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Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

nirvdrum.com

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Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#131

Post by [deleted] »

nirvdrum wrote: post #117
thecynic wrote: post #90

Is it possible that you failed at commercialization, and now you can't bear the thought that open sourcing your creation might lead to zero stars and forks on Github? Is it possible that the "bombardment of questions" you claim was nothing more than a handful, maybe in the half-dozen or so range, of people who wanted to offer you emotional support because that is free for them to do while paying you for a product the…

To be clear, since you made another snarky comment that you deleted, I did have paying customers and it was cash-flow positive. But, I couldn't hire a team on current revenues. And given I had bootstrapped a slow-and-steady business, I didn't have that awesome hockey-stick most people lie about, making raising substantially harder. It wasn't some 6 month operation that failed so I pivoted and I didn't piss through in…

[deleted]

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#132

Post by toomuchtodo »

Bjartr wrote: post #128
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.

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.

Price determination is always hard in business, but I'd like to think its a bit easier with software or SaaS products, as you have zero marginal cost (besides server time).

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#133

Post by jpollock »

j2bax wrote: post #124
jpollock wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They were all local buyers.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#134

Post by jpollock »

iandanforth wrote: post #121
jpollock wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, sorry, I have no data, this is pure anecdote. :)

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#135

Post by Dylan16807 »

tptacek wrote: post #17
Dylan16807 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's not the issue. People object to useful IP rotting in the back of a filing cabinet, unused. It's not about getting it free, it's about being able to get it at all. (Some people may want things for free but that's a different issue.)

That objection is a form of entitlement.

It's entitlement, but not entitlement to free stuff.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#136

Post by heliodor »

pnathan wrote: post #93
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've had the same experience. I think that's why B2B is so popular: people are willing to spend money to increase their corporation's value, when spending more than a latte's worth on personal software often is agonizing.

That's a direct result of people being salaried, meaning they're on a fixed budget. As a corporation, you put in something, and something comes out the other end. As a salaried individual, you put in something (more hours) and absolutely nothing comes out the other end.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#137

Post by JoeAltmaier »

heliodor wrote: post #136
pnathan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the same experience. I think that's why B2B is so popular: people are willing to spend money to increase their corporation's value, when spending more than a latte's worth on personal software often is agonizing.

That's a direct result of people being salaried, meaning they're on a fixed budget. As a corporation, you put in something, and something comes out the other end. As a salaried individual, you put in something (more hours) and absolutely nothing comes out the other end.

You're in the wrong job then. Product comes out; your performance review can improve, leading to raises and bonuses.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#138

Post by nirvdrum »

rudolf0 wrote: post #120
tptacek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not rebutting my argument; you're merely saying that the "entitlement" isn't in this case negative. You've confounded a positive argument with a normative one. Either way: it clearly is entitlement. Someone writes something, conjuring something new out of thin air. An unrelated person believes they have a moral claim to that thing. QED. I do happen to think this entitlement is negative, if for no other reason…

It is a sense of entitlement, but it's far more reasonable. If you spent years working on a codebase which at least a few people liked enough to use, is it really worth dumping all that code in the trash for all of eternity just because you'd incidentally end up capitulating to some obnoxious people when you open source it?

Setting aside the licensing issues, and assuming it's just because I don't feel like dealing with obnoxious people, something still doesn't make sense to me. Prior to announcing the shutdown, no one had access to the source. I've made a lot of it available since then, but not all of it. Today, they still don't have access to that source. How is society any worse off?

Unless your belief is simply that all code should be open source. And that's fine, but then it doesn't really seem tied to the shutdown of the company.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#139

Post by nirvdrum »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #72

Work on letting the pettiness go because it will only make your own emotional recovery more difficult. Honestly, it might take years for you to fully recover mentally but cynicism will just prolong it. If it helps you financially to not open the code because someone may yet still pay or because it saves you time then thats a good choice, don't feel bad one bit about it. But forget people who "should have paid" if it…

Thanks for the concern. I've sorta gone through this before. I ran another company (Servprise International) for 4.5 years and went through the adjustment back to a full-time job. The biggest difference is this time I'm older and wanted to think about something I could reasonably see myself doing for 3 - 4 years, at least.

I'm actually fairly at ease with things. Making the decision to leave it behind was liberating. Dealing with the BS required to shutdown a company is just annoying. But, the open source question has come up quite a few times. I wanted to give it more than a simple "no" answer and explain why. I feel like it's really a loaded question to ask a start-up that just shutdown, especially when it's not often asked of start-ups still running.

I threw the pettiness quip in there to be intellectually honest. Taken out, I don't think it materially changes the decision. But I wanted to address it. I'm human. I certainly have irrational tendencies and I'm rather okay with that. Sure, I'll work on them, but humans aren't perfect automata even if this forum is wont to linking to Wikipedia pages on logical fallacies. Even after challenging that part, I couldn't find a strong enough set of pros to outweigh the cons in spending more time to give it away.

Re: Open Sourcing a Failed Startup

#140

Post by marcosdumay »

toddgardner wrote: post #13

Giving your customers a soft landing is really important to maintain trust. They loved your product, and proved that the market existed--but it wasn't as big as you thought. When closing down, has anyone explored not completely shuttering the company, but instead continuing to exist as a licensing entity? License the source code itself to your existing customers so that they can continue using it, without all the mes…

I know that I'll sound like patio11, but have you tried charging more?

I mean, you have clients, that value your software. You have bills to pay. Do the clients value it more than the bills you pay? Why don't you try to discover that?

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