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Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

blog.hiri.com

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Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#321

Post by Digital-Citizen »

TuringTest wrote: post #65

"Unfortunately, the fundamentalist FOSS mentality we encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some Linux blogs and Podcasts simply won’t give us the time of day. This is not a problem with the mainstream tech blogs and is a problem unique to Linux." It seems weird that this guy will try to promote his product to the Linux community and chooses to do it by insulting its user base. While not all Linux users have…

I think you'll find that those who seek to "use our community as a market but not contributing to it" (as the older essay https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.htm... points out) will namecall when they think it suits them. He's not the first to do this. Another proprietor called GNU/Linux (which they too called "Linux" perhaps to avoid drawing attention to software freedom by referring to GNU at all) "unAmerican" http://web.archive.org/web/20010508201537/http://news.cnet.c... and "a cancer" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_c... . Now that proprietor wants us to believe they "[heart symbol] Open Source". Perhaps they do.

But the real harm here is the loss of software freedom for users of that program, not the cost of the program or some bad PR from its developer. That's what users rightly objected to and that's what is the incompatibility between free software and proprietary software. Unfortunately this also serves as another example of how someone talking about "open source" (Canonical in this case) pushes for a loss of software freedom--the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software built around an examination of how people treat each other ethically with regard to their computers.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#322

Post by glangdale »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #319
glangdale wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's pretty terrible if consenting adults choose to pay for software, isn't it? I love FOSS, but people like you (yes, "fundamentalists") can't deal with the idea that some forms of software are probably better as paid transactions between well-informed parties. The laughable state of open source office suites and any serious competitor to most of Adobe's products suggests that this model has its limits.

> Yes, it's pretty terrible if consenting adults choose to pay for software, isn't it? The thing I zero in on here is that I have literally zero problems paying for software. But I am wary of purchasing software that I don't get the rights to build, modify, and contribute to. My worry with software like this is that vendors come and go, and people get their workflows destroyed because the software can't be "saved" wh…

Agreed on most of these points. But I've been on both sides of this transaction, on both sides of the proprietary/FOSS fence (to oversimplify and abstract the difference between Free and Open Source). From experience it is hard to get people to pay for FOSS; my hat is off to those who can manage it.

I do think that vendors should have to put things into some form of shared-source or open-source escrow (possibly shared as they might not have IP rights to open source everything they've done) with a kind of 'dead mans switch' arrangement (i.e. you walk away without updating or responding to bug fix requests, you trigger escrow).

I'm perennially concerned that the fundamentalist attitude to proprietary software is suppressing innovation in some areas: especially complex desktop software where there is (a) a heavy requirement for the kind of tedious UI work that FOSS projects clearly don't bother to do and (b) where most or all of the product is "right there in the code" (i.e. once you have Photoshop, you can go to town and edit stuff, and you're not really all that dependent on having access to some other product or service which can be monetized).

The attitude reaches its most extreme in software tools. Best expressed by Andy Gocke with his great tweet: https://twitter.com/andygocke/status/1017509689695715328

'Developer tools seemed like a good industry to be in, "sell shovels in the gold rush" and all, but it turns out developers prefer to dig for gold with their teeth.'

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#323

Post by gear54rus »

glangdale wrote: post #318
mattl wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want “Linux desktop software” to grow. I want computer users to have zero-proprietary software. The problem with thinking of GNU/Linux in the same way as Windows and Mac OS X is that it assumes a world where proprietary software is the norm, or is okay. I believe that is isn’t okay, and that it is harmful.

Yes, it's pretty terrible if consenting adults choose to pay for software, isn't it? I love FOSS, but people like you (yes, "fundamentalists") can't deal with the idea that some forms of software are probably better as paid transactions between well-informed parties. The laughable state of open source office suites and any serious competitor to most of Adobe's products suggests that this model has its limits.

oh, the consenting adults argument, my ass. As if there aren't enough things consenting adults are banned from choosing like drugs or gambling. Some proprietary crap can be compared to both.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#324

Post by clircle »

zaarn wrote: post #2

Quite a neat insight and somewhat confirming what I think personally; Linux users largely don't use Linux for FLOSS reasons. People who do use Linux for FLOSS reasons are however rather loud. I would probably not be wrong when saying that most Linux users will happily pay a developer for the binary of an application if the dev is "doing it right". Doing it right largely involves "don't treat the customer as a walking…

I started using Linux for FLOSS reasons about 15 years ago, but now that I'm older and mostly just care about my computer working the way I want it, without bugs and distractions, I have really shifted away from my old free software opinions.

I still use Debian Linux for my home computers. My wife even uses a XPS Developer edition. I would like to switch to Windows 10 for the battery life upgrade, but I find that Windows is slow and has a lot of distractions (eye candy and advertisements) compared to my Linux computers. The virtual desktop management isn't as convenient as it is on Linux (Mate desktop). Emacs, Git, Elfeed, and a lot of the other Emacs-related features/plug-ins I like to use everyday are also dog-slow on Windows, which is the real deal-breaker for me.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#325

Post by nambit »

alkonaut wrote: post #213
dpower wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there, I'm the author of the blog post. Some context you may find interesting, and maybe I should do a follow up post about this. We were very enterprise focused, but it just didn't work. We were trying to displace MS Outlook. And unfortunately, most people want to stick with Outlook. Not because it's better, but because it's what they know. We found that even if we convinced 8 out of 10 people in a company to buy…

Any business that is part Linux and part windows, exchange infrastructure, will need an exchange client for all their Linux client machines? Assuming web based won’t cut it for those users, then it would seem Hiri is a good fit for that business? I can’t see in what way you are competing or displacing Outlook if you are makinhg a product for Linux. The reason it’s a viable product would be 1) because there is no Linu…

Web does cut it apparently. Not for the users but enough for management to not expense a separate product for the entire company.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#326

Post by jodrellblank »

mattl wrote: post #277
wendy0x2 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company can't survive on paid oss (gnu/gpl). The license allows anyone to purchase it and then go ahead and give it out for free, which would happen in short order. Support doesn't work for many small companies, because you just don't have the manpower, so proprietary software is necessary.

I don’t think a business would actually do that, if they purchased something they would likely not put it up on GitHub immediately, but I think the key to selling free software is customization. Red Hat makes a good deal of money from free software, but as you say, much of that is from support.

It's almost like 2.9 billion dollars of annual revenue incentivises RedHat to make worse software, to encourage people to buy support.

Hah, what am I saying, ignoring incentives like that is easy and commonplace, I'm sure they pay it no mind at all.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#327

Post by zaarn »

nine_k wrote: post #223
zaarn wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to look at the source and troubleshoot it is not mutually exclusive to a product being proprietary (ie, source available would give you this). There is also plenty of business I know that do everything in their power to ensure that if they go away the customer isn't left helpless (this is very popular in some parts of industrial engineering where it's common sense to hand over the blue print along with a s…

Sure, if you're a big enough customer, you can have access to (relevant parts of) source code, and various forms of preferential treatment. I've seen his firsthand. This is the norm with big vendors that are on the market for many decades, and not going anywhere (e.g. Microsoft). If you are a smaller fish, you have fewer of these options, because they just cost money. Of course it's often cost-effective to quickly st…

As I mentioned, this isn't about existing vendors but potential business models (or rather, rare business models since I do know vendors that do this even with very small hobbyist users).

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#328

Post by txcwpalpha »

jerguismi wrote: post #260
dpower wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there, I'm the author of the blog post. Some context you may find interesting, and maybe I should do a follow up post about this. We were very enterprise focused, but it just didn't work. We were trying to displace MS Outlook. And unfortunately, most people want to stick with Outlook. Not because it's better, but because it's what they know. We found that even if we convinced 8 out of 10 people in a company to buy…

> I would say about 50% of our customers are paying with the department credit card, and the other 50% buy it using their personal card. Is this your way to determine if it is for business or personal use? Often in small companies and startups people use their personal credit cards for business purchases. Even in some bigger companies they do that, they just invoice it later separately.

At my old company of 200k+ people, purchases for things like software licenses or other misc tools would be paid using a card that was in the employee's name, but with the bill going to the employer. I know it's the same method with at least 3 other 150k+ companies that are in my industry. I have a feeling this would confound those results quite significantly.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#329

Post by pjmlp »

hug wrote: post #314
awill wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outlook is already a bloated beast. Moving it to Electron would be a disaster. I can't see it happening. Maybe a 'lite' version of outlook, but not the version enterprises use.

Yes, but https://twitter.com/thelarkinn/status/1006746626617008128?s=...

That guy was forced to comment on Reddit that he was joking about it.

What about linking to that instead?

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#330

Post by pjmlp »

ben509 wrote: post #282
dogma1138 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly while it might sounds like I’m speaking out of my ass that’s a bad business model. Outlook is one of the best mail clients out there, not many can disagree about that. The Office 365 web client is nearly identical these days and it runs in the browser. You aren’t going to out Office Microsoft that is just a fools errand. You can maybe focus on better mail clients for the desktop but there are quite a few goo…

> Outlook is one of the best mail clients out there, not many can disagree about that. > You aren’t going to out Office Microsoft that is just a fools errand. Having used Outlook for a while, even on Windows, I'm shocked that people describe Outlook as good. It may be the least worst, but Outlook is, being generous, a very mediocre piece of software. That's Microsoft's strategy in a nutshell: be Good Enough for a ver…

Outlook is wonderful when compared against the competition, specially when you are unlucky enough to use Lotus Notes as alternative.
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