4 ms·

Open Source is not a business model. It's marketing, for sure, but you can't make money solely by giving away your product. Every single open source company ev

Open Source is not a business model. It's marketing, for sure, but you can't make money solely by giving away your product. Every single open source company eventually learns this when they have a strong competitor. Eventually you are forced to stop being open source, because no business wants to compete solely on the strength of their service quality. Moreover: a community is antithetical to a corporation's interest in the software. Corporations don't give a shit what people want changed in the code, for good reason: their purpose is to make money, not make good software. So business source always ends up annoying and limited while community open source provides the functions the users need, in the way they want them. So, yeah, you can make money while letting people read your source code. But the actual quality of the end result, the user's happiness, the ability to contribute to the whole thing, is much different in a real community project.

EspressoGPT 3y ago
> Every single open source company eventually learns this when they have a strong competitor. Many of the open source companies are their own strongest competitor, see HashiCorp.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  If they aren't, then someone else will be. That is always worse for them. Either that or they have to go at least semi-proprietary.
  - ritesofbryan 3y ago
    I agree with this. TBH my view is that the frustration towards open source companies around changing their licenses is sort of misguided. If there's a bad guy in the room, it's AWS. AWS is very good at commercializing open source -- they make literally billions of dollars doing so: Elasticache (Redis), AWS Managed Elastic, RDS etc. Changing the license becomes one of the only ways to hold them off, and the companies that have done so more proactively have fared much better. I think everyone agrees that in an ideal world this wouldn't have to happen, and indeed it didn't really happen until recently when the AWS thing started to become an issue. Ultimately, SOMEONE is going to leverage the open source for financial gain. So, the question becomes which would you rather have: - The company commercializing the open source (which is in almost every successful case includes the original creator(s) as a founder, CEO, or employee) benefit from the projects success, which in turn allows them to make further investment in the project. - AWS benefit from the projects success and (generally speaking) contribute very little back. Of course, there are plenty of projects that are NOT venture funded that see great success through purely community development. That's great! I just think commercial open source is beneficial as well, especially for larger more complex projects (databases, etc.) that need the funding. The two are not mutually exclusive. I am also of the belief that the additional funding (both from revenue and from venture investment) that goes into these projects gives them the ability to hire more people, which in turn makes the software better for everyone. Disclaimer: I am investor that invests predominantly in commercial open source companies. Previously I was developer who used a lot of open source, which is what led me here.
advaitruia 3y ago
More often than not, making money and making good software are complimentary outcomes. Its difficult to do the former without the latter. Infisical is an open core business model. While there is a proprietary crust, the core is truly open source. Disclaimer: I run an open core venture
lopatin 3y ago
Open source core, paid premium features + support. It's a valid business model, not sure why it's worthy of eye rolling. For example: Open source database that works on one machine. If you like it and want want to scale up, you can pay for the replication and authorization features with paid support.
- jamesbfb 3y ago
  > Open source core, paid premium features + support. It's a valid business model I’m a pretty rusted on Odoo developer, this has been their business model for years and it’s worked thus far, even when facing off with the likes of the SAP and Dynamics of the world.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  The people who will pay for your database are going to pay for it right away. They're not going to "scale up" and then pay for it. Just ask Docker. There's thousands of companies using Docker Desktop that should be paying for it but aren't. Same for most other Open Source companies with business licenses. Because they set themselves up as an "open source" company, all the villagers revolt when you finally ask to get paid, or stop allowing competitors to steal your lunch. You can survive, but it's very hard, and eventually they die away. (But that's also because most software gets replaced after a decade) You have to treat your business as a business first and foremost if you want to remain profitable and competitive. You can use Open Source for your business, but you will not survive for long if you're hoping people will pay you just because they can read your code. Eventually reality, and competitors, come knocking.

EspressoGPT 3y ago

> Every single open source company eventually learns this when they have a strong competitor. Many of the open source companies are their own strongest competitor, see HashiCorp.

_ea1k 3y ago
If they aren't, then someone else will be. That is always worse for them. Either that or they have to go at least semi-proprietary.
- ritesofbryan 3y ago
  I agree with this. TBH my view is that the frustration towards open source companies around changing their licenses is sort of misguided. If there's a bad guy in the room, it's AWS. AWS is very good at commercializing open source -- they make literally billions of dollars doing so: Elasticache (Redis), AWS Managed Elastic, RDS etc. Changing the license becomes one of the only ways to hold them off, and the companies that have done so more proactively have fared much better. I think everyone agrees that in an ideal world this wouldn't have to happen, and indeed it didn't really happen until recently when the AWS thing started to become an issue. Ultimately, SOMEONE is going to leverage the open source for financial gain. So, the question becomes which would you rather have: - The company commercializing the open source (which is in almost every successful case includes the original creator(s) as a founder, CEO, or employee) benefit from the projects success, which in turn allows them to make further investment in the project. - AWS benefit from the projects success and (generally speaking) contribute very little back. Of course, there are plenty of projects that are NOT venture funded that see great success through purely community development. That's great! I just think commercial open source is beneficial as well, especially for larger more complex projects (databases, etc.) that need the funding. The two are not mutually exclusive. I am also of the belief that the additional funding (both from revenue and from venture investment) that goes into these projects gives them the ability to hire more people, which in turn makes the software better for everyone. Disclaimer: I am investor that invests predominantly in commercial open source companies. Previously I was developer who used a lot of open source, which is what led me here.

advaitruia 3y ago

More often than not, making money and making good software are complimentary outcomes. Its difficult to do the former without the latter. Infisical is an open core business model. While there is a proprietary crust, the core is truly open source. Disclaimer: I run an open core venture

lopatin 3y ago

Open source core, paid premium features + support. It's a valid business model, not sure why it's worthy of eye rolling. For example: Open source database that works on one machine. If you like it and want want to scale up, you can pay for the replication and authorization features with paid support.

jamesbfb 3y ago
> Open source core, paid premium features + support. It's a valid business model I’m a pretty rusted on Odoo developer, this has been their business model for years and it’s worked thus far, even when facing off with the likes of the SAP and Dynamics of the world.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
The people who will pay for your database are going to pay for it right away. They're not going to "scale up" and then pay for it. Just ask Docker. There's thousands of companies using Docker Desktop that should be paying for it but aren't. Same for most other Open Source companies with business licenses. Because they set themselves up as an "open source" company, all the villagers revolt when you finally ask to get paid, or stop allowing competitors to steal your lunch. You can survive, but it's very hard, and eventually they die away. (But that's also because most software gets replaced after a decade) You have to treat your business as a business first and foremost if you want to remain profitable and competitive. You can use Open Source for your business, but you will not survive for long if you're hoping people will pay you just because they can read your code. Eventually reality, and competitors, come knocking.