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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

#281

Post by jjeaff »

anth_anm wrote: post #158
jjeaff wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are mostly right, but I don't think the major cloud providers have much of an uncrossable moat. Cloud services are and will continue to become more and more commoditized. Sure, there is proprietary lock-in. But because of OSS, it is also becoming easy to avoid the lock-in. For example, rather than use a hosted elastic service, I was able to launch an elastic stack on k8s in less than an hour of configurat…

> but I don't think the major cloud providers have much of an uncrossable moat Billions of dollars and years of constructions to just start trying to enter the market, where you will fail because your offerings are relatively pathetic on multiple fronts.

Billions of dollars spent means nothing unless it actually takes billions to launch a hosting company. It doesn't.

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

#283

Post by jrochkind1 »

mythz wrote: post #156
christophilus wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just made me wonder: what if all of the major OSS companies joined forces, started a new cloud company whose purpose was to send revenue back to all of its underlying OSS projects. Each then promotes that cloud as its #1 recommended cloud, and use their collective visibility to grow that into a contender? One can dream...

Fair and equatable distribution wouldn't factor into any consideration for Companies paying developers and cloud hosting companies to run their businesses. IMO the best way would be for all OSS developers to come together and agree on a standard "OSS-like" license which is basically "OSS and free for everyone else except cloud hosters", if enough OSS developers do this it will force the major cloud vendors to impleme…

Do you mean I could install this software on a box physically located in a building owned by my employer, but not on a virtual host?

I think you are trying to mean not that. Like, if I install it myself, it's okay, but if the "cloud vendor" installs it for me, that violates the license?

I think I understand the sorts of entities you have in mind to allow or not allow; I'm not sure it's clear how you'd write a license like that.

"The cloud" is in the end just hardware somewhere else. I think you are maybe fantasizing about a license that would be more about _what sorts of businesses_ are allowed to use it, than it is about _how_ it's run. The OSI open source definition does not allow licenses that "restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research." You could think that's an inappropriate restriction I guess. https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

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

#284

Post by behringer »

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…

actually this licensing source system will just harm OSS. We should be trying to get companies to use GNU licensing wherever possible, so we can continue to reap the rewards of truly FOSS software.

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

#285

Post by dragonwriter »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #271
prepend wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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” Why is it unfortunate. OSS developers are volunteering and donating their talent. Is it unfortunate that homeless people reap the benefit from patrons who sponsor charitable homeless shelters? Or is it unfortunate that students realize w…

They are not all volunteering. The Linux kernel, for example, is maintained mostly by paid individuals from all sorts of companies such as Red Hat, IBM, and even Microsoft.

All of which make good money selling support services and/or cloud infrastructure, and have decided to donate the fruits of the labor they are buying because doing so helps drive those businesses.

So, again, the developer labor is donated, by parties that are not blind to the market impacts. Where is the problem?

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

#286

Post by chobeat »

minitech wrote: post #244
pbalau wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 0 people that make a living making art (and music, as a subset of art). All the people you think of are selling art. They are doing things that they believe they can sell, either for money or for status.

That distinction seems like a bit of a nitpick.

Say it to all my friends that make art and don't want to sell it. Their hunger is very real.

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

#287

Post by zjaffee »

irrational wrote: post #10
astazangasta wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will become less true as a greater fraction of humanity learns to program.

You mean when it goes from .001% of the population to .002% of the population? I don't think there will be any time that a large fraction of the world's population knows how to program. I've even tried to get my own kids interested in learning how to program to no avail. Some of my kids don't have the aptitude for it, but those who do have the aptitude just aren't interested.

Think about how many people know how to use SQL or Excel functions. While the number of people knowledgable about writing C++ or Java won't reach this high of a level, there will be tools that are widely understood that enable people to build pieces of technology as needed beyond what is available now.

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

#288

Post by pcwalton »

tzakrajs wrote: post #208
mythz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because none of the Indie OSS developers that have donated their free time and energy into creating it will be rewarded with any of the value they've created from their efforts. Because there will only ever be 3 major multi-billion tech companies that stand to benefit most from OSS. Because they own their markets, where they can wait to find out what OSS software has become successful and either just profit from it b…

It’s unfortunate that you forgot to mention that these indie oss developers are highly sought after for independent contract work or direct hire positions. Open Source software was never meant to pay the bills of open source developers, it was meant to open source code to the public and allow free use. To somehow read this narrative that indie developers are losing because others profit from their work is facile and…

> It’s unfortunate that you forgot to mention that these indie oss developers are highly sought after for independent contract work or direct hire positions.

For the most part, any developer who is good enough to create e.g. Redis and be hired could easily have skipped the "create Redis" part and just get hired in the first place, for far greater return on investment.

That's not even getting into the fact that leading a popular open source project is no guarantee of even being hired by those big companies, due to their interview processes. For example, Google rejected the creator of Homebrew, despite getting a lot of value out of the software, because of problems with whiteboard coding.

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

#289

Post by miguelmota »

One trend I see is the following timeline pattern of an early startup wishing to become a scalable SaaS platform with an open source core:

Services > Support > Packaging > Subscriptions > Open Core > Managed > Cloud > SaaS

Basically they open source a core component that doesn't compromise the business model. For example, only open sourcing an engine but not plugins, modules, or dashboards around it. They also open source the core once they've already gained traction which puts them way ahead of anyone trying to do the same thing they are.

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

#290

Post by thstart »

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…

OPERATIONS-365/24/7 - just try to it.
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