Our experience launching a paid, proprietary product on Linux • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 6:53 AM UTC

pmlnr wrote: post #42

looperhacks wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I barely see the problem. Sure, the header and footer aren't perfect, but stupidly large? I also don't feel any "cpu melting javascripts" and my PC is barely usable when I compile anything. For me, Medium provides a very readable experience that is much better than the average static blog. And I don't have to fear a malware ridden page like an old Wordpress installation.

This is how the article looks like on 1280x800: https://i.imgur.com/L07L4ce.png Sticky header/footer, cookie consent covering the menu, not a single line of the content visible. You consider this design good? I might be wrong with this specific site on the JS - it only loaded 121KB Javascript. The actual HTML of the entry is 30. WordPress nowadays upgrades itself to minor version - security patches - without touching…

[deleted]

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

#342

Post by GenericsMotors » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 6:59 AM UTC

ndarwincorn wrote: post #269

alkonaut wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any business that is part Linux and part windows, exchange infrastructure, will need an exchange client for all their Linux client machines? Assuming web based won’t cut it for those users, then it would seem Hiri is a good fit for that business? I can’t see in what way you are competing or displacing Outlook if you are makinhg a product for Linux. The reason it’s a viable product would be 1) because there is no Linu…

>there is no Linux outlook With the GH aquisition I'll be shocked if we don't see most of MS's desktop stuff, including Office, move to Electron/WebAssembly in the next few years.

Then prepare to be shocked

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

#343

Post by shmerl » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 7:09 AM UTC

> This is going to be a very hard sell being a proprietary closed source system to Linux users

I agree. Closed source communication tools are not a good proposition in general and especially for Linux users.

That said, Exchange itself is a closed mess and existing FOSS tools are trying to working around a problem of MS lock-in.

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

#344

Post by nerdponx » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 7:23 AM UTC

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…

In that case, why does it need to be closed-source? If a business is paying for something like this, they probably would rather pay for a support contract than hire a guy to try and keep it running.

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

#345

Post by TuringTest » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 7:25 AM UTC

dpower wrote: post #301

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 sof…

What's not to like indeed? With FLOSS you get access to rewrite the code to suit your needs, independence from the provider, possibility to create as many copies as needed (no volume licensing)...

And most importantly, a guarantee that any paid investment to improve the code will be available in the future, no matter what happens to the original provider company. If you pay for closed source instead, the company going bankrupt may convert those investments into sunk cost.

You don't seem to understand that, by being closed source, your product lacks all those desirable properties. Having a strong desire for those benefits which disqualifies any product not complying with them, seems perfectly rational, it's just that they have a different balance of values and benefits from yours, which apparently only value the provided features.

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

#346

Post by willtim » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 7:26 AM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #204

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…

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 was designed and built in an era were just a few emails were ever sent/received in a day. It does not cope well with the deluge of mails common to today's corporate world. I think there now is an opportunity for other players here, as Google have shown.

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

#347

Post by raphinou » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 7:39 AM UTC

jest3r1 wrote: post #298

peterwwillis wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decision to choose a "mail client" (really a "groupware system") is a complex process in most cases. MS Office is the default because it does everything, and it works on the top two platforms. Google is sort of competing in this space, but it's nowhere near MS's feature set, customer/business service, and compatibility. The people buying your product are not integrating it into their business case because your pr…

A Linux niche I have had success selling is "privacy". The Linux crowd, especially decision makers in businesses that run Linux somewhere, are very privacy aware. It's a good differentiator. And people will pay for better privacy, especially considering the options.

Could you tell a bit more? I am currently evaluating opportunities to address the need of privacy. Maybe our offers could be complementary? I am also reachable at my user name @gmail.com.

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

#348

Post by theshadowknows » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 7:41 AM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #266

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…

The decision to choose a "mail client" (really a "groupware system") is a complex process in most cases. MS Office is the default because it does everything, and it works on the top two platforms. Google is sort of competing in this space, but it's nowhere near MS's feature set, customer/business service, and compatibility. The people buying your product are not integrating it into their business case because your pr…

We use Domino/Notes at work and it’s a nightmare. IT have been working for over a year to untangle it and get us over to Exchange/Outlook but from what I hear it’s been headache after headache for them.

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

#349

Post by Nursie » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 8:10 AM UTC

slrz wrote: post #245

Nursie wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a third issue - support. I worked for a place about 15 years ago which was trying desperately to retire its previous flagship product in favour of the new version. The new version was better written and more scalable, but the major value for them was that they had made a big mistake with the old one - The gave away source code and allowed customers to customise the software, but they still honoured support co…

No sensible person is going to be mad with you for asking them to reproduce their issue without local customizations applied if they want you to help them with it. Write it into your support contracts. Maybe offer smarter customers to review and sign off on their modifications in exchange for a reasonable fee. These problems can be solved.

> asking them to reproduce their issue without local customizations applied

This was a big, complex piece of software, a bank-level payment switch. It's possible that they couldn't run at all in their environment without the customisations applied.

> These problems can be solved.

I agree, if the contracts are well written and sensible :)

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

#350

Post by sah2ed » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 8:18 AM UTC

hug wrote: post #314

awill wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outlook is already a bloated beast. Moving it to Electron would be a disaster. I can't see it happening. Maybe a 'lite' version of outlook, but not the version enterprises use.

Yes, but https://twitter.com/thelarkinn/status/1006746626617008128?s=...

From the same author, but longer:

https://twitter.com/TheLarkInn/status/1006907969760473093/ph...