Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor

awesomekling.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 68 posts

Re: Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor

#31

Post by akling »

bvm wrote: post #24
akling wrote: post #14

Hello friends! I’m really happy to have Shopify putting their faith in our little project like this :) If you’d like a quick intro to the Ladybird project, I presented it at a conference earlier this month: https://youtu.be/De8N1zrQwRs Huge thanks to Mike, Tobi and the other folks at Shopify who hooked this up. <3

did this come about because shopify was the first page you visited in your May update video? nice bit of serendipity!

I first spoke with Tobi about this in mid-May, so it's been in the works for a while longer. :)

Re: Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor

#32

Post by defrost »

akling wrote: post #14

Hello friends! I’m really happy to have Shopify putting their faith in our little project like this :) If you’d like a quick intro to the Ladybird project, I presented it at a conference earlier this month: https://youtu.be/De8N1zrQwRs Huge thanks to Mike, Tobi and the other folks at Shopify who hooked this up. <3

Fantastic work on the OS and browser, congratulations on the sponsership.

I look forward to your future.

( and I'll see who I can poke on the native windows port front (no promises) )

Re: Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor

#33

Post by davnicwil »

WJW wrote: post #17
riffraff wrote: post #2

I'm very happy Shopify is doing this, but at the same time I'm mildly confused by the rationale. Is it literally just goodwill, or does Shopify stand to have other potential advantages out of this? Either way, cool.

Just off the top of my head: - Could be "just" goodwill, paying this out of the marketing budget to strengthen brand recognition amongst developers. - Goodwill amongst developers is not just a feelgood benefit btw. Being known for supporting open source projects might help with the hiring pipeline for example. Making current employees feel better about Shopify would presumably also reduce employees turnover rate, lea…

I'd say the amount donated (100k) suggests it can only really be marketing budget (possibly folding recruitment into this).

For an organisation of Shopify's size it's way too low an amount to invest if they expect significant strategic advantage from actually using the software.

Re: Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor

#34

Post by abyesilyurt »

akling wrote: post #14

Hello friends! I’m really happy to have Shopify putting their faith in our little project like this :) If you’d like a quick intro to the Ladybird project, I presented it at a conference earlier this month: https://youtu.be/De8N1zrQwRs Huge thanks to Mike, Tobi and the other folks at Shopify who hooked this up. <3

Congratulations and thank you Andreas for inspiring and encouraging developers like me to contribute to open source through your content. I began my open source journey by adding a snipping tool in screenshot utility to Serenity OS.

Re: Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor

#35

Post by WJW »

davnicwil wrote: post #33
WJW wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just off the top of my head: - Could be "just" goodwill, paying this out of the marketing budget to strengthen brand recognition amongst developers. - Goodwill amongst developers is not just a feelgood benefit btw. Being known for supporting open source projects might help with the hiring pipeline for example. Making current employees feel better about Shopify would presumably also reduce employees turnover rate, lea…

I'd say the amount donated (100k) suggests it can only really be marketing budget (possibly folding recruitment into this). For an organisation of Shopify's size it's way too low an amount to invest if they expect significant strategic advantage from actually using the software.

Investment size does suggest that, but I don't think it is as clear-cut as you say.

First, Ladybird is basically a one-man project and I don't think they are really looking to become a company as such. This means there is a practical maximum you can invest even if it was a very important project. The effect of investing 500k would be basically the same as investing 100k (ie, de dev behind can now work on the project full-time) and if you invest too much that might make it a shopify-exclusive project. If the goal is to sponsor a new widely used open source browser it makes sense not to monopolize it too much, because then people wouldn't see the project as "open" anymore. Now there can still be other sponsors.

Second, a project like this probably has a fairly low chance of actually succeeding in gaining market share from one of the big browsers. If shopify actually has some type of Strategic Investment Budget for commoditizing complements and the like, it would probably make sense to split it VC-style over many small projects rather than making big bets on only a few projects. If one of the small projects gains traction, you can always support it more when needed.

Re: Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor

#36

Post by marginalia_nu »

WJW wrote: post #17
riffraff wrote: post #2

I'm very happy Shopify is doing this, but at the same time I'm mildly confused by the rationale. Is it literally just goodwill, or does Shopify stand to have other potential advantages out of this? Either way, cool.

Just off the top of my head: - Could be "just" goodwill, paying this out of the marketing budget to strengthen brand recognition amongst developers. - Goodwill amongst developers is not just a feelgood benefit btw. Being known for supporting open source projects might help with the hiring pipeline for example. Making current employees feel better about Shopify would presumably also reduce employees turnover rate, lea…

It's also a way of effectively funding a non-committal proxy war on big tech.

I think almost everyone can see that the status quo creates a bad business environment, the big G can dictate terms far too unilaterally and is dire need of competition. Funding this sort of development can be a long term strategy to upset the status quo without risking the entire business by going on some kamikaze pivot that puts you in direct competition with Google or Apple. That would be investor relations suicide.

It's a very safe bet. It doesn't work out, and they lose $100k and can write it off as marketing and get some goodwill out of it. If it works out, and they sabotage Google for $100k.

One may say this is unlikely to succeed, that they are too entrenched, if it wasn't for the fact that this exact move succeeded already with Microsoft and Linux in the '90s.

Linus had nothing to his name but a janky Minix knockoff, and the entire userspace was filled with Richard Stallman's bizarre menagerie of hippie software. Does that seem like plausible competition for Microsoft, who at the time was by far the wealthiest software company in the world?

Well, as it turns out, yeah, Linux became one hell of a fly in the ointment for them.

Re: Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor

#37

Post by prox »

akling wrote: post #18
slekker wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations Andreas! One question that might have already popped up: with more and more attention going to Ladybird (in contrast to SerenityOS), how will these sponsorships direct what you do in both projects?

Thank you! Indeed, all of these large sponsorships so far have been specifically for Ladybird development. That’s also what I’ve been personally focusing on for many months already, so nothing really changes about my day-to-day. The main new thing this enables is hiring more full-time engineers to work on the browser. (Still have details to figure out here though!) That said, keep in mind that 99% of work on Ladybird…

We just talked about browser choices yesterday. I really hope we get back a “people’s” browser and not boxed in experiences from Big Tech that the market currently has.

I hope this project remains dedicated to such a vision!

Re: Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor

#38

Post by davnicwil »

WJW wrote: post #35
davnicwil wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the amount donated (100k) suggests it can only really be marketing budget (possibly folding recruitment into this). For an organisation of Shopify's size it's way too low an amount to invest if they expect significant strategic advantage from actually using the software.

Investment size does suggest that, but I don't think it is as clear-cut as you say. First, Ladybird is basically a one-man project and I don't think they are really looking to become a company as such. This means there is a practical maximum you can invest even if it was a very important project. The effect of investing 500k would be basically the same as investing 100k (ie, de dev behind can now work on the project…

You make good points, and yeah of course there may be a behind-the-scenes understanding that further funding will be made available as needed / when specific goals are hit, that's true!

Re: Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor

#39

Post by rglullis »

akling wrote: post #14

Hello friends! I’m really happy to have Shopify putting their faith in our little project like this :) If you’d like a quick intro to the Ladybird project, I presented it at a conference earlier this month: https://youtu.be/De8N1zrQwRs Huge thanks to Mike, Tobi and the other folks at Shopify who hooked this up. <3

Could you perhaps write up how this came to be? Did you know anyone there already, or did the contact come through some previous network? Did you put together a pitch deck or did they reach out to you first?

The reason I am asking is that I was some years ago I was working on an open source payment gateway for crypto which I was sure would be something interesting for companies like Shopify, and I even posted an "Ask HN" how I could approach companies to ask for sponsorships [0]. I'm not working on it anymore, but I'm pretty sure that I'd be if I were any better at establishing these connections.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23907711

Re: Welcoming Shopify as a Ladybird sponsor

#40

Post by akling »

rglullis wrote: post #39
akling wrote: post #14

Hello friends! I’m really happy to have Shopify putting their faith in our little project like this :) If you’d like a quick intro to the Ladybird project, I presented it at a conference earlier this month: https://youtu.be/De8N1zrQwRs Huge thanks to Mike, Tobi and the other folks at Shopify who hooked this up. <3

Could you perhaps write up how this came to be? Did you know anyone there already, or did the contact come through some previous network? Did you put together a pitch deck or did they reach out to you first? The reason I am asking is that I was some years ago I was working on an open source payment gateway for crypto which I was sure would be something interesting for companies like Shopify, and I even posted an "Ask…

Tobi (Shopify CEO) has been supporting my open source work via GitHub Sponsors since early 2022, so I reached out to him and said (very paraphrased) "I'm gonna start pushing harder on Ladybird, would Shopify want to be an official sponsor?"
Post reply on HN