4 ms·

Weird that no one mentioned docker as a counter-example. It was the internal company aspiring to be a paas provider and failing to do so.

by znpy 3y ago

entropie 3y ago
Or rails.
- fcsp 3y ago
  Please elaborate
  - entropie 3y ago
    Rails was the internal tool/backend of basecamp and got later its own project with great success.
    - fcsp 3y ago
      But rails wasn't the pivot of Basecamp into devtools, it was just a by-product, and hence rails never needed to take VC money to become a unicorn
- selcuka 3y ago
  Django, too [1]: > In fall 2003, the World Online developers (Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison) ditched PHP and began using Python to develop its websites. As they built intensive, richly interactive sites such as Lawrence.com, they began to extract a generic web development framework that let them build web applications more and more quickly. They tweaked this framework constantly, adding improvements over two years. [1] https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/faq/general/ https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/faq/general/
- insane_dreamer 3y ago
  but 37signals didn't try to turn Rails into a business
  - entropie 3y ago
    Well they kinda did. The early rails was rarely well documented. You had to buy books (developed by the rails team) to get everything together. At least I felt this way when I dived into rails pre 1.0.
    - fcsp 3y ago
      I'm not sure it's fair to criticise a company that puts it's secret sauce open source under a very liberal license for not spending more resources on writing free docs as their main priority. The growing community very quickly took up on that one and the docs got very good fast.
fcsp 3y ago
I think it's pretty clear that docker as the software extracted from the initial paas is by any means wildly successful to this day. I think docker the company not succeeding as a unicorn has more to do with trying to position it as a unicorn than a viable business built upon something in that original offering
- jrockway 3y ago
  I think they're having trouble selling the actual tool, though. Docker turning the screws on Docker Desktop users has resulted in a lot of people saying "we'd rather just switch to Podman". I think the place where you're most likely to find success in selling tools is being a team that works for a cloud provider. Developers can just start using it, and someone else gets the bill. If you're a developer and have to start paying the bill somehow, that can be challenging in many organizations, and that's why "I'll just write it myself" is so popular.
  - znpy 3y ago
    > I think they're having trouble selling the actual tool, though. Docker turning the screws on Docker Desktop users has resulted in a lot of people saying "we'd rather just switch to Podman". That was almost ten year later since Docker was released as open source.
    - jrockway 3y ago
      That's why I'm saying it's a questionable company. Would Docker have been as popular if it was closed source $100/month/seat? Would Docker have been as popular if they had registry pull rate limiting on day 1? No. They just lived off of VC for half a decade, then when that went away, they had to say "oh shit we better turn the screws", but by then, everyone had cloned their thing. That's why I think developer tools are a very risky business. Your salesperson emails a developer in the wrong tone, and suddenly they just up and cloned your company over a 4 day weekend out of pure spite. (That was not Podman's story, rather, a large company decided to do that. Similar to the registry-screw-turning; gcr.io, quay.io, AWS's thing, etc.)

Weird that no one mentioned docker as a counter-example. It was the internal company aspiring to be a paas provider and failing to do so.

by znpy 3y ago

Weird that no one mentioned docker as a counter-example. It was the internal company aspiring to be a paas provider and failing to do so.

entropie 3y ago

Or rails.

fcsp 3y ago
Please elaborate
- entropie 3y ago
  Rails was the internal tool/backend of basecamp and got later its own project with great success.
  - fcsp 3y ago
    But rails wasn't the pivot of Basecamp into devtools, it was just a by-product, and hence rails never needed to take VC money to become a unicorn
selcuka 3y ago
Django, too [1]: > In fall 2003, the World Online developers (Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison) ditched PHP and began using Python to develop its websites. As they built intensive, richly interactive sites such as Lawrence.com, they began to extract a generic web development framework that let them build web applications more and more quickly. They tweaked this framework constantly, adding improvements over two years. [1] https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/faq/general/ https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/faq/general/
insane_dreamer 3y ago
but 37signals didn't try to turn Rails into a business
- entropie 3y ago
  Well they kinda did. The early rails was rarely well documented. You had to buy books (developed by the rails team) to get everything together. At least I felt this way when I dived into rails pre 1.0.
  - fcsp 3y ago
    I'm not sure it's fair to criticise a company that puts it's secret sauce open source under a very liberal license for not spending more resources on writing free docs as their main priority. The growing community very quickly took up on that one and the docs got very good fast.

fcsp 3y ago

I think it's pretty clear that docker as the software extracted from the initial paas is by any means wildly successful to this day. I think docker the company not succeeding as a unicorn has more to do with trying to position it as a unicorn than a viable business built upon something in that original offering

jrockway 3y ago
I think they're having trouble selling the actual tool, though. Docker turning the screws on Docker Desktop users has resulted in a lot of people saying "we'd rather just switch to Podman". I think the place where you're most likely to find success in selling tools is being a team that works for a cloud provider. Developers can just start using it, and someone else gets the bill. If you're a developer and have to start paying the bill somehow, that can be challenging in many organizations, and that's why "I'll just write it myself" is so popular.
- znpy 3y ago
  > I think they're having trouble selling the actual tool, though. Docker turning the screws on Docker Desktop users has resulted in a lot of people saying "we'd rather just switch to Podman". That was almost ten year later since Docker was released as open source.
  - jrockway 3y ago
    That's why I'm saying it's a questionable company. Would Docker have been as popular if it was closed source $100/month/seat? Would Docker have been as popular if they had registry pull rate limiting on day 1? No. They just lived off of VC for half a decade, then when that went away, they had to say "oh shit we better turn the screws", but by then, everyone had cloned their thing. That's why I think developer tools are a very risky business. Your salesperson emails a developer in the wrong tone, and suddenly they just up and cloned your company over a 4 day weekend out of pure spite. (That was not Podman's story, rather, a large company decided to do that. Similar to the registry-screw-turning; gcr.io, quay.io, AWS's thing, etc.)