5 ms·

> it’s hard to make money when you give the shit away. Well, it's also not easy when you charge for things. I guess the important thing is to have a business m

by kolme 12y ago

> it’s hard to make money when you give the shit away. Well, it's also not easy when you charge for things. I guess the important thing is to have a business model, regardless of the openness of the software.

davidw 12y ago
It's hard in any case - yes - but it's even harder when you can't do the simplest thing, which is selling access to the software you've made.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Well, you actually can. Between the two extremes of proprietary software and putting everything on a public Github repository, there's a middle term: your software is FOSS, but it's not publicly available - the source is only available to paying customers. I never see this model discussed, but I've actually seen it work fine for many not very large software companies. They still get to sell the product, and the client gets the peace of mind of knowing that they have an alternative if the company goes under or discontinues the product. (This works better if the development is done on a common platform like Drupal, instead of being custom from the bare metal.) Of course, the clients can still turn around and distribute (and even sell!) the source, but in practice the average SMB isn't particularly interest in going into the software reselling business.
  - davidw 12y ago
    Yes, Cygnus software used to do this with their stuff, a long time ago, apparently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions It's valid, but not entirely in the spirit of open source software either, in my opinion. There are certainly various open source business models, it's just that they require more thought and effort than simply selling the software, or access to it. For some companies, that extra difficulty might be what makes or breaks them.

5 ms·

> it’s hard to make money when you give the shit away. Well, it's also not easy when you charge for things. I guess the important thing is to have a business m

by kolme 12y ago

davidw 12y ago
It's hard in any case - yes - but it's even harder when you can't do the simplest thing, which is selling access to the software you've made.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Well, you actually can. Between the two extremes of proprietary software and putting everything on a public Github repository, there's a middle term: your software is FOSS, but it's not publicly available - the source is only available to paying customers. I never see this model discussed, but I've actually seen it work fine for many not very large software companies. They still get to sell the product, and the client gets the peace of mind of knowing that they have an alternative if the company goes under or discontinues the product. (This works better if the development is done on a common platform like Drupal, instead of being custom from the bare metal.) Of course, the clients can still turn around and distribute (and even sell!) the source, but in practice the average SMB isn't particularly interest in going into the software reselling business.
  - davidw 12y ago
    Yes, Cygnus software used to do this with their stuff, a long time ago, apparently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions It's valid, but not entirely in the spirit of open source software either, in my opinion. There are certainly various open source business models, it's just that they require more thought and effort than simply selling the software, or access to it. For some companies, that extra difficulty might be what makes or breaks them.