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Democratising publishing

john.onolan.org

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Re: Democratising publishing

#11

Post by nightpool »

troymc wrote: post #9
nightpool wrote: post #7

I can't really comment too much on historical Wordpress politics—given Matt's recent public meltdown I'm completely willing to believe that he's continued to shoot Wordpress in the foot in more obscure ways in the past—but the posturing here vs. Wordpress really strikes me as someone who has gotten lucky and has attributed that luck to skill instead. What happens when Ghost gets popular enough to get their own "G Eng…

1) Many people or orgs who are aligned with Ghost and want it to succeed long-term will be okay with paying a bit more for hosting on Ghost(Pro); they might see the extra cost as paying for the continued existence and development of their publishing software. 2) Not all foundations-behind-open-source-projects use revenues from hosting as their sole source of funding. Notable examples include the Blender Foundation an…

Sure, I don't see where in my comment I imply this is a problem for all open source communities, just that it's a problem for the type of open source community John seems to want Ghost to be (no intellectual property, making revenue via providing services).

For #1, that is the kind of logic that works fine for the early adopters, but frustrates and turns away the people who just want e.g. a Substack that won't squeeze them for login walls or a Wordpress that is easier to use. I've seen a lot of non-technical people in that bucket turned away recently by Ghost (Pro)'s opaque and confusing member-based hosting costs. It makes it completely impractical to run a free email newsletter, and plenty of other Ghost providers seem to have this worked out. So all it takes is one of those competitors breaking through to achieve name recognition and get a lucky roll of the marketing dice to overtake Ghost in revenue. And then they can fund their own fork and the Ghost community is forced to agree to their development wishes or become outpaced by their proprietary features. It's a pretty bad place to be in.

Re: Democratising publishing

#12

Post by nightpool »

zokier wrote: post #10
nightpool wrote: post #7

I can't really comment too much on historical Wordpress politics—given Matt's recent public meltdown I'm completely willing to believe that he's continued to shoot Wordpress in the foot in more obscure ways in the past—but the posturing here vs. Wordpress really strikes me as someone who has gotten lucky and has attributed that luck to skill instead. What happens when Ghost gets popular enough to get their own "G Eng…

> I don't think Ghost is providing any new solutions here—they've just gotten lucky / been small enough to not be out-competed in their hosting niche yet. While I agree with most of your comment, I do want to point out that intentionally targeting to be small/niche is a kinda solution in itself. To me SourceHut is another good example of how being small can be winning move. Being sustainable with 1000 employees.

Fair! In this case though I meant small in terms of adoption—it looks like there are some alternative Ghost hosting providers, but none of them really have name-brand recognition in the same way Ghost does, and even Ghost is one small player in the "non-Wordpress subscription blog / mailing list" space. But a lot of my comment comes from watching the Redis / AWS Valkey split as well—even if Redis stayed as a smaller team instead of trying to compete with the hyperscalers, they'd still be stuck in the same catch-22—watching their revenue dwindle to zero while AWS and GCP competed on proprietary platform features.

Re: Democratising publishing

#13

Post by pessimizer »

troymc wrote: post #9
nightpool wrote: post #7

I can't really comment too much on historical Wordpress politics—given Matt's recent public meltdown I'm completely willing to believe that he's continued to shoot Wordpress in the foot in more obscure ways in the past—but the posturing here vs. Wordpress really strikes me as someone who has gotten lucky and has attributed that luck to skill instead. What happens when Ghost gets popular enough to get their own "G Eng…

1) Many people or orgs who are aligned with Ghost and want it to succeed long-term will be okay with paying a bit more for hosting on Ghost(Pro); they might see the extra cost as paying for the continued existence and development of their publishing software. 2) Not all foundations-behind-open-source-projects use revenues from hosting as their sole source of funding. Notable examples include the Blender Foundation an…

> 1) Many people or orgs who are aligned with Ghost and want it to succeed long-term will be okay with paying a bit more for hosting on Ghost(Pro); they might see the extra cost as paying for the continued existence and development of their publishing software.

Or the number of customers who would pay an $X premium to have "Ghost(Pro)" over another host (at the same features) will be roughly equal to the number of people who would spontaneously donate $X anyway. We have ample evidence that affection isn't enough to keep FOSS financed unless the developers are very visible and the ratio of developers to users is very low.

Re: Democratising publishing

#14

Post by saaaaaam »

I shifted a large 20+ year news publication from Wordpress to ghost about 18 months ago - and opted to use Ghost(Pro)

It’s been a dream. The core product for that site is a daily newsletter. On ghost it gets higher opens rates and more engagement than via the previous email backend. Build is far simpler too.

The clincher for me for Ghost(Pro) is that if you use your own hosted version of Ghost you need to plug into something else for sending email newsletters - which for the number of subscribers in this instance for a daily newsletter plus weekly wrap-up would cost a fortune. With Ghost(Pro) it’s all wrapped in. And their support is superb.

Re: Democratising publishing

#15

Post by anon7000 »

nightpool wrote: post #7

I can't really comment too much on historical Wordpress politics—given Matt's recent public meltdown I'm completely willing to believe that he's continued to shoot Wordpress in the foot in more obscure ways in the past—but the posturing here vs. Wordpress really strikes me as someone who has gotten lucky and has attributed that luck to skill instead. What happens when Ghost gets popular enough to get their own "G Eng…

Importantly, WordPress.com is not a predominant WP host! (Which is part of why Matt is lashing out, I think.) Yes, it hosts a huge number of small sites, many for free, but Automattic’s revenue comes from a lot of products. (Including e-commerce and enterprise.) There are a large number of healthy WordPress hosts. https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/web_hosting

Getting outcompeted is less of a bad thing as you make it out to be. Ghost is clearly not trying to be the most popular option. They only need to make just enough to survive and pay everyone. That is way easier than trying to grow 30% YoY for a long time. Capitalists and founders talk about how if you’re not growing, your product could be better because people could like it even more. Who gives a shit if profit isn’t your MO?

Literally all they have to do is avoid a scenario where no one wants to use them. If a competitor becomes the de facto choice and they start loosing customers, they can still make adjustments. That is a lot easier than trying to be a high-growth company.

Re: Democratising publishing

#17

Post by sieabahlpark »

saaaaaam wrote: post #14

I shifted a large 20+ year news publication from Wordpress to ghost about 18 months ago - and opted to use Ghost(Pro) It’s been a dream. The core product for that site is a daily newsletter. On ghost it gets higher opens rates and more engagement than via the previous email backend. Build is far simpler too. The clincher for me for Ghost(Pro) is that if you use your own hosted version of Ghost you need to plug into s…

[dead]

Re: Democratising publishing

#18

Post by 23B1 »

nightpool wrote: post #7

I can't really comment too much on historical Wordpress politics—given Matt's recent public meltdown I'm completely willing to believe that he's continued to shoot Wordpress in the foot in more obscure ways in the past—but the posturing here vs. Wordpress really strikes me as someone who has gotten lucky and has attributed that luck to skill instead. What happens when Ghost gets popular enough to get their own "G Eng…

> the posturing here vs. Wordpress really strikes me as someone who has gotten lucky and has attributed that luck to skill instead.

Twelve years is a long time to be 'lucky'

Re: Democratising publishing

#19

Post by dartos »

nightpool wrote: post #7

I can't really comment too much on historical Wordpress politics—given Matt's recent public meltdown I'm completely willing to believe that he's continued to shoot Wordpress in the foot in more obscure ways in the past—but the posturing here vs. Wordpress really strikes me as someone who has gotten lucky and has attributed that luck to skill instead. What happens when Ghost gets popular enough to get their own "G Eng…

The first line of the article seems to state that ghost is a none profit organization.

They probably don’t need to seek growth by shifting focus away from their open source aspects.

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