The real problem is that our scarcity based economy wasn't designed to deal with intellectual property.
Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money
111–120 of 454 posts
Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money
#112Its commoditized the cost to use software to near zero which has created a lot of unprecedented value and products that wouldn't be possible before OSS. Unfortunately most of the wealth created by OSS is being reaped by the large cloud vendors because relatively no-one pays for OSS but they do to host their production systems on it, atm this revenue goes directly to the major tech cloud companies which are using it t…
I think you are mostly right, but I don't think the major cloud providers have much of an uncrossable moat. Cloud services are and will continue to become more and more commoditized. Sure, there is proprietary lock-in. But because of OSS, it is also becoming easy to avoid the lock-in. For example, rather than use a hosted elastic service, I was able to launch an elastic stack on k8s in less than an hour of configurat…
Yes, but except at the micro level you need capital to compete, and getting hold of capital means paying rent to those who already have it. If you are clever you can make more than you pay back in rent, perhaps so much that you are in a position to lend out a surplus and collect rents of your own. But once you join the rent-collecting set, your economic incentives change drastically and you'll start getting lots of offers for moat digging services.
Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's more of an entertainment business, basically based on watching. Streamers are nothing else than sports arenas imho. or musicians. It's not so easy to get 10k people watch you code. I'd like to see it though.
It doesn't have to be restricted to livecoding. What about authors of the software you use answer to your questions? Well, to be creative, how much would you pay to watch Stallman dance for you?
He dances for free:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t96m2ynKw0
I'd pay to watch him not sing!
Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money
#114I'm currently experimenting with this directly. Specifically trying to make Open Source sustainable but for a consumer project. I think Open Source really works for infrastructure projects and it's possible to do really well either working on a system like Kubernetes or Elasticsearch. Not so well for projects that are more focused on consumers. My app, Polar, is focused more on consumers and is an app for people to m…
Some really quick unsolicited feedback (while I acknowledge upfront I know nothing about your business except what I gleaned from 10 seconds on your website): You say your model is "freemium" but I don't see a way to pay for anything on your website? That's not freemium, that's donationware. I'm not aware of any business like yours (consumer-focused desktop software) that's been successful as donationware, are you? I…
> Some really quick unsolicited feedback
go for it... really appreciate it.
> You say your model is "freemium" but I don't see a way to pay for anything on your website? That's not freemium, that's donationware.
Most apps that are freemium allow the user to use the app for free first and then convert later.
Right now the app will prompt you to upgrade once you hit a threshold.
Right now one of the challenges (with freemium) is that since we're a new app many people haven't fully integrated it into their work flow so asking them to pay for something which they are unsure about or uncommitted is a tough sell.
> nstead look for real-life examples of products like yours that people are paying an amount for that you'd be satisfied with (if you have examples like these I'd love to see them, I'd love for the model you're trying to actually be viable, I've just never seen it succeed).
Freemium has succeeded (github, evernote, etc) and OSS + freemium has too (Wordpress.org vs Wordpress.com).
> Finally, the business model for this product seems obvious to me: Charge a subscription for users that want to use sync more X than some threshold Y.
Yes... right now most of the users are still early so aren't actively using the sync feature.
I might step this up though and require more users to pay earlier than later.
Honestly the biggest challenge right now is distribution and user base.
We have a smaller user base (1500 active users, 4-5k monthly users) and I need to get this 10x at least. This is my goal for now. Without the larger user base all this other discussion is worthless honestly.
The challenges there have been around distribution. Improving our SEO, getting into the app stores, etc.
It's not as easy as it would seem. Takes a lot of science and testing unless you've had a ton of experience here before.
Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money
#115Its commoditized the cost to use software to near zero which has created a lot of unprecedented value and products that wouldn't be possible before OSS. Unfortunately most of the wealth created by OSS is being reaped by the large cloud vendors because relatively no-one pays for OSS but they do to host their production systems on it, atm this revenue goes directly to the major tech cloud companies which are using it t…
What about OSS as a talent acquisition and retainment strategy?
That's called "Check out the candidate's GitHub and see how willing they are to give away work for free and then hire that one and when they ask for a raise, say no and let them quit."
Rinse and repeat.
Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money
#116Its commoditized the cost to use software to near zero which has created a lot of unprecedented value and products that wouldn't be possible before OSS. Unfortunately most of the wealth created by OSS is being reaped by the large cloud vendors because relatively no-one pays for OSS but they do to host their production systems on it, atm this revenue goes directly to the major tech cloud companies which are using it t…
I'm starting to suspect that the major cloud vendors are well along on pulling a classic "embrace, extend, extinguish" gambit on that front. I'm sure there are a percentage of people operating in the cloud who stick judiciously to an open-source stack, and remain masters of their own future as a result. But it seems more common to spread some open source icing on top of a cake made out of ingredients like Beanstalk,…
The lock in is far more complete than it ever was in the Microsoft era, with Microsoft of the 90s, you could mostly still choose to just stop buying their crap, and stick with what you had while you migrate, or work out an alternative.
The minute you stop paying a cloud vendor, your entire infrastructure vanishes in a cloud of smoke, and if you relied on their "value add" proprietary services, you are left with basically nothing, not even the ability to run your own code, or in some cases even your data.
Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money
#117I'm currently experimenting with this directly. Specifically trying to make Open Source sustainable but for a consumer project. I think Open Source really works for infrastructure projects and it's possible to do really well either working on a system like Kubernetes or Elasticsearch. Not so well for projects that are more focused on consumers. My app, Polar, is focused more on consumers and is an app for people to m…
I've been building & running a niche website since 2015 that requires around 20hrs/wk in support, social media, and continued software development (all code gpl on github). It's become one of the most (if not the most) used software resources in my community, and users seem appreciative of my efforts. But I very rarely get donations. Previous appeals on social media for donations have resulted in small bumps that qui…
One issue I thought of, if you're going to pull yourself away anyway, is to just put up a banner saying essentially:
"This app requires community sponsorship and we're trying to raise $20k in April 2019 or there will be no new releases and we will close the project."
One way to look at it is that if people can't pay or won't pay then they don't deserve it or they don't care.
Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money
#118Its commoditized the cost to use software to near zero which has created a lot of unprecedented value and products that wouldn't be possible before OSS. Unfortunately most of the wealth created by OSS is being reaped by the large cloud vendors because relatively no-one pays for OSS but they do to host their production systems on it, atm this revenue goes directly to the major tech cloud companies which are using it t…
I think you are mostly right, but I don't think the major cloud providers have much of an uncrossable moat. Cloud services are and will continue to become more and more commoditized. Sure, there is proprietary lock-in. But because of OSS, it is also becoming easy to avoid the lock-in. For example, rather than use a hosted elastic service, I was able to launch an elastic stack on k8s in less than an hour of configurat…
Once you have your production systems running on a cloud vendor it becomes increasingly difficult to move off it regardless if you're only using OSS components, there's an inherent risk with every migration that grows the more services you use and years you host on it that needs to be offset with any migration and given the major cloud vendors are comparatively priced, there's little incentive to invest their time and energy doing that instead of focusing on their core business.
The small players will always stay niche, a cloud is effectively a network monopoly (like iOS and Android) with most companies only wanting to invest in the cloud that's going to have everything they need when they need it, they'll still offer proprietary services to differentiate against the other 2 cloud vendors and additional way to lock you in and make it harder to migrate away.
You could choose to build out your system to be completely cloud agnostic but that is generally regarded to be economically irresponsible in itself preventing you from leveraging the best features available in each cloud.
Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money
#119Its commoditized the cost to use software to near zero which has created a lot of unprecedented value and products that wouldn't be possible before OSS. Unfortunately most of the wealth created by OSS is being reaped by the large cloud vendors because relatively no-one pays for OSS but they do to host their production systems on it, atm this revenue goes directly to the major tech cloud companies which are using it t…
I'm starting to suspect that the major cloud vendors are well along on pulling a classic "embrace, extend, extinguish" gambit on that front. I'm sure there are a percentage of people operating in the cloud who stick judiciously to an open-source stack, and remain masters of their own future as a result. But it seems more common to spread some open source icing on top of a cake made out of ingredients like Beanstalk,…
Totally agree. I keep crowing IaaS only but everyone has their fingers in their ears going lalalalala. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just not my funeral now.
Re: Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed to Make Money
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some really quick unsolicited feedback (while I acknowledge upfront I know nothing about your business except what I gleaned from 10 seconds on your website): You say your model is "freemium" but I don't see a way to pay for anything on your website? That's not freemium, that's donationware. I'm not aware of any business like yours (consumer-focused desktop software) that's been successful as donationware, are you? I…
> Some really quick unsolicited feedback go for it... really appreciate it. > You say your model is "freemium" but I don't see a way to pay for anything on your website? That's not freemium, that's donationware. Most apps that are freemium allow the user to use the app for free first and then convert later. Right now the app will prompt you to upgrade once you hit a threshold. Right now one of the challenges (with fr…
Got it all makes sense, regarding "Right now the app will prompt you to upgrade once you hit a threshold." Is there somewhere you advertise what the threshold is and how much you'll be charged? I didn't see it on the site. That's the first thing I'd look for when evaluating a product like this, answering what's it going to cost me if I like it? (Not to mention it's comforting for me to know the owners have a plan for making a living maintaining it...)