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Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

blog.hiri.com

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Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#301

Post by dpower »

TuringTest wrote: post #65

"Unfortunately, the fundamentalist FOSS mentality we encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. Some Linux blogs and Podcasts simply won’t give us the time of day. This is not a problem with the mainstream tech blogs and is a problem unique to Linux." It seems weird that this guy will try to promote his product to the Linux community and chooses to do it by insulting its user base. While not all Linux users have…

Hi there - I'm the author of the post in question. I chose my language carefully. I do think FLOSS only is a fundamentalist position. The word is used to describe a religious believer who interprets scripture literally. I did mean to bring the baggage, but to provoke thought rather than to insult. And I must stress, this only applies to those who believe in FLOSS ONLY, completely turning their back on proprietary software. It's my opinion that this is not a rational position. Proprietary software can complement FLOSS. This is for the people who write to me and say "Not open source? Forget about it!".

Personally, I am a fan of FLOSS. What's not to like? But sometimes private companies compelled to compete in a free market produce better software. Seems to be especially true of consumer facing software. Think Gimp vs. Photoshop or Sketch.

Also, I don't think this is true anymore: "most got attracted to the platform for the advantages of its open and freely usable code". It used to be true, but I think Linux has wider appeal now. And I think that's a good thing.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#302

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

ben509 wrote: post #282
dogma1138 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly while it might sounds like I’m speaking out of my ass that’s a bad business model. Outlook is one of the best mail clients out there, not many can disagree about that. The Office 365 web client is nearly identical these days and it runs in the browser. You aren’t going to out Office Microsoft that is just a fools errand. You can maybe focus on better mail clients for the desktop but there are quite a few goo…

> Outlook is one of the best mail clients out there, not many can disagree about that. > You aren’t going to out Office Microsoft that is just a fools errand. Having used Outlook for a while, even on Windows, I'm shocked that people describe Outlook as good. It may be the least worst, but Outlook is, being generous, a very mediocre piece of software. That's Microsoft's strategy in a nutshell: be Good Enough for a ver…

> That's Microsoft's strategy in a nutshell: be Good Enough for a very large captive audience.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#303

Post by [deleted] »

mattl wrote: post #284
toopsss wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My field of endeavor involves running non-free software. So which is it? Is it non-discrimatory or am I doing something against the creators wishes?

Your field of endeavor has nothing to do with a free software license. A piece of free software cannot say nobody using proprietary software cannot use it, however proprietary software is against the wishes of the original developers of what is best described as GNU/Linux.

[deleted]

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#304

Post by untangle »

jerguismi wrote: post #221
mattl wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, the fundamentalist FOSS mentality we encountered on Reddit is still alive and well. This is incredibly rude. You may not like it, but GNU/Linux was built by people for user freedom, not for proprietary email clients. Instead of using words like “fundamentalist” please instead consider that you are doing something that is not welcomed by the creators of the operating system and a large number of the l…

If you consider "fundamentalist" a rude adjective to descibe the said behaviour, what would be a better adjective then? I don't have anything against that kind of attitude, it's great and I approve those guys though I myself also like to buy software. "Fundamentalism" IMO describes it pretty well and I don't see the negative connotation.

> If you consider "fundamentalist" a rude adjective

How about no adjective?

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#305

Post by kaybe »

mjevans wrote: post #299
mattl wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want “Linux desktop software” to grow. I want computer users to have zero-proprietary software. The problem with thinking of GNU/Linux in the same way as Windows and Mac OS X is that it assumes a world where proprietary software is the norm, or is okay. I believe that is isn’t okay, and that it is harmful.

I feel similarly but not quite 100%. For the core things the basic, inter-operable, standard should be fully open and free. This includes protocols, data formats, reference applications/servers/clients and anything similar. A user should not need to pay to communicate. This is a natural right and one of the cornerstones of a free society. However I don't mind proprietary products as OPTIONS that allow someone to do t…

I think combining it with some sort of code escrow could work. Keep it secret while you support it, if you go bust or stop support the source enters public domain.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#306

Post by scarface74 »

mattl wrote: post #236
wendy0x2 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't rude at all. He was describing a situation in the Linux community where a large number of users have an aversion to paid software. It's a real problem and one of the main reason osx was able to eclipse desktop software usage on linux in such a short amount of time. Responses like yours are the real problem. If you want linux desktop software to grow, there needs to be room for proprietary software.

I don’t want “Linux desktop software” to grow. I want computer users to have zero-proprietary software. The problem with thinking of GNU/Linux in the same way as Windows and Mac OS X is that it assumes a world where proprietary software is the norm, or is okay. I believe that is isn’t okay, and that it is harmful.

So who do you expect to write all of this non proprietary software without any means of making money?

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#307

Post by [deleted] »

pmlnr wrote: post #112
hiccuphippo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having the blog post outside Medium doesn't guarantee them all looking better. On the other side, it is easier to fix one site using custom CSS than it is to fix a bunch. An on the other other side Firefox's reading mode makes this whole discussion irrelevant.

> An on the other other side Firefox's reading mode makes this whole discussion irrelevant. It really doesn't. It doesn't fix it for non-firefox and non-power users.

[deleted]

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#308

Post by jeena »

scarface74 wrote: post #306
mattl wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want “Linux desktop software” to grow. I want computer users to have zero-proprietary software. The problem with thinking of GNU/Linux in the same way as Windows and Mac OS X is that it assumes a world where proprietary software is the norm, or is okay. I believe that is isn’t okay, and that it is harmful.

So who do you expect to write all of this non proprietary software without any means of making money?

The same people who have been writing it in the past. And who said there are no means of making money? You're just assuming something which isn't true just because you can't come up with an explanation.

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#309

Post by jpwgarrison »

dpower wrote: post #168
magduf wrote: post #72

The big thing I see missing from all this analysis is the home vs. work distinction. You have people saying "Linux users choose FLOSS because of philosophy, and proprietary software goes against this", you have users saying "I'd have tried it if it were FLOSS and I could just download it and try it", etc., but the problem is: this is a product for working with an Exchange server. How many individual users have a need…

Hi there, I'm the author of the blog post. Some context you may find interesting, and maybe I should do a follow up post about this. We were very enterprise focused, but it just didn't work. We were trying to displace MS Outlook. And unfortunately, most people want to stick with Outlook. Not because it's better, but because it's what they know. We found that even if we convinced 8 out of 10 people in a company to buy…

> This is why we have chosen to support Gmail.

Your website and this discussion suggests Hiri does not support gmail.

Which is it?

Re: Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux

#310

Post by jpwgarrison »

jpwgarrison wrote: post #309
dpower wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there, I'm the author of the blog post. Some context you may find interesting, and maybe I should do a follow up post about this. We were very enterprise focused, but it just didn't work. We were trying to displace MS Outlook. And unfortunately, most people want to stick with Outlook. Not because it's better, but because it's what they know. We found that even if we convinced 8 out of 10 people in a company to buy…

> This is why we have chosen to support Gmail. Your website and this discussion suggests Hiri does not support gmail. Which is it?

Whoops just re-read TFA, you are working on it, good luck!
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