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Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money

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Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money

#61

Post by boomboomsubban »

krupan wrote: post #50

It feels to me like there was a lot of social pressure over the last 10 years or so for open source projects to use the most permissive open source license they could. You were cool and "more free" if you used Apache, BSD, or MIT licenses. I wonder if this is coming back to bite us now. Red Hat built a very successful business selling mostly GPL software. Would things be different for the companies we've been talking…

This doesn't make sense. What additional revenue would the GPL provide for you? How would a copyleft license end up requiring additional support contracts? Your other comment lists a range of things Redhat offers in addition to support, but none of those things rely on the GPL.

Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money

#63

Post by phkahler »

jaabe wrote: post #37

I think you can make money on Open Source, but I think you need partners to do so. I work for a Danish municipality that is a member of a municipality driven open source community called OS2. We’re around 60 members, and we’ve recently won a national award for tech-reuse issued by our ministry of digitisation and around 10 interest groups. We don’t build the code ourselves. We do own, review and manage the code. We h…

>> I work for a Danish municipality that is a member of a municipality driven open source community called OS2. We’re around 60 members, and we’ve recently won a national award for tech-reuse issued by our ministry of digitisation and around 10 interest groups.

>> We don’t build the code ourselves. We do own, review and manage the code. We handle the project management and we facilitate access to our business processes and employees, but the actual development is something we buy.

This sounds like you're treating the software like infrastructure, which is how I've been starting to view it. You contract out the work to maintain it just like roads. It's no surprise to me that you work for a municipality where that's how they get things done. I believe this is what the future of a lot of large software projects looks like. From the developer side people will look just like contractors and their specialization with be which OSS programs they are familiar with - i.e. how fast they can get the desired changes done and into the master branch. There will of course be cheaper guys who will make your changes in a fork that ends up costing you more long term.

Big software is infrastructure which needs to be maintained but is not inherently profitable.

Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money

#64

Post by max76 »

sanxiyn wrote: post #38
adamnemecek wrote: post #30

It's very easy to get people to pay for hosting. In Mozilla's case, I would love to see some sort of cloud hosting for Rust. I also wish I could write front end in Rust but maybe I'll just have to wait for webassembly. I can't imagine that some sort of rust to js compiler (kinda like kotlin) would be too hard and this would be a killer application. Matei Zaharia (of the Spark fame) and friends are working on weld, ht…

I am working on Rust to JS compiler based on Scala.js design. I plan to release it using Street Performer Protocol.

Why do you plan on using Street Performer Protocol?

Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money

#65

Post by sanxiyn »

clarry wrote: post #57
sanxiyn wrote: post #34

I always thought Street Performer Protocol is an obvious answer to fund open source software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_performer_protocol Do not release the source until the fund is raised.

I'd like to see crowdfunding move in this direction, but it'd be too good, right? Calculate that a project takes $100k, amass the backing, then release the finished work for the benefit of the whole world. What happens instead of release is that the makers just keep it all closed and try to make further profit.

mycli used this model, read about their experience here: https://www.mycli.net/kickstarter

Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money

#66

Post by krupan »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #61
krupan wrote: post #50

It feels to me like there was a lot of social pressure over the last 10 years or so for open source projects to use the most permissive open source license they could. You were cool and "more free" if you used Apache, BSD, or MIT licenses. I wonder if this is coming back to bite us now. Red Hat built a very successful business selling mostly GPL software. Would things be different for the companies we've been talking…

This doesn't make sense. What additional revenue would the GPL provide for you? How would a copyleft license end up requiring additional support contracts? Your other comment lists a range of things Redhat offers in addition to support, but none of those things rely on the GPL.

Those are good questions. As I think about it more, in the early days, Microsoft stirred up a lot of fear around open source and the GPL specifically. It was viral, it would get you sued for copyright infringment (see: SCO), it would get you sued for patent infringement, it was terrible quality, hard to install, changes all the time, the project might be abandoned, etc., etc.

So yeah, maybe it wasn't so much GPL specifically (except that "viral" threat), but overall Microsoft reinforced a bunch of concerns associated with open source and Red Hat was able to address those concerns.

Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money

#67

Post by sanxiyn »

clarry wrote: post #54
oweqruiowe wrote: post #15

It recently dawned on me, in light of the Elastic / AWS battle, that Elastic's business model is kind of like GGG's 'free to play' game Path of Exile. Where the base game is free, but as you get more serious you end up spending money on quality of life things, stash tab upgrades and what not. That business model has proven to be very successful (in gaming), versus the buy once model with games like Diablo. Hopefully,…

You mean games like Diablo weren't very successful?

Freemium model is vastly more profitable. There is a reason every game company is switching to it.

Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money

#68

Post by jopsen »

If Firefox for Android cost 10 USD / year some people would buy it..

Even if there was 100 free forks readily available. People would pay for the brand :)

Honestly, I prefer bitwarden over "password store" because I pay and, thus, I know it's unlikely to go away or go unsupported.

Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money

#69

Post by YayamiOmate »

snaky wrote: post #49
est31 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Godot engine has this model. They are getting donations from patreon [1], enough to pay 2 people full time at the center of the project. Wikipedia is another project which is doing this very successfully. But in general, those methods bring you much less money than if you were proprietary, because as you rightfully point out, most people are "freeloaders". [1]: https://www.patreon.com/godotengine

Chinese livestreaming industry is based on donations, so-called 'virtual gifts', and top streamers can make $100,000 a month or more.

That's more of an entertainment business, basically based on watching. Streamers are nothing else than sports arenas imho. or musicians.

It's not so easy to get 10k people watch you code. I'd like to see it though.

Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money

#70

Post by sanxiyn »

51lver wrote: post #62

So open source is generic, and personalized interfaces are profitable. Well then. I guess now is a really good time to be running an app store.

Mozilla should let people buy, say, Tree Style Tab, and split revenue with the author.
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