4 ms·
> In any case, it changed years later when a startup using Nodemailer was acquired for half a billion dollars. I was financially not in a good place back then,
by rossy 3y ago
> In any case, it changed years later when a startup using Nodemailer was acquired for half a billion dollars. I was financially not in a good place back then, and when I saw the news, I started to wonder – what did I get out of this?
This is really what you should expect when you work to improve the commons in the same world where there are entities that are hyper-optimized to make the most short-term profit out of anything they can exploit. Of course they're not going to give anything back. It could happen to any FOSS dev. It sucks, and it's definitely human to look at all the money they're making and feel like you deserve some of it. You do deserve it! Everyone deserves to make a living. But the world is still a better place with FOSS in it. It's a shame for this to happen to someone and for them to decide that improving the commons was a mistake and instead they should have been making projects that FOSS orgs can't use and individuals and small orgs are priced out of (but is still "peanuts" for big businesses.) If you make best-in-class software that's FOSS, everyone benefits, and you can feel proud that individuals have access to the same resources as big corps because of what you've done.
I'm also tentatively in favour of the idea of scaring away big corps with GPLv3 or AGPL licensed software.
- ZaoLahma 3y agoThis is just the thing - there needs to be a very clear reason for you to partake in FOSS, something that you want to gain from it that has a bigger value to you than the cost of allowing your time and effort to be used by others for free, and money can not be it.
- mnau 3y agoExactly, before you go to open source, take a hard look at * why I am doing that * plethora of burned-out maintainers and their posts * how I am going to deal with the issues/PRs, toxic entitlement * what's my exit strategy The first thing before you go into open source (provided it's actually used open source) is to answer these questions honestly for yourself. Because it's massive time sink with no money and *there will never be money* (unless you go open core or your employer pays you, in that case that's just a job just like any other).
- xiphias2 3y agoOne important thing the author got from working on open source is free feedback (issues). I don't view people taking the time to open issues as entitled people, but people offering their free time providing invaluable feedback. Those issues are quite often different from what I expect, and they represent of how people are using the software. The only mistake the author did was waiting too much monetizing, not doing open source software in the first place.
- andris9 3y agoTBH, I get way better feedback from paying users than previously from free users. Free users like to tinker and think in terms of "what if," so they bring up all kinds of features the software should also have because it can or it would be cool. The paying users only need actual features that help their business case, and they do not care at all about these "what if" features.
- xiphias2 3y agoI see, do you think just _starting_ with payed product would have been better? (Or starting with a product + open source tools for marketing?) BTW good luck to scaling up to $60k / month, it will be fun
- andris9 3y agoI did not plan to make the project paid at first, I would have prefered the OS / Open Core model, but it did not work out. So what I meant about the feedback was that the feedback for a free product might not help much for a paid product and vice versa. Different target groups, different priorities. On the other hand, more users, no matter if free or paid, help to detect edge case bugs better as there is a higher chance of someone stumbling on it and reporting it. In this case the first larger wave of free users did help me, yes.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoPlenty of projects are source-available, but not open source, and get tons of issues, and even contributions (https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension off the top of my head)
- goodpoint 3y ago> I'm also tentatively in favour of the idea of scaring away big corps with GPLv3 or AGPL licensed software. GPL scares freeloaders.