.

Blackthorn 5y ago
It's a default paragraph on literally all of his/her blog posts.
toastal 5y ago
Patronage is like the new normal for supporting people creating things online. My only rub is I don't need a VPS and I'm sure as heck not going to support anyone through a Microsoft-owned venture. Payments don't need to be tied to corporations but a lot of people hate crypto (and the exchanges take a substantial cut). At least Liberapay is open, low-fees, not trying to be a loss-leader start-up, and not trying to be a social network.
meetups323 5y ago
Selling GPL software is objectively a terrible business model. If the entire proposition behind buying your software is "it'd be a pain to build this myself so I'll pay someone to compile the binary then give it to me", the only thing I can infer is that you have an unnecessarily painful build process. Supporting GPL software, on the other hand, can be very viable. Another good option is licensing data to be interpreted/rendered/whatever by your GPL software. End of the day, people don't buy software. They buy solutions to business problems. If the business problem can be solved for free by building the FOSS software yourself, there's no reason to pay the creator. On the other hand, if the creator sells "I will solve X business problem for you, this is an example of some of the FOSS software I will use to do so, but in the event this software is unable to properly solve the problem I will take whatever steps are needed to ensure it is solved to your satisfaction", it makes darn good sense to pay that creator to solve that problem.

eminence32 5y ago

If Paul Davis is around, I'd be interesting in hearing their take on the subject given their experience with Ardour (which is open-source GPL, but official binaries cost money). As far as I know, Ardour has done this for at least a decade, so I assume it's been reasonably successful. Edit: it occurs to me that Paul is probably asked about this frequently, and maybe has already said some words about this, so any relevant links would be useful too

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
He's around though! No particularly good links, and your summary almost says it all anyway. When I started working on Ardour, I didn't need to make any money from it. By 2009, it started to seem clear that I did, and fortunately Radiohead had just released "In Rainbows" using their "pay tunnel" approach (can't get it unless you pay but what you pay is up to you). I wasn't a Radiohead fan but I thought there was something interesting in the idea. Ardour has remained GPL (v2+) licensed, so the current situation is this: * you can get the source without charge (github or our own tarball) * if you want a prebuilt binary, we ask you to pay something (any amount above US$1) We set the "default" price (the one in the price box, that can be edited) based on your IP address and OECD data about the cost of a mid-priced meal for 2 without alcohol in (roughly) your (apparent) location. We also added subscriptions, not like Adobe etc., but just regular periodic payments, mostly because they help smooth out the income flow between releases. They are available at the US$1, 4 and 10 per month, to try to cater to the wide variety of incomes worldwide. There's a huge churn in Windows-based subscribers (e.g. 10 cancellations a day, 10 new ones). You get free upgrades as long as your subscription is active (and obviously for a GPL project, there are no other consequences to it ending - the software keeps working as ever). We have on the order of 6000 subscribers these days (with the aforementioned high rate of churn). Linux distributions are obviously free to distribute it as they wish. There are one or two resellers on ebay etc. also, who I just try to ignore. During COVID our total monthly revenue grew as high as US$20k/month, and have settled back to about US$17k/month. The income is divided between two full time developers (I'm one of them) and we've built an "escrow" account of more than US$60k over the last two years. Some of this currently being used to pay someone I discovered on HN to rebuild our website, and we hope to pay for more development work next year. AFAIK, we are one of the most successful "user-funded" GPL projects in the world. Blender has way more revenue, but AFAICT, most of it is not from users.

cozzyd 5y ago

Is it still illegal to put GPL software in the app store? (Obviously can be worked around with dual licensing here)

pserwylo 5y ago

I'm in a fortunate enough position that the day job pays the bills and I enjoy it, such that I don't need income from my open source efforts. However, about a year ago I did two things: - Enabled sponsorship through GitHub and Liberapay. - Put my GPL apps (freely available on FDroid) on GPlay for $1. Since then, I've made a fun amount of ~$300 in little donations (a combination of one off and recurring sponsorships). Although a tiny amount of income in the scheme of things, it is still thrilling each time someone kicks a small donation my way even though there is no obligation to do so. Itis a nice pat on the back for things I do for free anyway. Also, given that I do zero self promotion and very minimal nagging (just in some of my release notes), and given I spend probably less than a total 7hrs a week on all of my projects combined, it makes me think that this could be ramped up if I was to dedicate more time to it. Some things I try to do with each project to help gain traction: - Release often, so it appears at the top of the FDroid front page regularly. - Take i18n seriously so that people around the world can benefit from the apps. - Foster a sense of community and inclusion in any discussions (e.g. GitHub issues and PRs). I also try to add new apps whenever a new idea comes along. Hopefully a large diverse range of apps will find use with more people. Hopefully in the future that $300 will grow to $500, $1000, or even more.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

Go and look at simple mobile tools. This person is selling Foss apps on google play store pro version but pro version is also on f droid for free and github. Look at the downloads of pro versions and tell me if they haven't found it sucessfull

andris9 5y ago

I’m selling an AGPL licensed app that allows to access IMAP/SMTP accounts over REST (https://emailengine.app https://emailengine.app). At first I sold it in a way where AGPL version was completely free and public, but you could pay to get the same thing with a MIT-license. Turned out that no-one cared about the license, everyone was happy to use the free AGPL thing, so I changed it in a way where the app is dual licensed under AGPL and proprietary license and you need a “license key” to fully unlock it. As it’s AGPL with source code available from Github you can freely remove that license key check, just a 1-line change. It’s still a big enough of a hurdle that I’ve actually gotten some customers.

pessimizer 5y ago
I've been obsessed with those kinds of strategies for (A)GPL software lately. If it's true, like the critics say, that customers like locked-down, dumbed-down software, there's no reason we can't do that with GPL stuff - even though it can be easily bypassed in then source, and other distributors can sell clean versions, plenty won't. GPL software should use the same predatory tactics as proprietary, and trend chase. Focus primarily on trend-chasing and marketing, focus on getting cash by any means necessary other than not making the source available. Market hard, dual license. Dropping a license check in (as long as it's not obfuscated or intentionally confusing) is very cool in my opinion, and I wish you luck. Thanks for adding to the commons.
- wott 5y ago
  > GPL software should use the same predatory tactics as proprietary, and trend chase. Focus primarily on trend-chasing and marketing, focus on getting cash by any means necessary other than not making the source available. Market hard, dual license. I'd rewrite this as "People who want to make money from GPL software should ...", because GPL software in general doesn't have to have a commercial goal.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  >the same predatory tactics >trend chase >getting cash by any means necessary >Market hard I think you have a distorted view of the commercial software world. Of course you can find some bad apples but the majority just isn't like that.

AussieWog93 5y ago

I run a pretty decently-sized OSHW project that sells both b2b and b2c, and the biggest hurdle I can see is that this guy really likes making hurdles for himself. Literally every single one of the "business hurdles" can be either trivially solved or ignored completely. Payment processing takes 5 minutes to set up through PayPal or Stripe, and invoices can be generated manually for the few customers that actually ask for them through free online software like this: https://invoice-generator.com/ https://invoice-generator.com/ The rest literally don't matter at all, at least not until you're selling >$1k worth of software a month. I don't mean just practically, I mean legally, at least under Australian law. If things are significantly different in the UK or NL, I'd be very surprised! (I wouldn't call "Marketing" a hurdle either - it as much work as writing the software and requires as much skill!) Of the technical hurdles, the only one that is an actual that needs to be solved in order to release an MVP is "Website with payment processor and downloads". Set up a $5 Wordpress droplet on DigitalOcean, install WooCommerce and spend an afternoon customising things. Go Shopify and eat the comission if you want to make things even easier. The rest can come later, once you've validated that a market for your product exists at all!

amelius 5y ago
> (I wouldn't call "Marketing" a hurdle either - it as much work as writing the software and requires as much skill!) It can be a psychological hurdle for people who hate and haven't accepted the concept of marketing.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  You could say the same about writing code. Getting over the mental hurdle is just the first step on a journey, though, not "job complete".
arka2147483647 5y ago
I think you are being too harsh. If you have never run a business there are a lot of things to learn and get right.
mpol 5y ago

codethief 5y ago

On an unrelated note: I accidentally opened the OP in another browser where I don't have uOrigin and PrivacyBadger etc. installed and it's so full of ads one can barely read the article. Why would anyone put that many ads on their personal blog?

GreenWatermelon 5y ago
My God you weren't kidding... It's hovering around unreadable, and certainly not something I like to scroll through. It reminds me of Newspaper websites these days. I think this is a statement about the current state of the web.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

open-source-ux 5y ago

This article highlights the contortions developers go through when trying to "sell" their open source product. The GPL family of open source licences let you charge for the distribution of the source code. The oft-repeated suggestion of selling support for your open source product is probably the least attractive option to solo developers or small teams. An alternative is the 'source only' option. It's not open source but it gives your customers the ability to adapt the source code to their circumstances. If you are creating a B2B product (i.e. selling to profit-making businesses), the 'source only' option let's you do the one thing GPL licences forbid: charge for the source code. For some open source advocates the term 'source only' is a dirty word. It's up to you to decide whether it suits your product. I posted an 'Ask HN' question on this topic the other day: Ask HN: What are you thoughts on 'source only' software products? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29676321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29676321

nanodano 5y ago

> Payment providers wont do business with private (personal) accounts, so you need a business bank account Eh, I don't know where you've looked, but Stripe is one of the biggest around and you don't need a business bank account..