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I agree completely. If open source doesn't require as much up front investment, then you don't need as much sales or market cap to justify good returns for you

I agree completely. If open source doesn't require as much up front investment, then you don't need as much sales or market cap to justify good returns for your investors. That aside, I do like the point of the original article. Build a scalable service on top of something open source, rather than T&M services.

mattjaynes 13y ago
"Build a scalable service on top of something open source, rather than T&M services." 37Signals/Basecamp are an interesting example of this. Rather than building a business around supporting Ruby on Rails, they've built products on top of the framework they created. It's certainly an outlier and I can't think of many other examples like them who both built a popular tool, but then just used it as a tool instead of trying to monetize it directly. DHH wrote: "External, expected rewards diminish the intrinsic motivation of the fundraising open-source contributor. It risks transporting a community of peers into a transactional terminal. And that buyer-seller frame detracts from the magic that is peer-collaborators. It also holds the threat of corrupting the community at large. We plant the seeds of discontent by selective monetary rewards." http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2013/the-perils-of-mixing-open-source-and-money.html http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2013/the-perils-of-mixing... I've certainly seen this recently in some open-source communities. The peer-to-peer camaraderie transitions to a dictator-to-underlings relationship and people start defecting. It's sad to see, but happens when an open-source company isn't vigilant in nurturing the community that got them where they are. Kudos to those companies that are able to pull off maintaining a strong community while still staying focused. It's a rare thing to be able to do well and behind the scenes there's a lot of work that goes into that kind of nurturing.

mattjaynes 13y ago

"Build a scalable service on top of something open source, rather than T&M services." 37Signals/Basecamp are an interesting example of this. Rather than building a business around supporting Ruby on Rails, they've built products on top of the framework they created. It's certainly an outlier and I can't think of many other examples like them who both built a popular tool, but then just used it as a tool instead of trying to monetize it directly. DHH wrote: "External, expected rewards diminish the intrinsic motivation of the fundraising open-source contributor. It risks transporting a community of peers into a transactional terminal. And that buyer-seller frame detracts from the magic that is peer-collaborators. It also holds the threat of corrupting the community at large. We plant the seeds of discontent by selective monetary rewards." http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2013/the-perils-of-mixing-open-source-and-money.html http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2013/the-perils-of-mixing... I've certainly seen this recently in some open-source communities. The peer-to-peer camaraderie transitions to a dictator-to-underlings relationship and people start defecting. It's sad to see, but happens when an open-source company isn't vigilant in nurturing the community that got them where they are. Kudos to those companies that are able to pull off maintaining a strong community while still staying focused. It's a rare thing to be able to do well and behind the scenes there's a lot of work that goes into that kind of nurturing.