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> I am starting a company, npm, Inc., to deliver new products and services related to npm. I don't know whether I should be concerned a core part of Node.js is

> I am starting a company, npm, Inc., to deliver new products and services related to npm. I don't know whether I should be concerned a core part of Node.js is becoming "businessy". Is this common amongst other big software projects? Providing "premium" services is a slippery slope. What happens when someone wants to add a feature to npm that the premium services already provide, for example? Python and Django have non-profits which help sustain their ecosystems, but AFAIK Node.js doesn't. Perhaps it would be a good step.

treenyc 13y ago
yes a slippery slop indeed. The bigger problem is the current economic system/context that we are all operating in. I for one would prefer a NPM non-profit (maybe with a for-profit branch for consulting). How does the Python and Django non-profits work right now?
mbrubeck 13y ago
I think it can work, though you have to be careful to avoid conflict with community goals. It seems to work best when the "premium services" involve technical support or custom open source development, rather than closed-source code. Canonical and Red Hat are examples of for-profit businesses that primarily build and distribute free software, including employing some of the developers and managing some of the open source projects they distribute. I believe both make money primarily through "premium services" (especially "enterprise" support services). Ximian was a for-profit company started by Nat Friedman and GNOME project founder Miguel de Icaza, which developed much of the GNOME code base for a while. (It was later acquired by Novell.) Miguel went on to found the Mono project and Xamarin, the for-profit company that leads development of Mono. Qt, MySQL, InnoDB, and Berkeley DB were each developed in part by businesses using dual licensing models, where licenses for use with non-free-software were available for a fee. (The original companies have since been acquired by Nokia, Sun, Oracle, and Oracle, respectively. Sun was itself later acquired by Oracle.) The author of SQLite earns income by providing commercial support and custom development services: http://www.sqlite.org/support.html http://www.sqlite.org/support.html The developers of CyanogenMod recently founded a VC-backed company to fund its development. I'm sure there are a bunch more examples like this that I've forgotten or don't know about. I agree that a non-profit foundation has benefits for free software projects. (I've been a developer on three projects associated with non-profits: Audacity, Debian, and Mozilla.) "For profit" as I used it above may be the wrong label, though. "Taxable" might be a better word in some cases. If a company is privately held, then its owners can use it to pursue a mission other than maximizing profit. For example, I'm employed by the Mozilla Corporation, a taxable entity that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. The Corporation has to pay taxes because of the nature of its income and spending, but its mission is still that of its sole shareholder, the Foundation.
- mlvljr 13y ago
  With Qt, Digia seems to start betting on "here's the free parts, and here's a version of them which is better (Creator)," which does induce some fear.
- IsaacSchlueter 13y ago
  > If a company is privately held, then its owners can use it to pursue a mission other than maximizing profit Well, that depends on your shareholders. Mozilla Corp can do this, because its only shareholder is Mozilla Foundation. However, the minute you take institutional investment, hand out shares to employees, take on debt financing, etc., you are now bound by a fiduciary duty to do right by those other parties. You still can focus on other things, but only if they don't conflict with turning a profit. In my opinion, "turning a profit" in fact serves the greater needs of the npm/node community, because servers cost money. npm isn't just a program, it's a service, and services require infrastructure. So, it's not a conflict at all. It is a very foolish business person who sees an exponential curve of user engagement, and decides that the best way to make money is to screw all those people.
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    > However, the minute you take institutional investment, hand out shares to employees, take on debt financing, etc., you are now bound by a fiduciary duty to do right by those other parties. You still can focus on other things, but only if they don't conflict with turning a profit. This is not true. The shareholder value myth has been debunked by law professors. "...shareholder primacy theory was first advanced by economists, not lawyers. This may explain why the idea that corporations should be managed to maximize shareholder value is based on factually mistaken claims about the law." http://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/?p=6482 http://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/?p=6482 "Contrary to myth, the sale of Ben & Jerry’s to corporate giant Unilever wasn’t legally required." http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_truth_about_ben_and_jerrys http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_truth_about_ben_...
    - IsaacSchlueter 13y ago
WalterSear 13y ago
From what I heard on the nodeup podcast, many corporate node users are eschewing all modules they did not develop themselves, hosting their own internal package managers and rewriting libraries in order to avoid unvetted 3rd party code. It seems like this is the market that NPM premium is after. The question is will businesses be more comfortable using a premium service? In other words - someone they can sue? EDIT: It think it was the security episode, if I recall correctly.
kkwok 13y ago
This is pretty common, and there's certainly a wave of open source software based companies currently. Definitely a tricky thing to navigate, of course. Typically I find it works best when the company is very clear about which areas they feel should be open source and which areas they will be monetizing. Its the ambiguity and loss of trust that creates tension.

treenyc 13y ago

yes a slippery slop indeed. The bigger problem is the current economic system/context that we are all operating in. I for one would prefer a NPM non-profit (maybe with a for-profit branch for consulting). How does the Python and Django non-profits work right now?

mbrubeck 13y ago

I think it can work, though you have to be careful to avoid conflict with community goals. It seems to work best when the "premium services" involve technical support or custom open source development, rather than closed-source code. Canonical and Red Hat are examples of for-profit businesses that primarily build and distribute free software, including employing some of the developers and managing some of the open source projects they distribute. I believe both make money primarily through "premium services" (especially "enterprise" support services). Ximian was a for-profit company started by Nat Friedman and GNOME project founder Miguel de Icaza, which developed much of the GNOME code base for a while. (It was later acquired by Novell.) Miguel went on to found the Mono project and Xamarin, the for-profit company that leads development of Mono. Qt, MySQL, InnoDB, and Berkeley DB were each developed in part by businesses using dual licensing models, where licenses for use with non-free-software were available for a fee. (The original companies have since been acquired by Nokia, Sun, Oracle, and Oracle, respectively. Sun was itself later acquired by Oracle.) The author of SQLite earns income by providing commercial support and custom development services: http://www.sqlite.org/support.html http://www.sqlite.org/support.html The developers of CyanogenMod recently founded a VC-backed company to fund its development. I'm sure there are a bunch more examples like this that I've forgotten or don't know about. I agree that a non-profit foundation has benefits for free software projects. (I've been a developer on three projects associated with non-profits: Audacity, Debian, and Mozilla.) "For profit" as I used it above may be the wrong label, though. "Taxable" might be a better word in some cases. If a company is privately held, then its owners can use it to pursue a mission other than maximizing profit. For example, I'm employed by the Mozilla Corporation, a taxable entity that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. The Corporation has to pay taxes because of the nature of its income and spending, but its mission is still that of its sole shareholder, the Foundation.

mlvljr 13y ago
With Qt, Digia seems to start betting on "here's the free parts, and here's a version of them which is better (Creator)," which does induce some fear.
IsaacSchlueter 13y ago
> If a company is privately held, then its owners can use it to pursue a mission other than maximizing profit Well, that depends on your shareholders. Mozilla Corp can do this, because its only shareholder is Mozilla Foundation. However, the minute you take institutional investment, hand out shares to employees, take on debt financing, etc., you are now bound by a fiduciary duty to do right by those other parties. You still can focus on other things, but only if they don't conflict with turning a profit. In my opinion, "turning a profit" in fact serves the greater needs of the npm/node community, because servers cost money. npm isn't just a program, it's a service, and services require infrastructure. So, it's not a conflict at all. It is a very foolish business person who sees an exponential curve of user engagement, and decides that the best way to make money is to screw all those people.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  > However, the minute you take institutional investment, hand out shares to employees, take on debt financing, etc., you are now bound by a fiduciary duty to do right by those other parties. You still can focus on other things, but only if they don't conflict with turning a profit. This is not true. The shareholder value myth has been debunked by law professors. "...shareholder primacy theory was first advanced by economists, not lawyers. This may explain why the idea that corporations should be managed to maximize shareholder value is based on factually mistaken claims about the law." http://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/?p=6482 http://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/?p=6482 "Contrary to myth, the sale of Ben & Jerry’s to corporate giant Unilever wasn’t legally required." http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_truth_about_ben_and_jerrys http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_truth_about_ben_...
  - IsaacSchlueter 13y ago

WalterSear 13y ago

From what I heard on the nodeup podcast, many corporate node users are eschewing all modules they did not develop themselves, hosting their own internal package managers and rewriting libraries in order to avoid unvetted 3rd party code. It seems like this is the market that NPM premium is after. The question is will businesses be more comfortable using a premium service? In other words - someone they can sue? EDIT: It think it was the security episode, if I recall correctly.

kkwok 13y ago

This is pretty common, and there's certainly a wave of open source software based companies currently. Definitely a tricky thing to navigate, of course. Typically I find it works best when the company is very clear about which areas they feel should be open source and which areas they will be monetizing. Its the ambiguity and loss of trust that creates tension.