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How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

indiehackers.com

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Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#31

Post by prepend »

nvr219 wrote: post #25
yakubin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't mention GPL. It's unlikely that this code is GPL-licensed. Moreover, yeah, probably the customer can modify the code, but can they resell it or share it with someone else for free? If not, it's not open source. From "The Open Source Definition"[1]: > The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing pro…

It says open source in the title. Turns out it is open source. "Interesting" Like... why did you expect it to not be open source

“I’m contradicting the author without validating my claim. And it’s super easy to validate my claim, but I just didn’t. When confronted, I complain that it takes greater than 10 seconds to verify my claim.”

This is curious behavior. There’s lots of incorrect and misleading articles. But I try to bring up questions only when exhausting reasonable investigations.

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#32

Post by yakubin »

prepend wrote: post #31
nvr219 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says open source in the title. Turns out it is open source. "Interesting" Like... why did you expect it to not be open source

“I’m contradicting the author without validating my claim. And it’s super easy to validate my claim, but I just didn’t. When confronted, I complain that it takes greater than 10 seconds to verify my claim.” This is curious behavior. There’s lots of incorrect and misleading articles. But I try to bring up questions only when exhausting reasonable investigations.

1. There is no link in the article to the zip file.

2. Searching for open3A in duckduckgo brings me to a page that spits out PHP errors and doesn't give me anything.

3. The only way that I now know where the zip file is, is because another commenter linked to it.

4. We've seen companies disguise something as open-source, when it wasn't.

5. Open source is commonly hard-to-sell.

So no, it wasn't 10 seconds to verify and the author didn't make it particularly easy to do so. My doubts are completely natural, given past news in "open-source". Are you commenting in bad faith?

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#33

Post by Shadonototro »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #8

The demo site is in German; a language selector is not obviously findable. It’s also excruciatingly slow to load! “Let the software speak for itself” - well, it did - if I were evaluating invoicing software I’d go look elsewhere mainly based on this very poor first impression. Could certainly use some optimization / speed up.

it's a full featured 2mb web app

it is not a bloated 20mb C# blazor simple todo mvc web app lol

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#34

Post by myth2018 »

mikehollinger wrote: post #29
protomyth wrote: post #6

In 2021 I recently launched my newest product: It's called open3ABox and it's a raspberry pi with open3A pre-installed which I deliver to my customers who have not the technical skills for their own server but don't want a cloud version either. It's fully remote managed and monitored by me This would be an interesting model for quite a few services. It reminds me of Ubiquity's cloud key. I wish some government grant…

Yup. That raspberry pi with stuff on it is a clever way of addressing a wider market. :-) If you’re clever or worried about business continuity you can learn from the practices of some enterprise it providers and add built in self checks, call home, and even charge for preventative maintenance. For example, “We noticed your dongle is overheating / having flash issues / whatever and not running optimally. Here’s a rep…

That would be cool indeed.

Besides, depending on the reliability of the available internet connection, it might be also useful (and easy) to add an embedded mobile connection as a fail over.

I know a guy who had some issues for that reason. The quality of the customer's LAN was extremely poor, but the customer (out of ignorance, bad faith or both, it wasn't clear) always blamed his software.

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#36

Post by tyingq »

protomyth wrote: post #6

In 2021 I recently launched my newest product: It's called open3ABox and it's a raspberry pi with open3A pre-installed which I deliver to my customers who have not the technical skills for their own server but don't want a cloud version either. It's fully remote managed and monitored by me This would be an interesting model for quite a few services. It reminds me of Ubiquity's cloud key. I wish some government grant…

I'd be a bit wary of something as important as invoices on the Rpi storage though. Hopefully there's some automatic backup.

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#37

Post by pizzazzaro »

mosaic_school wrote: post #7

Please correct me if I'm wrong but this is not how I understand the meaning of "open source software". It sounds rather like customers get source access. Do they have the right to sell the source code or re-release it in any way by following an open source license? ( https://opensource.org/licenses ) P.S. I'm not criticizing your business model or anyone elses.

[dead]

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#38

Post by indymike »

amenod wrote: post #13
mosaic_school wrote: post #7

Please correct me if I'm wrong but this is not how I understand the meaning of "open source software". It sounds rather like customers get source access. Do they have the right to sell the source code or re-release it in any way by following an open source license? ( https://opensource.org/licenses ) P.S. I'm not criticizing your business model or anyone elses.

Even though OSI clearly defines what "open source" means, it is sometimes (often even?) used as a synonym for "source available", as opposed to "free software" (which is the term that FSF promotes). I'm not saying which term is better, just explaining why "open source" might not be objectively wrong in this case.

This application falls in the commercial open source bucket. There's actually quite a bit of it, especially software written in interpreted languages.

Re: How I earn a living selling my open-source web-based invoicing application

#39

Post by touggourt »

yakubin wrote: post #32
prepend wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I’m contradicting the author without validating my claim. And it’s super easy to validate my claim, but I just didn’t. When confronted, I complain that it takes greater than 10 seconds to verify my claim.” This is curious behavior. There’s lots of incorrect and misleading articles. But I try to bring up questions only when exhausting reasonable investigations.

1. There is no link in the article to the zip file. 2. Searching for open3A in duckduckgo brings me to a page that spits out PHP errors and doesn't give me anything. 3. The only way that I now know where the zip file is, is because another commenter linked to it. 4. We've seen companies disguise something as open-source, when it wasn't. 5. Open source is commonly hard-to-sell. So no, it wasn't 10 seconds to verify an…

Basicaly you are just explaining that you've just done a very quick search. Fact that Duckduckgo doesn't gives the right answer an the first page is not an excuse. Actually, DDG printed a lots of comparison pages of business application for me, so I changed my search string, tried elsewhere, searched on indiehackers.com where she writed the post. This is more completely natural that becoming suspicious from nothing.

BTW typing only "open3A" in DDG gaves me the right answers all on the first page.

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