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This is simply not true. There's an initial cost of getting your engineers familiar with a codebase, sure, but that's still substantially less than building and

by _cenw 3y ago

This is simply not true. There's an initial cost of getting your engineers familiar with a codebase, sure, but that's still substantially less than building and maintaining the damn thing. Someone outside the project maintainers will always have a smaller cost basis for the tradeoff of not controlling what goes into the code (a power you say they shoudn't abuse - and most of the examples I named did, i.e. Terraform Cloud integration) and not being able to say "from the makers of <thing>". I don't think that's enough, especially if the other company is AWS. Also, Wordpress has a lot of competitors. Pantheon and Pressable come to mind in the enterprise space, with every commodity webhoster using Plesk for a less managed but very budget experience.

imiric 3y ago
> Someone outside the project maintainers will always have a smaller cost basis for the tradeoff of not controlling what goes into the code How do you figure this? Nobody will know the product, its users and their needs better than the original authors. They have a distinct advantage over any competitor who only offers a commercial wrapper around it. Not to mention that they have full control over the direction of the product, and can at anytime introduce a new feature their commercial service takes advantage of from day one. Their competitors could also fork the OSS product, but it's very likely that the OSS userbase stays with the original authors. Again, for this to work the authors need to be both great OSS stewards, and great business leaders. Not many companies do this correctly. > I don't think that's enough, especially if the other company is AWS. By the time AWS takes notice of your product, you should already be quite successful at your own business, in a way that they can't compete. The companies AWS stole lunch from didn't do this properly, and their only recourse was a license change. > a power you say they shoudn't abuse - and most of the examples I named did Yes, I'm not arguing those companies don't exist. I'm saying that it's not in their best interest to do so, considering how much community backlash can hurt them. You also ignored my two examples of companies which I think do this right, and have successful businesses. > Also, Wordpress has a lot of competitors. Sure it does. Hooray for open source. https://wordpress.com/hosting/ https://wordpress.com/hosting/ lists some of them. The goal for the original authors is to offer the _best_ service so that customers will want to choose them over the competition. Or maybe they can focus on a certain slice of the market, and leave others to cover the rest. The pie can be big enough for everyone. This is not unlike any other company. Competition will always exist. But again, the original authors will always have an advantage. Not knowing how to do this properly speaks more about the company than about open source. This isn't impossible, just very difficult.

by _cenw 3y ago

imiric 3y ago

> Someone outside the project maintainers will always have a smaller cost basis for the tradeoff of not controlling what goes into the code How do you figure this? Nobody will know the product, its users and their needs better than the original authors. They have a distinct advantage over any competitor who only offers a commercial wrapper around it. Not to mention that they have full control over the direction of the product, and can at anytime introduce a new feature their commercial service takes advantage of from day one. Their competitors could also fork the OSS product, but it's very likely that the OSS userbase stays with the original authors. Again, for this to work the authors need to be both great OSS stewards, and great business leaders. Not many companies do this correctly. > I don't think that's enough, especially if the other company is AWS. By the time AWS takes notice of your product, you should already be quite successful at your own business, in a way that they can't compete. The companies AWS stole lunch from didn't do this properly, and their only recourse was a license change. > a power you say they shoudn't abuse - and most of the examples I named did Yes, I'm not arguing those companies don't exist. I'm saying that it's not in their best interest to do so, considering how much community backlash can hurt them. You also ignored my two examples of companies which I think do this right, and have successful businesses. > Also, Wordpress has a lot of competitors. Sure it does. Hooray for open source. https://wordpress.com/hosting/ https://wordpress.com/hosting/ lists some of them. The goal for the original authors is to offer the _best_ service so that customers will want to choose them over the competition. Or maybe they can focus on a certain slice of the market, and leave others to cover the rest. The pie can be big enough for everyone. This is not unlike any other company. Competition will always exist. But again, the original authors will always have an advantage. Not knowing how to do this properly speaks more about the company than about open source. This isn't impossible, just very difficult.