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Open Source does not win by being cheaper

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Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#241

Post by bigstrat2003 »

intelVISA wrote: post #239
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you know, if you're trying to make a profit on sales of the software itself. All the working open source business models work on selling service, not the software. Which is fine, but not everyone wants that business model.

Why would a client pay for a closed source wrapper over battle-tested open source libs? Excl. the rare case where the problem space requires a novel solution.

1. That's not what most closed source software is. It's kind of weird that you're equating closed source software to glorified open source wrappers, because most software (closed or open source) has a significant amount of work besides just "include some libs".

2. Even if it is a glorified wrapper, someone might want to pay so they don't have to do it themselves. Not everyone is a programmer, not every business wants to hire programmers (or their programmers are better used elsewhere).

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#243

Post by deaddodo »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #50

"Profit" is a strange and ambiguous term here. I've been running an open source, libre project for closing in on 24 years now, and generating revenue from it for about 17 years. There's never been any "profit", but there has been revenue. I regard profit as what's left of the revenue after you pay the people who work on the project and any expenses, which is the way most corporations and accountants would view it. Th…

I mean, you answered your own conundrum here. Profit is an overlay of Revenue, minus some other overlay. In this case, your profit is 1:1 with your revenue.

But you certainly have profit.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#244

Post by CrazyStat »

Kiro wrote: post #230
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This runs counter to every definition of profit I've ever read.

You use the profit to pay your salary. You could choose not to, or use the money for other things. That's no different than any other company.

Money used for business expenses like salary is not profit. Profit is (roughly speaking) what's left over after you deduct all your business expenses from your revenue.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#245

Post by brabel »

Applejinx wrote: post #195
brabel wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allegedly because I don't have time or interest to check it, and because if you're running a for-profit business and you need someone to clarify for you what profit means, I feel like there's something weird going on.

There is, but it's not where you think it is. That's the guy who runs Ardour. It's a fundamental DAW on Linux, as familiar as Excel on Windows: it is the foundation of Harrison Mixbus. He's also fundamental to the JACK audio subsystem. It's possible you've heard of him as one of the two first programmers at Amazon. His objection is mighty valid, here. You cannot say profit is a basic principle of open source. The who…

Fair enough, but saying ""Profit" is a strange and ambiguous term here." is bonkers regardless. It's not strange nor ambiguous, anyone reading this post should know exactly what those terms mean and the way an open-source company trying to make money would use the term. Whether you find it obscene or whatever that people want to make profit off open source seems like an unrelated discussion: profit is a basic concept everyone understands without ambiguity.

"The only sort of open source project that needs "profit" defined this way is one funded by a capital investment of some kind"

I guess this is what you chose to refer to... this is also a really weird take. The author finds himself in a position to define who needs profit and who doesn't because he's been participating somehow in open source for a few decades?! The OP's point seems much stronger to me, as they say something like "if you intend on growing and paying people to work on open source" you need to make a profit. If there's an argument against that, saying "you don't need it" is not at all a good one.

> Making wealth for individuals isn't in the equation.

So open source is only for people who are already wealthy enough to not need to make money? If you accept that working on open source is not feasible if you cannot make a living off it, and that you won't do it just for fun after day job, then you really should rethink this.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#246

Post by thinkmassive »

pjmlp wrote: post #234
thinkmassive wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the main reasons to donate a project to a foundation, such as the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), is to protect the community against this type of rugpull. A requirement for them to even consider adopting a project is that it isn’t under majority control of one single commercial entity. Do people honestly believe none of these projects compete with commercial solutions, or are they mostly oblivious t…

A better measurement would be how many of those projects are still relevant in 10 years from now.

From today, or from when they first joined?

Also consider that a project needs to not only have existed, but to already have an established track record of being vendor-neutral before it can join.

Kubernetes joined CNCF on March 10, 2016. Prometheus joined May 9, 2016.

In 2017, these 10 projects joined:

    - Linkerd
    - gRPC
    - CoreDNS
    - Containerd
    - rkt
    - CNI
    - Envoy
    - Jaeger
    - Notary
    - TUF
Of those 12, only one (rkt) has been archived. Do you honestly believe the majority of these will be unsupported 10 years from now, let alone 10 years from when they were added (or started in the first place)?

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#247

Post by pjmlp »

thinkmassive wrote: post #246
pjmlp wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better measurement would be how many of those projects are still relevant in 10 years from now.

From today, or from when they first joined? Also consider that a project needs to not only have existed, but to already have an established track record of being vendor-neutral before it can join. Kubernetes joined CNCF on March 10, 2016. Prometheus joined May 9, 2016. In 2017, these 10 projects joined: - Linkerd - gRPC - CoreDNS - Containerd - rkt - CNI - Envoy - Jaeger - Notary - TUF Of those 12, only one (rkt) has…

Now remove the ones with FAANG funding.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#248

Post by whatsdoom »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #223
jacquesm wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Paul, I've been a long time user of Ardour and would love to send some bread your way, but I'm absolutely allergic to Paypal, is there a way for EU users to send you funds directly via SEPA or something like that?

Sorry, there's no way for us to interface with SEPA at this time. It would not be that hard to setup a way to just receive money via SEPA (probably using Wise's multicurrency account system), but integrating it into the rest of our payment system would be gigantic, because of the totally different interaction model inherent in SEPA-based transactions (i.e. a bank would have to notify us of a payment). While I'd love…

FWIW that link didn't work for me seems the anchor tag is #paypal

https://ardour.org/faq.html#paypal

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#249

Post by ozim »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #50

"Profit" is a strange and ambiguous term here. I've been running an open source, libre project for closing in on 24 years now, and generating revenue from it for about 17 years. There's never been any "profit", but there has been revenue. I regard profit as what's left of the revenue after you pay the people who work on the project and any expenses, which is the way most corporations and accountants would view it. Th…

That is how Wikipedia doesn’t have a profit while it’s CEO takes 6 figure bonus.

Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper

#250

Post by GuB-42 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #216
GuB-42 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't make profit, you are a non-profit organization, or at least, you should be. Companies of all kinds, including open source companies are for making profit. Now you can make money running a nonprofit, by having the organization pay you, but few people do that, even in open source. Usually, you want your company to be worth something. A company often requires personal investment, and if you want to stop, yo…

In the USA, a 501c3 organization that sees revenues of over about $10k needs a fairly extensive board, officer insurance (to protect board members from claims about misappropriating funds) and other legal stuff. I considered this years ago, but decided that it was not worth the effort. > On a nonprofit, because obviously, you can't make profit, you can't get anything back from what you created. I do not agree with yo…

Ok, I don't live in the US, I didn't realize a nonprofit involved so much paperwork and bureaucracy. I shouldn't be surprised, it is a way to avoid taxes after all and governments like taxes.

But clearly, your goals are in the spirit of a nonprofit, and I think you are part of a minority.

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