Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

linkedin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 179 posts

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#121

Post by crazypython »

hapless wrote: post #90

The author makes a good case against open source businesses, but he indulges himself in a false dichotomy between a traditional proprietary model and open source. Increasingly often, there is no market for your proprietary software. It is then not a choice between open source and proprietary models, but rather between doing open source or doing nothing. A lot of markets are just gone , and they're not coming back. Od…

> A lot of markets are just gone, and they're not coming back. Odds are, you're never going to sell another proprietary UNIX clone, or a proprietary database, or a proprietary application server.

I would argue this encourages innovation in freedom-respecting/open-source software business models.

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#122

Post by lifeisstillgood »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #62

The essential problem is gatekeeping . Any commercial business uses money as a means of getkeeping what it uses (buys). This works well to reduce and so control the purchases of chairs, desks, external consultancies and proprietary software. We all know the horrors and pain of trying to raise a PO to get a license for a really useful / necessary piece of software. I fundamentally guarantee that if React needed a 0.01…

I would like to expand on this

McDonalds has a operating manual - it details exactly how to cook the burgers, how to operate the trash compactor, insurances etc etc. It is how to run a fast food restaurant and it is I am sure proprietary information.

But if they published it under creative commons they would probably not lose a fortune.

Firstly there is already completion in the market - plenty of small one person late night takeaways exist - all of whom have some level of floor quality enforced by regulation, taught by suppliers or simply being fairly obvious.

The mcdonald's effect comes partly from consistency yes, but also supply chain efficiencies and huge marketing costs.

So do we ask, is a Software house that chooses to release FOSS or not actually Mcdonaldds - or are they the department inside mcdonald's that just writes policy operations manuals?

A small team of developers will find it hard to just write code and make a fortune / business / change the world.

which i find infinitely sad now.

But at least i should be wiser.

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#123

Post by XCSme »

Great post, I completely agree!

I have debated over this for years while building a self-hosted analytics platform (userTrack.net) and I have always reached the same conclusions: if I open-source it, not only I affect its sustainability but also the business goals would become complete opposite to the product goals (eg. as you mentioned, making it easier to install improves product but affects the business).

I now think that the best way to go is "paid-source": make the product as good as you can, make it as easy to install as possible and the customers who want to use it can pay a reasonable amount for it. I recently changed the pricing model, as the one-time payment was not sustainable, so the product has now an upfront cost + optional yearly maintenance fee (you can use it forever, but if you want new features and support you should support it).

I have used many amazing open-source projects that got abandoned over the years, I would have gladly paid for many of them if that meant sustaining the future development of the project. And, before anyone mentions it, donations are not the answer.

(I left the same comment on the article)

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#124

Post by fphhotchips »

hapless wrote: post #90

The author makes a good case against open source businesses, but he indulges himself in a false dichotomy between a traditional proprietary model and open source. Increasingly often, there is no market for your proprietary software. It is then not a choice between open source and proprietary models, but rather between doing open source or doing nothing. A lot of markets are just gone , and they're not coming back. Od…

>proprietary database

Oracle, Microsoft and SAP all do very well out of their proprietary databases for OLTP. In analytics, Snowflake was the largest tech IPO ever last year. For whatever reason, the database market seems to be entirely ok with proprietary software.

Disclaimer: I sell Snowflake for a living.

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#125

Post by passivate »

hapless wrote: post #90

The author makes a good case against open source businesses, but he indulges himself in a false dichotomy between a traditional proprietary model and open source. Increasingly often, there is no market for your proprietary software. It is then not a choice between open source and proprietary models, but rather between doing open source or doing nothing. A lot of markets are just gone , and they're not coming back. Od…

Well, how many companies are there that are selling some sort of proprietary software and still making money? I'd wager there are hundreds of thousands of them around the world. Also, software can now be sold as a service, so the market is just transforming, no?

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#126

Post by tommoor »

alfonsodev wrote: post #96
tommoor wrote: post #27

I'm working on an "open core" knowledge base [0] right now and have been for the last few years. We're definitely leaving money on the table by offering an easy docker install option and I'd largely agree with the points made in the article but it's hard to understate the value of the distribution that open source brings, particularly for product-lead teams that aren't so hot at marketing. [0] https://www.getoutline.…

Your product looks great, I’ll give it a try! I’m curious. What was your thought process when making the decision about open sourcing? Were you open source from day one?

Not from day one, I wrote about the decision here :)

https://blog.tommoor.com/2019/01/01/you-should-open-source-y...

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#127

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

XCSme wrote: post #123

Great post, I completely agree! I have debated over this for years while building a self-hosted analytics platform (userTrack.net) and I have always reached the same conclusions: if I open-source it, not only I affect its sustainability but also the business goals would become complete opposite to the product goals (eg. as you mentioned, making it easier to install improves product but affects the business). I now th…

> I now think that the best way to go is "paid-source"

Is that just source-available software[0] (sometimes also called shared-source)? I ask not because I object, but because it's easier if we all use the same words for the same things.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#128

Post by linkdd »

InvOfSmallC wrote: post #110
mooreds wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really good point. However, there are still successes that I'd never have expected. Jetbrains is a good example. Who would have thought that an IDE could be sold when there are adequate ones for free? There are also many many smaller niches where software can be sold because there isn't adequate developer interest to create OSS. One example is this: https://querix.com/products/lycia (not a customer, just ra…

I personally have been being using Intellij for everything for the last five years. I tried to migrate to VSCode for golang. I mean, don't get me wrong, the situation is not the worst possible, but the only reason you would want to use that is because you never tried refactoring with Goland. Are you kidding me? I had to go look for what is the current needed extensions for go that are still maintained, configure them…

The best IDE is in my head. I don't need to type anything and it can even run buggy code without any error.

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#129

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

IncRnd wrote: post #69
nine_k wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "open source" has a well-known definition, and the "novel licenses", like Mongo's, do not match it. They are more like the "source available" licenses, as practiced by MS in 1990s, and by IBM, much earlier.

There are several definitions for Open Source that come from foundations and other groups, which push their own beliefs and standards. Opensource.org, for example, pushes their own definition that excludes all those who do not use the perferred license! However, dictionaries that mirror collective understandings, as used by millions of people, tell a different story. According to OxfordLanguages, Open Source denotes,…

> There are several definitions for Open Source that come from foundations and other groups

...and all of them do so because they really want to pretend that their software is "open source" without actually putting it under an open source license. Like, in the abstract I agree that it's weird having the OSI (or any one group) define "open source", but in this case I'm okay with it because every single "alternative definition" turns out to be someone just trying to pretend that their source-available software is "open source" for marketing reasons when it isn't.

Re: I wouldn't invest in open-source companies, even though I ran one

#130

Post by Barrin92 »

hapless wrote: post #90

The author makes a good case against open source businesses, but he indulges himself in a false dichotomy between a traditional proprietary model and open source. Increasingly often, there is no market for your proprietary software. It is then not a choice between open source and proprietary models, but rather between doing open source or doing nothing. A lot of markets are just gone , and they're not coming back. Od…

>A lot of markets are just gone

for tooling or infrastructure or languages this seems true, but most plain SAAS is proprietary, almost all end-user applications are and so on. I'm not entirely sure what percentage of the market that is but it's probably the largest one?

Post reply on HN