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Open-source infrastructure is not venture-backable

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Re: Open-source infrastructure is not venture-backable

#101

Post by wildmXranat »

So I like everything that Zed Shaw wrote on this topic before. Whether his points were mostly or somewhat correlated with her point of view, I don't remember, but it was full of great ideas.

His project Mongrel, allowed other for profit Ruby projects exist in the way that the community needed.

A good analog of getting paid with 'free to use' theory are calculators. We know that 2 + 2 is 4. The theory is free and out there. If you want a thing that does the calculation for you, then you gotta pay $5 for a calculator.

CS theory is similar. Each tool or abstraction builds on a previous one. While we can't charge at each step of abstraction, we can at least license accordingly to encourage sharing of profits made from it's use.

Re: Open-source infrastructure is not venture-backable

#102

Post by nickpsecurity »

wildmXranat wrote: post #101

So I like everything that Zed Shaw wrote on this topic before. Whether his points were mostly or somewhat correlated with her point of view, I don't remember, but it was full of great ideas. His project Mongrel, allowed other for profit Ruby projects exist in the way that the community needed. A good analog of getting paid with 'free to use' theory are calculators. We know that 2 + 2 is 4. The theory is free and out…

Got a link to a comparable Zed Shaw post you were thinking about? I've only read a few of his but enjoyed them.

Re: Open-source infrastructure is not venture-backable

#103

Post by nickpsecurity »

lmeyerov wrote: post #93
agibsonccc wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. We're open core ourselves. In our case the algorithms which researchers can benefit from aren't the same as what the businesses pay for (GUIs, integrations,support,..) which allows us to serve both fairly well.

So let's play this out: Community user: this is awesome, let me add this bugfix Company: bugfix tweaked/improved & in mainline. Come speak at our conference! Community user: cool. Now here's this admin tool. Company: uh,no,sorry,please keep that out of the main repos. Community user: but admin is pretty central... When the center of the community actively dissuades core contributions, which is what we see, the alignm…

This is a worry that's mentioned in any article of business models. Do you know if anyone has collected actual data on how often a community version got parity with enterprise edition and significantly burned the sales?

It's a good hypothesis but I'm not sure it happens often in practice. Most companies I found that had a premium model still have a premium model. Mine wasn't a large sample, though.

Re: Open-source infrastructure is not venture-backable

#104

Post by nickpsecurity »

sarciszewski wrote: post #54
adekok wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most open source infrastructure tools lack a business model to capture revenue from its users. Like youtube videographers? Who start off doing it for fun, and then later monetize it? That evidence shows you're wrong.

How do you monetize, say, OpenSSL?

Hardware accelerators or appliances that do it faster and painlessly is another option. Safenet makes a nice living on stuff like that. Plus, it's harder to "fork" hardware. These usually have support contracts, too.

Re: Open-source infrastructure is not venture-backable

#105

Post by hwestbrook »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #39
hwestbrook wrote: post #24

Seems as though she undermines her whole point with the "Here’s what is true about the “open source is really well funded” myth" section. The open source projects that people/businesses really care about are funded. Isn't a non-funded open source project just one an open source project that no one really cares about? I think there is a really subtle line that she has missed by assuming all open source projects develo…

> The open source projects that people/businesses really care about are funded. Isn't a non-funded open source project just one an open source project that no one really cares about? It's one that no one with substantial spare cash cares about. Granted, it's broadly understood that people without money aren't actually people, but it's considered gauche to say so out loud.

Are you taking my argument and projecting it onto how people are valued within a society, and even onto how I value people?

That would stretch my argument to encapsulate a much broader topic than was intended. You would have to make a lot of assumptions both about me and my argument to do so.

Re: Open-source infrastructure is not venture-backable

#106

Post by nayafia »

dang wrote: post #76
nayafia wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hi there! I wrote this article. Glad to see it on HN. I didn't see the original headline, but wanted to point out that the current headline is IMO inaccurate. OSS infrastructure isn't an overlooked category for VC funding; it's just not venture backable. My suggestion was not that VC should fix the problem, but that we in tech should recognize the issue and find another way of supporting it.

Well I think we have to go with the author's interpretation. :) Thanks!

thank you! :)

Re: Open-source infrastructure is not venture-backable

#107

Post by someguydave »

adelevie wrote: post #98
someguydave wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My objection isn't to the cuteness of the bot - it's to the waste of taxpayer's money. Could you really look an elderly taxpayer in the eye and tell them that building slackbots with their bottom dollar is a great idea without feeling a tinge of guilt?

Employees who are happy and feel included are going to produce better work (and a better return on the invested tax dollar) than those who aren't. I'd also expect second-order benefits such as helping us recruit from a wider, more diverse pool of applicants. Of course there are boundaries to the happiness-increases-productivity dynamic, but quickly coding up a Slack bot seems well within the safe range.

> Employees who are happy and feel included are going to produce better work

Sure, but to what degree? Does the 'gained productivity' actually pay for the cost of maintaining 'happiness infrastructure'?

Re: Open-source infrastructure is not venture-backable

#108

Post by ci5er »

vanattab wrote: post #83
sarciszewski wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for that spectacular TL;DR. No rational investor wants to invest in something that will absolutely not give them a return. Most open source infrastructure tools lack a business model to capture revenue from its users. So one of several things will have to happen in order for open source infrastructure to get funded: - Investors will part ways with their money, full knowing that they will not see a return. (…

Based on my experience as a government contractor I have to say I think the government taking taxpayers money and funding open source infrastructure would be a terrible idea. What the government should do however is release all software it develops or pays to have developed from scratch as FOSS excluding sensitive defense systems and the like of course.

Interesting. I believe that VistA's (VA Hospital EHR) was originally open sourced because of a FOI filing. And then they (more-or-less) got behind it seriously. Contrary to the title of this posting, in 2005-or-so, there was more than one company formed around commercializing VistA that pulled down venture funding. Draper-Fisher-Jurvetson funded one, and I forget the other...

But this was strictly a "toss over the wall" kind of deal. No community edits or changes ever make it upstream. Is that the kind of thing you are talking about, or would you envision a structure where improvements were re-absorbed into the borg?

Re: Open-source infrastructure is not venture-backable

#109

Post by scrollaway »

adelevie wrote: post #99
scrollaway wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is turning into a debate, so let me apologize; it was meant as a one-off comment on how silly and counterproductive it is (imv) to write a bot for such things. If this bot isn't actually negatively affecting anybody, more power to you. I certainly won't be the one to tell you what you can and can't do within your company. Putting myself in those shoes, I would personally find it incredibly rude, and I highly dou…

> The person is assuming ill-intent on behalf of the speaker. This is where these kinds of issues typically go off the rails. With male-gendered language as the default, I doubt very many people intend to do anything wrong. It's how I learned to speak and I'm sure it's how many others did, too. A silly nudge from a Slack bot, is just that--not an accusation or a judgment of character. I was thinking about this a bit…

I've been thinking about it a lot and there's something seriously off in this "prevention-based" approach to political correctness.

People can get offended at all sorts of things. Maybe some girls will be offended at people saying "guys" gender-neutrally. A lot of women won't.

Are you going to write bots to prevent all possible verbal offences? What if some of those bots offend people themselves, what do you do then?

I find it interesting you mention the nondiscriminatory aspect of a bot as a feature. To me it's one of the most disturbing parts, and it's what creates the "passive aggressiveness" I was talking about. If you have a problem with the way I say something, you can be upfront about it with me and I'll change my behaviour. Writing a bot for it is quite a backhanded way of getting me to do something, with less chances of succeeding (and if anything, more chances of continuing out of spite).

Like I said though, all this is personal take. Maybe everybody at your company is fine with this. However, I did show this little post around and got a near-unanimous reaction similar to mine, which reinforces what I thought before: It is highly likely there's people at your company who think this is far more than "a silly nudge", and the bot would then have a completely counter-productive effect to its original intent.

Re: Open-source infrastructure is not venture-backable

#110

Post by scrollaway »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #37
scrollaway wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not uncommon, I've seen it a lot in England. If the group is 100% women, a lot of people would say "hey girls". It seems far less common in the US. But yes, "guys" is used as a gender-neutral "group of people". We also do it sometimes in french. As for whether it's PC/anti-pc/whatever, this is really down to the intent behind it and how it's perceived by the recipients. If you're a woman, addressing other women…

> It's far more offensive to have someone else police your words But which is entirely understandable in a workplace environment.

I'm truly sorry to hear you work at such an awful place that you might consider this acceptable, let alone understandable.
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