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Ask HN: What is the economics/business behind building an open source software?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the economics/business behind building an open source software?

#11

Post by webmobdev »

webmobdev wrote: post #4

Most often, opensource software are not opensourced with a commercial intent. They are created for ideological reasons and / or to highlight their professional skillset. Some of these opensource projects become popular, and soon the creator(s) become deluged with feature requests and / or support requests for the opensource software. Ofcourse, at some point it becomes economically unviable for a developer to provide…

To add to what I said, this is also a good read - Vivaldi browser and open-source - https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-open-source/ ... (Vivaldi offers a browser that is built on the open source chromium web engine framework. But in their previous avatar, they used to sell a closed source browser called Opera. The post linked to explains why they aren't 100% opensource.)

Re: Ask HN: What is the economics/business behind building an open source software?

#12

Post by webmobdev »

2rsf wrote: post #6

Another indirect reason is creating support for your product in another open source project. Qualcomm, for example, adds Linux drivers for their chipsets so they can be used in Android devices.

But aren't most of Qualcomm drivers closed source blobs? I remember that's why many mobile OS ports have to depend on libhybris ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_(software) ) to use the binary-only Android drivers of Qualcomm and other SoCs.

Re: Ask HN: What is the economics/business behind building an open source software?

#13

Post by jimmyvalmer »

webmobdev wrote: post #10
open-source-ux wrote: post #7

Developers often ask on HN: "How can I make a full-time living from my open source product?" Consider this scenario: You have created an open source library or programme and now want to sell it to customers. You would love to work on the product full-time. And it's important to you that the product remains open source. What are your options? - Offer the product for free, but sell support. (No developer finds this opt…

Offer the product for free, but sell support. (No developer finds this option appealing.) This is new to me - do developers really not like providing paid support for their product? It's one of the easiest way to make money! The whole of India's IT industry makes money this way - the annual maintenance contract is a tried and tested business model. Even I've made easy money by doing light sys-admin tasks on VPS for c…

Time was software makers could make a living just selling CD-ROMs in shrink-wrapped boxes. They'd of course augment their income by selling support, but few devs enjoyed "is your computer plugged in?" hand-holding. With everything now open-source, selling support is now all their income.

Same thing happened to music industry. Artists could live off record sales alone, but ever since napster, going on tour is no longer optional if they want to maintain a proper rockstar standard of living.

Re: Ask HN: What is the economics/business behind building an open source software?

#14

Post by 2rsf »

webmobdev wrote: post #12
2rsf wrote: post #6

Another indirect reason is creating support for your product in another open source project. Qualcomm, for example, adds Linux drivers for their chipsets so they can be used in Android devices.

But aren't most of Qualcomm drivers closed source blobs? I remember that's why many mobile OS ports have to depend on libhybris ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_(software) ) to use the binary-only Android drivers of Qualcomm and other SoCs.

check the Qualcomm supported open source code base at https://www.codeaurora.org/

Re: Ask HN: What is the economics/business behind building an open source software?

#15

Post by austincheney »

mimixco wrote: post #5

The simple answer is that enterprise companies often want open source for security and flexibility reasons, but they also want hosting, support, and custom services. The world's largest open source software company, Red Hat (which IBM acquired in the largest buyout in software history), makes their money exactly this way. Many smaller commercial open source companies like my own follow this same model. Google is anot…

I don’t think it’s fair to think of Google as an open source company. Everything at Google exist to reinforce search or advertising and those segments are not open.

Re: Ask HN: What is the economics/business behind building an open source software?

#16

Post by mimixco »

austincheney wrote: post #15
mimixco wrote: post #5

The simple answer is that enterprise companies often want open source for security and flexibility reasons, but they also want hosting, support, and custom services. The world's largest open source software company, Red Hat (which IBM acquired in the largest buyout in software history), makes their money exactly this way. Many smaller commercial open source companies like my own follow this same model. Google is anot…

I don’t think it’s fair to think of Google as an open source company. Everything at Google exist to reinforce search or advertising and those segments are not open.

This is 100% my point. The idea that open source exists to make software free for "the people" is the biggest and most convenient lie in our industry.

Open source exists because its easier to make money with software if you don't have to pay developers for the code you start with!

How you make money is up to your business model. In the case of Google, that's the egregious advertising and surveillance business. As much as I dislike that, it is still a business that monetizes open source software.

Re: Ask HN: What is the economics/business behind building an open source software?

#17

Post by relaunched »

Open source has become a marketing / sales strategy. Start out with something that is free, brought into a company by their own engineers. Then when the company starts to adopt it broadly, they charge for Enterprise level support and features. And it works.

From an investor perspective, it's great to see a strong top end funnel, prior to investing. With open core products, that's pretty straight forward.

There customer / product development is present through feature requests and, if popular enough, you get some free work. In practice, that might be a big driver upfront, but isn't a huge motivator as it grows. Additionally, open-source devs are a great and passionate early adopter group. So, all in all, tons of upside to going the open-core route.

However, the open source community isn't dumb and there are signs that, en masse, they are tired of getting used.

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