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Releasing Serverless Framework V.1, and Fundraising

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Re: Releasing Serverless Framework V.1, and Fundraising

#3

Post by bjacobel »

Are there other examples of an open-source community project taking on several million dollars in venture capital funding? It seems a bit odd to me.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable using a presumably open-source, free (beer and speech) tool knowing that the group behind it will have to find a way to monetize their users in order to justify the investment from VCs at some point down the road. Open-source developers should of course be able to be compensated for their work, and the project has to find a way to sustain itself (I work for a company whose main product is open-source so I know this better than most), but the venture capital model doesn't seem like a good fit with the interests of the community, in my opinion.

That said, Serverless is a great tool, and congrats on the 1.0. Thanks to the team for their hard work.

Re: Releasing Serverless Framework V.1, and Fundraising

#4

Post by matlock »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #2

This is definitely a step forward for software development. I'm interested to see what people build with it.

Thanks Miguel. We're going to release more about our plans for the next steps in the Framework soon. I'm currently writing those and will share with the community in the very near future (CTO of Serverless here)

Re: Releasing Serverless Framework V.1, and Fundraising

#5

Post by ac360 »

bjacobel wrote: post #3

Are there other examples of an open-source community project taking on several million dollars in venture capital funding? It seems a bit odd to me. I'm not sure I'm comfortable using a presumably open-source, free (beer and speech) tool knowing that the group behind it will have to find a way to monetize their users in order to justify the investment from VCs at some point down the road. Open-source developers shoul…

Lots. Docker, HashiCorp... It's the go-to-market strategy for lots of products now, especially developer tools.

Re: Releasing Serverless Framework V.1, and Fundraising

#6

Post by matlock »

bjacobel wrote: post #3

Are there other examples of an open-source community project taking on several million dollars in venture capital funding? It seems a bit odd to me. I'm not sure I'm comfortable using a presumably open-source, free (beer and speech) tool knowing that the group behind it will have to find a way to monetize their users in order to justify the investment from VCs at some point down the road. Open-source developers shoul…

Thanks, appreciate the shoutout!

There certainly are other open source tools like ansible, Chef, Puppet, Hashicorp, MongoDB (and many more) that have started out as an Open Source project and are still OSS champions.

We have many plans for monetisation and are working closely with small to enterprise scale companies on building products and services around the Framework that help you once your infrastructure has reached a large scale. More info to come in the future.

Re: Releasing Serverless Framework V.1, and Fundraising

#7

Post by bjacobel »

matlock wrote: post #6
bjacobel wrote: post #3

Are there other examples of an open-source community project taking on several million dollars in venture capital funding? It seems a bit odd to me. I'm not sure I'm comfortable using a presumably open-source, free (beer and speech) tool knowing that the group behind it will have to find a way to monetize their users in order to justify the investment from VCs at some point down the road. Open-source developers shoul…

Thanks, appreciate the shoutout! There certainly are other open source tools like ansible, Chef, Puppet, Hashicorp, MongoDB (and many more) that have started out as an Open Source project and are still OSS champions. We have many plans for monetisation and are working closely with small to enterprise scale companies on building products and services around the Framework that help you once your infrastructure has reac…

To expand on my last point, how are you balancing the needs of an open-source community (steady, stable feature development, good communication/outreach/support, dedication to supporting existing products) with the needs imposed on Serverless by the VC funding model (acquiring new users quickly, launching new products you can monetize, getting hockey stick growth)?

Re: Releasing Serverless Framework V.1, and Fundraising

#8

Post by emdowling »

bjacobel wrote: post #3

Are there other examples of an open-source community project taking on several million dollars in venture capital funding? It seems a bit odd to me. I'm not sure I'm comfortable using a presumably open-source, free (beer and speech) tool knowing that the group behind it will have to find a way to monetize their users in order to justify the investment from VCs at some point down the road. Open-source developers shoul…

Realm, most recently featured on HN here[0], is a good example of this. Open source, widely adopted base product, with optional consultancy and now a full-featured platform for enterprises that need/want it.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12589426

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