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Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

nirvdrum.com

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Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#121

Post by iandanforth »

jpollock wrote: post #77
Kequc wrote: post #52

I'm always brought back to the time I decided to literally sell everything I had and leave the country. A few weeks before leaving I listed each item I had for extremely reasonable prices. A $400 couch for $200, table for $20, beautiful custom framed long print of an old possibly rare poster for $50. Laser printer for $20. Ridiculously reasonable prices on everything on and on. Nobody bought anything and every thing…

I just had to do the same thing, and had a completely different experience. I sold our stuff on an auction site (TradeMe, the NZ EBay equivalent), with $1 reserve, and applied some of the lessons I've learned from lurking here. My wife thought I was crazy. She was completely ready with the "I told you so". I argued that we didn't have time to relist it if it didn't sell at the reserve, so $1 it had to be! Everything…

I'm really interested in this, any chance you have the hard numbers on what you spent vs what you made? Marketing is a skill that I'm not great at so this kind of explicit example is very helpful.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#122

Post by mappu »

nirvdrum wrote: post #14
buckbova wrote: post #3

So what now? Did you get a day job? Honestly, there shouldn't be any rush to do anything. You released some good tools, and that's fine.

I came to the realization that Mogotest didn't have a future, at least with me, over the summer. I've evaluated a lot of opportunities in that time. The hardest part being that I didn't really have a clue what I wanted to do. My strategy was to cast a wide net and see if anything excited me. It took a while, but I'm happy to say I joined as a researcher at Oracle Labs working on their JRuby/Truffle implementation. I…

Currently the only other downstream comment from this post starts with "Bummer to hear that".

So I want to say, congratulations on your new job. It sounds incredibly interesting. I hope you enjoy it, meet new people and learn new things.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#123

Post by akerl_ »

zanny wrote: post #85
toolshift wrote: post #18

Having been through this kind of decision before, this really resonates with me. Especially the pettiness. When your business fails after years of struggle because people didn't want to pay for your software, and those same people make you feel guilty for not supporting the codebase after you can't pay the bills... that breeds the kind of resentment that creates real-life Walter Whites. It's hard to understand the ex…

> In short, please pay for your software. I regularly donate to several free software projects (kde, gimp, vlc, firefox, and occasionally others) because they respect my freedom. I strive to avoid proprietary products. If other developers want my money, I want my software freedoms. Those that provide them get money from me. I do understand this is not the norm behavior, and it is awful that it takes developers disres…

Given that developers prefer not to starve and companies prefer to stay in business, if we're going to switch to a world where software is open source and everybody pays/donates even though the source is there, consumers need to make the change first.

As long as consumers don't pay/donate for opensource software, producers cannot afford to pull the ripcord and switch things over, even if they want to.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#124

Post by j2bax »

jpollock wrote: post #77
Kequc wrote: post #52

I'm always brought back to the time I decided to literally sell everything I had and leave the country. A few weeks before leaving I listed each item I had for extremely reasonable prices. A $400 couch for $200, table for $20, beautiful custom framed long print of an old possibly rare poster for $50. Laser printer for $20. Ridiculously reasonable prices on everything on and on. Nobody bought anything and every thing…

I just had to do the same thing, and had a completely different experience. I sold our stuff on an auction site (TradeMe, the NZ EBay equivalent), with $1 reserve, and applied some of the lessons I've learned from lurking here. My wife thought I was crazy. She was completely ready with the "I told you so". I argued that we didn't have time to relist it if it didn't sell at the reserve, so $1 it had to be! Everything…

Were these local buyers or were you shipping everything?

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#125

Post by Retra »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #87
Flimm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people value an open source product more than a proprietary one. Although in this case, the OP couldn't get enough funding to release it as open source.

If someone won't pay for a closed product, and won't pay to open it up, they don't value it at all.

Ah yes, money is the only measure of value in the world...

It's a good thing my kids pay me to love them.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#126

Post by toomuchtodo »

Retra wrote: post #125
toomuchtodo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone won't pay for a closed product, and won't pay to open it up, they don't value it at all.

Ah yes, money is the only measure of value in the world... It's a good thing my kids pay me to love them.

Note that I said, "They don't value it." That doesn't mean it doesn't have any value.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#127

Post by nirvdrum »

pnathan wrote: post #114
nirvdrum wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the purpose of my post was to paint a realistic picture of this process. I suspect much of what I ran into isn't an aberration. Creating a tarball and distributing it is a gross oversimplification of the process in many cases. And there's massive liability exposure in doing so. So, the question then becomes how much more do I owe society? Am I obligated to spend 40 hours to clean up the code? Should I pay for…

Those are really quite fair questions in reality: I'm arguing from principle, but I don't think your complaints are unreasonable. Reality exists, after all. :-) Let me pose a hypothetical example - Suppose your company produced the World's Shiniest Algorithm (WSA), allowing our total software energy use to drop below 10% of what it currently does. And, then, because your company is led by a scientist who can not run…

These are interesting points and my response wasn't intended to slap you down, as it were. I just see the question posed every time someone announces a shutdown here. And I don't think it's a bad question to ask, but it is quite loaded. I set out to explain why.

To your example, if someone tells you exactly how something was built, but didn't give you the source for the embodiment, that seems like a fine societal contribution to me. But, I'd probably argue that if it were truly that valuable to society, society probably should have found a way to support it, too. As long as the argument is no one owes a founder anything (which I can agree with), then the founder shouldn't owe anyone anything as a matter of fairness.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#128

Post by Bjartr »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #87
Flimm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people value an open source product more than a proprietary one. Although in this case, the OP couldn't get enough funding to release it as open source.

If someone won't pay for a closed product, and won't pay to open it up, they don't value it at all.

Actually there's an entire spectrum of pricing between paying enough to get the owner to agree to give the product or the source to you, and wanting it for free.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#129

Post by nirvdrum »

mappu wrote: post #122
nirvdrum wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came to the realization that Mogotest didn't have a future, at least with me, over the summer. I've evaluated a lot of opportunities in that time. The hardest part being that I didn't really have a clue what I wanted to do. My strategy was to cast a wide net and see if anything excited me. It took a while, but I'm happy to say I joined as a researcher at Oracle Labs working on their JRuby/Truffle implementation. I…

Currently the only other downstream comment from this post starts with "Bummer to hear that". So I want to say, congratulations on your new job. It sounds incredibly interesting. I hope you enjoy it, meet new people and learn new things.

Thanks! I don't think the other comment was meant to be negative. It was a bummer to shut it down. And it's one of those events you sorta relive every time you talk to someone. "Hey, how's the company doing?" Fortunately, I've gotten a lot of those out of the way by now :-)

So far, the new gig has been great. I was extremely reticent to join such a massive company, but it's the sort of work virtually no start-up would ever be able to justify spending resources on. The change of pace and the new experience should be worthwhile. And rather than working in a silo, I'm surrounded by some of the top people in their respective fields. It's ... different :-)

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#130

Post by nirvdrum »

hyperliner wrote: post #108
nirvdrum wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of leading and insulting questions here lead me to believe you simply didn't read the post. Go back and take the 15 minutes to actually read it. You'll find most of it answered. And feel free to spend a modicum of effort looking me up to determine to what degree I care about stars on GitHub.

That took some restraint. You are a nice human being for not responding to that comment like it deserved. I wish I could comment the way I would respond, but I am at work now...Good luck to you.

It's an acquired skill :-)
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