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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

#121

Post by reallydude »

mythz wrote: post #86

Its commoditized the cost to use software to near zero which has created a lot of unprecedented value and products that wouldn't be possible before OSS. Unfortunately most of the wealth created by OSS is being reaped by the large cloud vendors because relatively no-one pays for OSS but they do to host their production systems on it, atm this revenue goes directly to the major tech cloud companies which are using it t…

> Unfortunately most of the wealth created by OSS is being reaped by the large cloud vendors

Why is that unfortunate? It has enabled a cycle of OSS to user AND OSS to vendor to vendor enrichment to user...since you can always modify the code at will. The best of both worlds, until you get into that special "extension" problem that GPL3 tried to lock down.

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

#122

Post by _dark_matter_ »

mythz wrote: post #86

Its commoditized the cost to use software to near zero which has created a lot of unprecedented value and products that wouldn't be possible before OSS. Unfortunately most of the wealth created by OSS is being reaped by the large cloud vendors because relatively no-one pays for OSS but they do to host their production systems on it, atm this revenue goes directly to the major tech cloud companies which are using it t…

This is exactly the "Commoditize your Complements" strategy that Joel espoused all those years ago [0].

[0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

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

#123

Post by macspoofing »

sanxiyn wrote: post #67
clarry wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Freemium model is vastly more profitable.

Is it?

>There is a reason every game company is switching to it.

Are they?

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

#124

Post by anon1m0us »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #116
bunderbunder wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting to suspect that the major cloud vendors are well along on pulling a classic "embrace, extend, extinguish" gambit on that front. I'm sure there are a percentage of people operating in the cloud who stick judiciously to an open-source stack, and remain masters of their own future as a result. But it seems more common to spread some open source icing on top of a cake made out of ingredients like Beanstalk,…

The lock in is far more complete than it ever was in the Microsoft era, with Microsoft of the 90s, you could mostly still choose to just stop buying their crap, and stick with what you had while you migrate, or work out an alternative. The minute you stop paying a cloud vendor, your entire infrastructure vanishes in a cloud of smoke, and if you relied on their "value add" proprietary services, you are left with basic…

schadenfreude for all!

Everyone hated Microsoft for selling software. Everyone hated Microsoft for requiring the world value software monetarily. The world thought programmers were just a bunch of nerds to be taken advantage of. Microsoft said no.

The nerds hated microsoft for making them pay for an operating system.

The nerds got their way. They got free everything.

And now the OSS worls is a convoluted mess. It costs way more to make Ruby on Rails work than just installing IIS and writing some C#.

Now those who said Microsoft was bullying them are the bullies. OSS has become more expensive than the Microsoft equivalent.

No one wants to pay for code at all anymore.

Why couldn't you all see this coming? It was so obvious.

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

#126

Post by burtonator »

robenkleene wrote: post #120
burtonator wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some really quick unsolicited feedback go for it... really appreciate it. > You say your model is "freemium" but I don't see a way to pay for anything on your website? That's not freemium, that's donationware. Most apps that are freemium allow the user to use the app for free first and then convert later. Right now the app will prompt you to upgrade once you hit a threshold. Right now one of the challenges (with fr…

Got it all makes sense, regarding "Right now the app will prompt you to upgrade once you hit a threshold." Is there somewhere you advertise what the threshold is and how much you'll be charged? I didn't see it on the site. That's the first thing I'd look for when evaluating a product like this, answering what's it going to cost me if I like it? (Not to mention it's comforting for me to know the owners have a plan for…

Not yet but it's mostly because we're iterating and trying to figure out what will work.

For example, I'm considering not charging at all, and instead charging just for private teams - at least in the future. That's a feature we haven't shipped yet.

Like I said, my main goal right now is to get us to 30-50% month over month growth and then trying to get us to at least 30k users. Until then monetization is irrational for the most part.

I might start a kickstarter with our user base as they might be more motivated by that rather than asking to pay directly since they're buying the vision of the project not the actual implementation.

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

#127

Post by the_pwner224 »

bolzano wrote: post #81
Insanity wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to nitpick, but to me the term 'freeloaders' has a negative connotation and I don't think it should in the case of FOSS. Being able to use it for free is quite literally the point of FOSS. Apart from that, you make good points :)

Do you mean free as in beer, or free as in speech here? I'm still honing my understanding of FOSS, and I'm not 100% sure that FOSS means free as in beer.

> I'm not 100% sure that FOSS means free as in beer.

It doesn't. The only requirements for licenses like GPL, etc. is that anyone who you distribute a binary to can ask you for the source code, and you must provide it for a reasonable fee (for GPL it's "for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source", and you must provide the source on request for as long as you offer support for the binary blob, with a minimum of three years).

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

Can't find it now, but I recall finding a link here (by the developer(s) of curl iirc) about how his BMW had a screen with the free software credits and BMW sent him a CD with the source when he requested it.

Edit: couldn't find that BMW article, but here are a few interesting links related to that:

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/08/12/a-hundred-million-car...

(multiple BMW screenshots in this page) https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/10/03/screenshotted-curl-cr...

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

#128

Post by csallen »

> You can’t make a living making music. Or art. You can’t even make a living taking care of children.

First, this isn't true. Plenty of people make a living doing each of the above.

(Art is somewhat of a special case, because some will say that what you're doing isn't art by definition if it's attached to some functional purpose like a business model. But you don't have to listen to those people.)

Second, these things aren't cheap because they're not valuable. Water is cheap. Water is also necessary to life. It's immensely valuable. What makes it cheap is that it's easy to provide, so competition drives prices down. People aren't going to pay a lot of money to get something valuable if they can pay less to get the same value elsewhere. Value isn't the only thing that matters when determining price.

> There are dozens (hundreds?) of successful open source projects that have tried to become even just modest commercial enterprises, some very seriously. Results aren’t great.

Are results much better for normal people trying to start businesses that aren't based on open-source code? I'm not convinced they are. Businesses are hard.

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

#129

Post by SkyPuncher »

csallen wrote: post #128

> You can’t make a living making music. Or art. You can’t even make a living taking care of children. First, this isn't true. Plenty of people make a living doing each of the above. (Art is somewhat of a special case, because some will say that what you're doing isn't art by definition if it's attached to some functional purpose like a business model. But you don't have to listen to those people.) Second, these thing…

I think a more apt description would be "You can't PLAN to make a living making music".

Certainly, lots of people successfully make a living with music, arts, sports, etc. However, there's a lot out of the individual's control in those fields.

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

#130

Post by anon1m0us »

mythz wrote: post #86

Its commoditized the cost to use software to near zero which has created a lot of unprecedented value and products that wouldn't be possible before OSS. Unfortunately most of the wealth created by OSS is being reaped by the large cloud vendors because relatively no-one pays for OSS but they do to host their production systems on it, atm this revenue goes directly to the major tech cloud companies which are using it t…

Why buy the cow if you get the milk for free?
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