It's yet another example of consumers being forced to choose the lower price, lower value product because they have no surplus due to the artificially extractive design of the monetary system.
The life and death of open source companies
181–190 of 207 posts
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#182I feel like the problem is defined in the title. Open Source. Company. These are two pretty distinct concepts, and the (traditional) motives for those two things don't merge terribly well. Over and over we see the same story playing out. Companies need to make revenues to sustain the employees. Open Source makes "competing" with an existing company trivial, but with none of the invested costs. So the first mover, the…
> decide if you want to make a company, or if you want to make Open Source. The number if places that have succeeded in both is vanishingly small.
Google releases Android source code. While people would like even more of it released, I can and have compiled LineageOS and put it on an Android device.
I could even go more in and get a Pinephone (I do not have one, but have a Pine watch). From another open source company.
Google released Angular and more OSS. Facebook released React.
Red Hat built a giant OSS business before being swallowed up by IBM - b2b companies to get swallowed up by big b2b companies.
On a smaller scale, Health Market Science released a generic database Java library I used. They needed to write some generic software to use, then open sourced it if anyone found it useful. Doing so did not threaten their business, LexisNexis acquired HMS.
Open source is released within and without companies. Lots of successful companies release open source. Most of what I use is open source - from my System76 laptop and desktop, to my Android and LineageOS phones, to my Pinetime watch. I suppose for people who don't program it the appeal level is different, but I do program.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but they haven't succeeded, for the reasons mentioned No, I haven't succeeded because I haven't tried yet. However, I am surrounded by open source companies that succeeded. The comment I responded to obviously reasons theoretically, and confuses some things. I will answer two aspects of it: > Open Source makes "competing" with an existing company trivial, but with none of the invested costs. So the first mover, the…
Thanks for responding. >For you to get customers, you need to prove the world that you are an expert. It takes spending time with the code, and also on marketing. I agree with this, and that the makers of P likely enjoy a big (and genuine) advantage in being considered the authority in all matters P. But for a competitor (me, in your example), spending time with your existing, working code is much less time and effor…
The real potential competitors are current staff. The risk is not that -I- want to invest all the time and energy, its that a small group of existing experts aka your current staff, decide to do it.
There's also possibly a small % of users who end up knowing enough to end up doing "mostly supporting others". They can end up becoming competitors as well.
So yes, this model can work, as its currently doing for you (and others). But it certainly is a lot harder to build, and keep such a business going.
Being an employee of such a business is great. You still get a paycheck every month, so the model is irrelevant. Owning such a business though is precarious - basically the staff can walk anytime, and effectively take all the customers with them.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but the response of "just try" is basically saying "do something the extra-hard way".
> do something the extra-hard way indeed > just try I did say "please" try, the nuance is quite important :-) You know, I think the views differ because we have two problems: 1. How can I create a profitable company 2. How can I make my open source work sustainable If you only target 1, open source might not be the more immediately easy solution. I'm aiming at 2, and 1 is one way to do it: given I want to live from o…
Oh, making a profitable company, of any kind, isn't easy :) . Most businesses fail. (90% within 5 years, something like 1% make it to 10.)
Of course there are successful examples of just about every model under the sun. If you can find a model, and a business which allows externalities like Open Source then that's fantastic.
And yo be clear I'm not saying companies fail because they are Open Source. Mostly they'll fail for the same reasons every other model folks- they don't generate enough cash to pay the bills.
Indeed Open Source can be an attractive start. There's at least a chance of free labor. There's some marketing milage.
The problem is not the start. The problem is when the money starts flowing. When you're "surviving" no-one is really incentived to muscle in. When you start "thriving" then suddenly your space looks really interesting to others.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Proprietary software isn't exactly scarce either. It relies on copyright and patent law to enforce a monopoly.
So...it's scarce? I genuinely don't understand what the point of bringing up copyright here is. Apart from a tiny handful of materials, even physical products rely on legal protections against counterfeits and knockoffs to be scarce. Why do we talk about software as if it's the first and only thing to be artificially scarce?
No it isn't scarce. There isn't a limited supply. There is no point at which the software company would say "sorry, we're out of stock". Unless maybe you are selling physical media with the software on it. With SaaS, possibly you are constrained by the capacity of your infrastructure, but that isn't usually a practical concern unless you have incredibly unexpected growth.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are four business models that I believe are sustainable for open source development. 1. Solo developer (or small group), funded via e.g. Patreon 2. Non-profit funded by sponsorships and donations 3. For-profit but the software is free; the company charges for support and/or cloud services 4. Open collective, where donations fund bounties that are paid out to people who contribute patches In other words, I think…
I'd slightly modify 3: a for-profit company that open-sources some software that is not a product in and of itself. For instance, Facebook can open source React because it's something they need, but it would not be a viable product on its own. Releasing it as open source doesn't give them any disadvantage. Similarly, a GPU manufacturer can open source their drivers because this won't prevent them from selling their h…
Their product is the hardware but clearly without software the product has little value.
So they invest resources in building the software.
Another hardware company comes along. Their product I'd also hardware. The software they get with no investment at all.
The second company has a strategic advantage. Far fewer software development staff. No carried software investment to cover. Hence lower costs. Hence cheaper product.
In theory company 2 sells nothing because the buying public understand the models, and are prepared to pay a lot more for the same or lessor product.
In practice the buying public doesn't know about Open Source, and the tiny fraction that do, don't care enough to matter. Hence the success of iPhone and the lack of traction for the latest "OSS Phone".
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
So...it's scarce? I genuinely don't understand what the point of bringing up copyright here is. Apart from a tiny handful of materials, even physical products rely on legal protections against counterfeits and knockoffs to be scarce. Why do we talk about software as if it's the first and only thing to be artificially scarce?
No it isn't scarce. There isn't a limited supply. There is no point at which the software company would say "sorry, we're out of stock". Unless maybe you are selling physical media with the software on it. With SaaS, possibly you are constrained by the capacity of your infrastructure, but that isn't usually a practical concern unless you have incredibly unexpected growth.
It has had artificial scarcity introduced to provide an incentive to create it. It's certainly an imperfect system in many ways, but it kinda sort does create scarcity that drives revenue which pays programmers to keep working on the software.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
So...it's scarce? I genuinely don't understand what the point of bringing up copyright here is. Apart from a tiny handful of materials, even physical products rely on legal protections against counterfeits and knockoffs to be scarce. Why do we talk about software as if it's the first and only thing to be artificially scarce?
No it isn't scarce. There isn't a limited supply. There is no point at which the software company would say "sorry, we're out of stock". Unless maybe you are selling physical media with the software on it. With SaaS, possibly you are constrained by the capacity of your infrastructure, but that isn't usually a practical concern unless you have incredibly unexpected growth.
Well, for closed-source software there's a scarcity of suppliers, not supply.
The value is not in "a copy of windows" it's that all copies of windows come from one supplier.
Yes there can be competing products, that achieve the same goals, or there may be scarcity there too.
Of course, even when achieving the same goals, some products are more desirable than others. There's no scarcity of OS options, but some would seem to be more popular.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#189I feel like the problem is defined in the title. Open Source. Company. These are two pretty distinct concepts, and the (traditional) motives for those two things don't merge terribly well. Over and over we see the same story playing out. Companies need to make revenues to sustain the employees. Open Source makes "competing" with an existing company trivial, but with none of the invested costs. So the first mover, the…
I don't thing that is necessarily the case. If your model is to sell the software as a SaaS, then yes it gives you a disadvantage, because someone else can just take it and sell the same thing without paying for development. Same thing if you sell a packaged product. If you sell support, you have a slight advantage, because you have more expertise in your product since you created it, and can make changes directly to…
Actually this is exactly how many, if not most, software companies are set up today.
The interested parties in this case are users. They pay a small subscription each month. That subscription pays for development, support, hosting, and so on.
Its the very definition of sustainable because it doesn't rely on "new sales" to fund existing customers. The overall cost is spread very thinly across the ones who are benefiting.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#190I feel like the problem is defined in the title. Open Source. Company. These are two pretty distinct concepts, and the (traditional) motives for those two things don't merge terribly well. Over and over we see the same story playing out. Companies need to make revenues to sustain the employees. Open Source makes "competing" with an existing company trivial, but with none of the invested costs. So the first mover, the…
> So the first mover, the program author, is always at a strategic disadvantage. I disagree with that part. You have the people who know and understand the code, that's worth a tremendous amount. This also applies for new features, who else is gonna be as proficient as your people at building on top of it? Also a lot of enterprise contracts are all about assured support, who is placed better than you to provide it? Y…
You cant "have" people.
Yes, today a bunch of highly skilled, highly trained people happen to work for you.
Tomorrow those same people get hired by your customers, strike out on their own, or join the competition.
All the points you raise are true. But the company doesn't "own" the people, it can only exploit them for as long as they hang around.