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Open Source does not win by being cheaper

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Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#61

Post by mooreds »

rubenfiszel wrote: post #33

Interesting post and would like to bring nuance as the founder of an open-source alternative to Retool and Airplane: https://github.com/windmill-labs/windmill Our enterprise edition is clearly cheaper (between 2-5x cheaper based on customers migrating away from those) than our competitors but we bet on volume and lack of sales team to make it up for it in terms of margins. There are pragmatic reasons for it, our comm…

Loved your podcast here: https://podcast.scalingdevtools.com/episodes/ruben-fiszel-fr...

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#62

Post by musicale »

kelnos wrote: post #48
musicale wrote: post #28

> For some, this might be a tough pill to swallow. But a for-profit business exists for profit. No, a business usually exists to provide some useful good or service to its customers. FedEx delivers packages. Apple makes phones and computers. Etc. > Definitionally and practically. Profit is what allows the company to hire employees, grow, and sustain itself—it is quite literally what funds ongoing development That's g…

> No, a business usually exists to provide some useful good or service to its customers. FedEx delivers packages. Apple makes phones and computers. Etc. That's just an avenue to make profit. If those activities weren't profitable, they probably wouldn't get done, outside of government regulation or subsidy. Sure, some businesses are "labors of love", but they still would likely not exist if they were break-even, cert…

Apple's mission statement isn't "try to extract as much money from our customers' wallets as possible" or even "deliver the highest profit and value to our shareholders." (Recall Tim Cook's comment on the "bloody ROI.")

In fact I'd be hard-pressed to find such a mission statement for a non-financial firm - at least one that doesn't mention any other purpose for the company.[1]

It's a mistake to think that companies only exist for the benefit of their owners or shareholders. Realistically there are many stakeholders including employees, customers, and society at large.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/mission-statement-ex...

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#63

Post by justinclift »

version_five wrote: post #32
jandrese wrote: post #3

I've always been annoyed that companies will pay 6 figures for a support contract, but won't consider hiring a full time engineer for the same or less pay to support an open source product that does the same thing. The support contracts are often disappointing too, like you are paying $200,000+ a year for the stupid thing and they won't even fix your problems? "That product is not our current area of focus". So frust…

Your company needs the maturity to manage that engineer. Companies with products have customer success and sales etc and their own engineering management and product hierarchy to translate your end user issue into a software fix. That doesn't happen automatically by staffing and engineer in house. How would a company even figure out the profile they need?

> How would a company even figure out the profile they need?

Generally by asking the existing developers of the software project in question. Some of them might be the person you'd end up hiring anyway.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#64

Post by lolinder »

brap wrote: post #22
msy wrote: post #5

The problem with this business model is it creates a tension between the OSS version and the paid versions - you want the OSS version to be good, but not such a good solution that nobody feels the need to pay for your SaaS/consulting/etc. That tension seems to inevitably lead to obvious features missing or functionality/knowledge that's needed to operate at any scale coistered away as closed source so the sponsoring…

What’s the pattern you’re referring to? I’m curious how these infra projects keep AWS/GCP from killing them

HashiCorp is the latest big name to do it—they switched to the BUSL, which more or less says you can only use the product if you aren't offering it for sale in competition with HashiCorp:

https://www.hashicorp.com/bsl

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#65

Post by paxys »

jandrese wrote: post #3

I've always been annoyed that companies will pay 6 figures for a support contract, but won't consider hiring a full time engineer for the same or less pay to support an open source product that does the same thing. The support contracts are often disappointing too, like you are paying $200,000+ a year for the stupid thing and they won't even fix your problems? "That product is not our current area of focus". So frust…

By that line of reasoning software companies should not be a thing at all and everyone should hire engineers and write all their software in-house. Hiring and maintaining a team of developers is hard, especially if the problem they are solving is not in your domain. Contracting a problem out to specialists is most often the more sensible option for both parties.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#66

Post by dpig_ »

musicale wrote: post #44
maltalex wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, a business usually exists to provide some useful good or service to its customers. FedEx delivers packages. Apple makes phones and computers. Etc. What? If Apple or FedEx could get customers to (sustainably) pay them without actually providing a product in return, do you think they would have kept making phones and delivering packages just for the hell of it?

> What? If Apple or FedEx could get customers to (sustainably) pay them without actually providing a product in return, do you think they would have kept making phones and delivering packages just for the hell of it? That's a strange counterfactual. Why would customers keep paying a company that doesn't provide any goods or services to anyone? They're not really "customers" anymore if all that is happening is money t…

It's not really strange at all. It's a clear illustration of why your perspective is incomplete.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#67

Post by jiggawatts »

debarshri wrote: post #52
jandrese wrote: post #3

I've always been annoyed that companies will pay 6 figures for a support contract, but won't consider hiring a full time engineer for the same or less pay to support an open source product that does the same thing. The support contracts are often disappointing too, like you are paying $200,000+ a year for the stupid thing and they won't even fix your problems? "That product is not our current area of focus". So frust…

I am engineer, now trying to sell enterprise software. May be I can shed some light. If a company says it is not their current focus even after paying 200k, you should looking into finding an alternative vendor who is willing to go above and beyond. A good vendor gets you by features and keeps you with exceptional service. I have seen vendors saying that those words when they are in extraction mode. In my opinion org…

> saying that those words when they are in extraction mode.

These words were almost verbatim used this morning in a meeting. A small agile ISV was purchased by one of those big "holding companies" and now everything is "for consideration", "not on the roadmap", "not strictly required", or like you said "not their current focus".

We've been raising issues like: "You're using frameworks and SDKs that went end-of-life years ago for Internet-facing security-critical components, how is that not your current focus!?" and hearing crickets in response.

Support contract is in place, but there's no specific clause requiring them to do their job, so they're not doing it.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#68

Post by djbusby »

mouse_ wrote: post #20
ilyt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck trying to get any actual liability out of them... Like, go try to make Oracle write you a contract where their base going down compensates your lost profits. You just won't get it, unless you throw some hideous amount of money their way (and they will just pay insurance company and pocket the rest).

It's not about compensation, it's about finger-pointing. "WE didn't bill your card 40 times draining your bank account -- STRIPE did! Go sue them, not us!"

Risk Mitigation

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#69

Post by andrewstuart2 »

debarshri wrote: post #52
jandrese wrote: post #3

I've always been annoyed that companies will pay 6 figures for a support contract, but won't consider hiring a full time engineer for the same or less pay to support an open source product that does the same thing. The support contracts are often disappointing too, like you are paying $200,000+ a year for the stupid thing and they won't even fix your problems? "That product is not our current area of focus". So frust…

I am engineer, now trying to sell enterprise software. May be I can shed some light. If a company says it is not their current focus even after paying 200k, you should looking into finding an alternative vendor who is willing to go above and beyond. A good vendor gets you by features and keeps you with exceptional service. I have seen vendors saying that those words when they are in extraction mode. In my opinion org…

I respect your position but it doesn't sound like you've worked for any company that's decided to "buy in to the ecosystem" for any sufficiently large ecosystem. Get all your data in DataDog and try to leave. Build your business on IBM and see how agile you are in 25 years. Same goes for pretty much any large enterprise software, even the free ones. Good luck leaving git. Good luck de-kubernetesifying someday to a higher or lower level of abstraction.

And good luck getting the procurement department to approve your exception to not use the #blessed vendor for just your org. What happens is, everyone does that and then spends 20x more money on 5x vendors and then the other 15x is trying to integrate them all so you have a coherent business.

My experience has been, service contracts are a great way to feel a false sense of security and burn cash until you need service, and then they're a great way to sit on a phone call watching revenue burn while you say "they haven't gotten back to us yet" until they say "yeah it looks fine on our end, sorry."

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#70

Post by [deleted] »

jandrese wrote: post #3

I've always been annoyed that companies will pay 6 figures for a support contract, but won't consider hiring a full time engineer for the same or less pay to support an open source product that does the same thing. The support contracts are often disappointing too, like you are paying $200,000+ a year for the stupid thing and they won't even fix your problems? "That product is not our current area of focus". So frust…

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