Here we go again. Open Source, as currently defined is hard to monetize, so lets go ahead and call Open Source something which makes it easy. Note though Easy Monetization was never goal of Open Source, so why not instead leave Open Source alone and focus on defining something different, which is focused on being easy to monetize.
The life and death of open source companies
31–40 of 207 posts
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#32The tragedy with any form of software development is that it becomes a commodity very quickly. That's why open source works so well for commodity software. The challenge is that while everybody needs commodity software, they aren't necessarily willing to pay for it. People pay for other things like managed services, support, etc. But not for software directly. Take operating systems as an example. Unless you have ver…
> You invent something, and then immediately turn it into a cheap commodity by releasing it for free.
Exactly. A 71-line python script https://github.com/getsentry/sentry/commit/3c2e87573d3bd16f6... was groundbreaking when it came out and the fact that it springboarded into a startup is commendable. But 15 years later and Functional Software Inc. d/b/a Sentry has to support 100+ (according to their marketing material) platforms as well as adding new verticals in UX session replay, web performance, backend profiling, CORS error monitoring, code coverage etc. just to keep the growth machine going. That's not OSS' fault.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#33My point of view, as a linux user from my teens to now, early thirties, I'm just some random, so don't take this too seriously. Are we totally out of touch? Let my explain myself, the idea that if the drivers/firmware were open source it will make the bet on some hardware safer sounds like this to me, "Someone could get it working and share the code in case the company goes out of business in a few years", emphasis o…
> Also, I find amusing when people get the pikachu face when some big corporation uses OSS and makes profit off of it, isn't that the whole point of the OSS? When I use it on my pc I'm also making profit for myself, the corporations are just doing the same but at scale, and if your goal is to make profit, who wouldn't use all the tools available? They don't have to like OSS, don't have to share the values of the OSS, don't have to 'give back'
That is the point of Open Source, but it is not the point of Free Software. Specifically -- and I know this was addressed in the article -- this is why AGPL should be what programmers are using. It doesn't discriminate, but it does make sure that any entities that use Free Software contribute back to the commons.
This bears repeating again and again; this is why copyleft exists.
> The terms “free software” and “open source” stand for almost the same range of programs. However, they say deeply different things about those programs, based on different values. The free software movement campaigns for freedom for the users of computing; it is a movement for freedom and justice. By contrast, the open source idea values mainly practical advantage and does not campaign for principles. This is why we do not agree with open source, and do not use that term.
Source: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#34I 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. these companies decided that they can leverage the marketing that is "open source" in order to gain mind share and traction, after which they start looking to charge. That is what i associate with any open source company.
It's not always pure marketing. There are companies who truly have open source / free software in their DNA. The founders are true open source proponents, and some people joined these companies because of the open source aspect. Because of this, sometimes, a majority of the people in these companies are pro-open source and will skew things towards this. Some don't even have investors pushing against this.
What do you think about WordPress, XWiki, Nextcloud, Passbolt, Univention, LinPhone, Element, Igalia for instance?
I don't know the internals of each of these, but I believe they all manage to make money from open source by keeping the free software / open source spirit.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#35Sorry, Armin, but this is such nonsense. Do you really think that Prusa going with non-free firmware is going to dissuade Bambu from undercutting them? The point isn't the firmware is free or non-free, hell, 3D printer firmware is rather easy to make. Prusa's was already GPL'd and there's no evidence that Bambu used it in their product, so making it non-free is pointless. The material issue is that Bambu is undercutt…
> Do you really think that Prusa going with non-free firmware is going to dissuade Bambu from undercutting them?
I don’t have an opinion on that. I know that Prusa is clearly keeping some firmware closed (for now?) that they previously developed in the open. They also talk about their disadvantages of being open. Does it change the undercutting? Probably not, but I don’t believe that many more Open Source players will enter the race now.
> But you can make money with genuinely free software, social contract and everything, if you're smarter about it than barking up the VC tree and promising infinite growth and monopolization using a tool (open source) which is not suited for that purpose by design -- that was Sentry's mistake.
Our funding did not motivate the license change. I can say this with clean conscience. I understand that I have biases here but I also do not want Open Source to turn into something that is exclusively for plumbing.
I don’t want Sentry to be my last adventure and I also don’t want to give up on Open Source. But I don’t know a better way either. When I start something new I’m not sure I’m any more the wiser when it comes to balancing Open Source and commercial interests.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
software has zero marginal cost, so therefore, if a piece of software can be used by the majority of humans, it makes sense that it ends up costing very little per instance of it. It's not a tragedy. It's actually a good outcome imho.
Software has zero marginal cost, that software engineers can imagine. My workstation runs all the time and I don't care that it consumes this 100$ of electricity a month. Who cares about amortisation of new hardware? New, shiny is new, shiny. There are some large, expensive server machines running my software? I don't see the bill, so the costs don't apply to me. There are dozens of engineering hours required to even…
> But an already well fed software engineer doesn't think that every minute of his life is precious and it costs way beyond the price of his dinner cheeseburger.
For some developers, if they were not developing open source software for free in their spare time, they would be doing something like playing games or watching movies. At least, when they use their time to create software, they can feel like they're doing something good for other people while improving their own skills - which can translate in better jobs and hence more money though I think most would do it even if that were false.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#37I 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…
> My recommendation is this - 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.
I would suggest the contrary: if you want to build a company and believe open source is the right way to do it, please do try! We don't have enough open source companies, we need more successful examples of this.
It's hard and there are traps one needs to not fall into. I personally think VC money is one of the biggest traps, it's absolutely critical you keep control of where and how the companies is going. If you don't have investors to feed, you may make enough money to pay the employees with a good strategy. You can even manage without open core, which incentivizes pushing the useful features outside the open core.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#38I 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…
Even if they end up not succeeding, OSS companies are a good thing for another reason: they shift the Overton window. Some companies are getting boo'd on HN and elsewhere for changing their license from OSI-style to source-available, whereas 10 years ago there would be no source available to the public at all. This is, overall, a positive development.
Well, there's no harm to them if they stop sharing their source X months after switching to source-available model.
It'll even be a net benefit since CoPilot will not devour their code, strip its license out and spit (sorry, emit) to anyone who asks the right questions.
An OSI approved license allows building upon that work, more importantly GPL prevents these improvements to go private.
Source-available provides "for your eyes only" view to the code, and is just window dressing when compared to other models.
I fail to see a net benefit, just a staggered backtrack.
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#39>They offer a user friendly experience at a very attractive price point That's what most users care about. That it just works and it does that at an attractive price point. The rest is ideology and politics, which is fine if it's what you are into, but most people won't care.
Caring about what happens to the thing you bought five years down the road when the company that made it goes bankrupt is nor "ideology and politics"
Re: The life and death of open source companies
#40Sorry, Armin, but this is such nonsense. Do you really think that Prusa going with non-free firmware is going to dissuade Bambu from undercutting them? The point isn't the firmware is free or non-free, hell, 3D printer firmware is rather easy to make. Prusa's was already GPL'd and there's no evidence that Bambu used it in their product, so making it non-free is pointless. The material issue is that Bambu is undercutt…
> Do you really think that Prusa going with non-free firmware is going to dissuade Bambu from undercutting them? I don’t have an opinion on that. I know that Prusa is clearly keeping some firmware closed (for now?) that they previously developed in the open. They also talk about their disadvantages of being open. Does it change the undercutting? Probably not, but I don’t believe that many more Open Source players wil…
>Our funding did not motivate the license change. I can say this with clean conscience. I understand that I have biases here but I also do not want Open Source to turn into something that is exclusively for plumbing.
Here's the thing: you are no longer working in open source. If that's right for your product and your company, then so be it, I wish you success. FSL is an interesting development in this space. But, you opted out. You did give up on open source. Okay, fair enough, but to square your conscience I think you need to acknowledge that.
If you want to chat a bit more about the problems of open source and commercialization, share your insights from Sentry, and hear some thoughts from someone who might have done differently, feel free to send me an email, sir@cmpwn.com. Would be interested in talking about it with you further.