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How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

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121–130 of 214 posts

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#121
post #55

If it's AGPL it's free software, not open source

The Open Source Initiative recognizes AGPL as an open source license -> https://opensource.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0

The FSF recognizes AGPL as a free software license.

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#122
post #110
post #49

I sell my MIT open source Video Hub App for $5 ($3.50 goes to a cost-effective charity - it's charityware). Over the 3 years it's resulted in over $9000 donated to protect people from malaria. Public: https://videohubapp.com/en/ GitHub: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App Charityware: https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-pro...

I would love to build charity ware to help offset some of the ethically questionable things I do, but I was wondering how did you choose a cause to donate toward? Did you know someone personally who perished from malaria? There’s so many things that can be donated to I don’t know how to pick one or evaluate where donations would even be most effective.

Donating money is an act of self-expression. Do learn about effective altruism, cost-effectiveness, impact, etc. but know that it will ultimately reflect your values. Donate to African wildlife if you're fascinated by lions and zebras.

I donate to Wikipedia and the archive.org. I practice rational ignorance: I estimate that the costs of learning more about effective charity are far above the costs of doing it wrong. Maybe Wikipedia uses the money to create more and more small-fry side-projects (Wiki-maps, wiki-this, wiki-that). Maybe it funds Wikifeet, which is thoroughly weird. I don't care -- Wikipedia is one of the greatest accomplishments of H. sapiens sapiens.

(Malaria is still a big problem, and it's so cheaply improved upon -- if that touches your heart, go for it!)

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#123
post #55

If it's AGPL it's free software, not open source

It's both, i.e. FLOSS.

No, it's not both. Open source is a business model. AGPL is a free software license. Look at Wikipedia, or ask the license holder, the FSF.

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#124
post #77
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be a bit wary of something as important as invoices on the Rpi storage though. Hopefully there's some automatic backup.

Every single time the RPi comes up in an HN thread, someone mentions the reliability of SD cards. The truth is: 1) Regular SD cards were never designed to be OS volumes, of course they're going to fail when used for that. Buy better SD cards, like ones with high write endurance. 2) RPi 4 does not need to boot off SD card. It can boot from any USB drive of your choosing, or over Ethernet.

It's much easier to buy industrial [1] and high endurance [2] microSD cards now. SanDisk/WD started selling them to the public due to the popularity of dashcams that record continuously. No more buying cards on digikey from a manufacturer you'd never heard of for 10x the price.

I haven't seen reports of these particular cards being counterfeited yet, but still... you probably shouldn't buy them from Amazon...

[1] https://www.westerndigital.com/products/commercial-removable...

[2] https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/memory-cards/sandis...

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#125

"I have a free version of open3A which is as useful as possible without any limits but of course it is missing advanced functionality. This version gets full support by me via phone and email." I think that providing support for free version is somewhat unique, however it does make sense - the longer people use her software the more likely they purchase add-on or subscription.

It depends on customer base. This is B2B solution so I assume when she picks up the phone the caller is someone who values own time.

That way she can hear about frequent needs of users who don't buy the thing when it lacks some essential feature, also could upsell existing extensions or the boxed version. Customers often have no idea of potential the software offers.

Simply it is support+marketing+sales number.

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#126
post #49

I sell my MIT open source Video Hub App for $5 ($3.50 goes to a cost-effective charity - it's charityware). Over the 3 years it's resulted in over $9000 donated to protect people from malaria. Public: https://videohubapp.com/en/ GitHub: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App Charityware: https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-pro...

Doesn't Plex already provide a desktop app that does this ? https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#127
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to build charity ware to help offset some of the ethically questionable things I do, but I was wondering how did you choose a cause to donate toward? Did you know someone personally who perished from malaria? There’s so many things that can be donated to I don’t know how to pick one or evaluate where donations would even be most effective.

Donating money is an act of self-expression. Do learn about effective altruism, cost-effectiveness, impact, etc. but know that it will ultimately reflect your values. Donate to African wildlife if you're fascinated by lions and zebras. I donate to Wikipedia and the archive.org. I practice rational ignorance : I estimate that the costs of learning more about effective charity are far above the costs of doing it wrong.…

Effective altruism isn't opposed to your values. It's about achieving your values as much as possible, given resource constraints. If your values are different from most EAs, then you'll have a different criterion for "effectiveness".

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#128
post #117
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efforts work best when they are focused on helping with a problem that you have direct experience with. I think the long term large impact of pushing back against these ethically questionable things, even at the expense of your long term career earnings potential, would have a better result for society. If you can't push back on that stuff internally, consider publicizing the behaviors and starting a conversation aro…

Efforts work best when they are focused on cost-effective interventions, not things you have direct experience with. Just about 100% of the US population have no experience with malaria. Yet it costs about $2 to provide a insecticide-treated net that protects on average 2 people for 2-3 years from malaria (while they sleep -- a common time for malaria transmission). There is arguably nothing you can do with $2 of res…

Then, it's possible that nets are being distributed by evil people who make their victims kneel for hours before getting help. (This is extreme, but it could involve things diametrically opposed to your values; maybe Islam is being spread in traditional animistic societies[0], destroying traditional culture; maybe they're micro-chipping these people.) Cost-effectiveness is a good metric, but if you know nothing about what's involved in curing malaria...

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[0] Semi-relatedly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Save_the_Children_Fund_Fil...

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#130
post #70

Kudos to the author! I don't get this part: > In 2021 I recently launched my newest product: It's called open3ABox and it's a raspberry pi with open3A pre-installed which I deliver to my customers who have not the technical skills for their own server but don't want a cloud version either. It's fully remote managed and monitored by me more steady income, yay When people object to cloud (SaaS really), I tend to think…

My thoughts exactly--Having a fleet of client-side machinery open to the Internet sounds like a larger overall risk footprint than having one hosted solution. I'm guessing a bit part of this is just customer psychology and lack of education.

Why do you think it is opened to the Internet? May be just a box behind a NAT calling home and/or be part of closed VPN swarm.

I would love to hear how the management part got implemented.

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