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I agree with those perspectives, they're questions we talk about and analyze: - We do in fact operate multiple OSS repos. Despite their usage, most, as with mo
by lmeyerov 3y ago
I agree with those perspectives, they're questions we talk about and analyze:
- We do in fact operate multiple OSS repos. Despite their usage, most, as with most OSS in general, do not get significant code-based contributions. Our proprietary repos are even more complicated (e.g., distributed GPU code, webgl shaders, and "boring" enterprise bits), where we'd expect even less involvement. Instead, they see other values from the OSS community like easier bug reporting and, as you say, easier for folks to see if the tool is for them. Writeups like Supabases misses this nuance in practice, focusing just on the rarer lottery ticket scenario. (Which is natural to come from a marketing / devrel person that got hired after-the-fact: selection bias in action.)
- Our customers do pay for feature development even without the OSS
Most of all, as you say, maybe marketshare can grow! But in my original point, now that's counting on lightning to strike twice, once for OSS and then again for the company. That's a very big decision when many people's lives -- and their families -- are making bets here. We're actually reexamining the economics of this question now that much more is known and we have more stability. Much trickier than the blogpost makes out!
- ensignavenger 3y agoYeah, I don't expect a really nuanced blog post from a marketing department... For your open source repos, how much effort is put into inviting contributions and making it easy to contribute? Growing an open source community is a lot of work, and is a skillset apart from (but not always exclusive of) software development and business development. Many projects don't try, or don't do a good job of it. Some projects (may e most famously SQLite) openly state that they have no interest in outside contributions. (Its a legitimate choice, but the consequences are obvious).
- lmeyerov 3y agoWe experimented with this: Typically we get nice small contributions from devrel teams around connectors in their software, and junior data scientists newer to coding who we encourage to do examples instead of core code We revisit this every year or two, and are overdue, thanks!
- ensignavenger 3y agoI think a good example of this is the Django Software Foundation. They have a Django Fellow they employ who is responsible for helping guide the community and take care of the bug tracker and other tasks. They maintain a list of begginer friendly tasks. Release notes specifically call out first time contributors and credit them, no matter how small the first contribution may be. These callouts serve as both a thank you/welcome, and a message to the community reminding them that contributions are welcome. Every project is unique,.sounds like you guys are making a serious effort- keep up the good work!