61–70 of 125 posts
> I really hate to Jimmy Wales people about this Have a case of beer on me, mate.
Hey, I see an intense dislike for Jimmy Wales in this thread. Is there anything well written I can read about it to inform myself?
This is slightly adjacent to the topic but I think a very important one. I do not know much about [name redacted] and the creator but after looking at his resume, I feel he obviously has a very marketable skills and with over 10+ year of experience, I feel one should have enough put away for rough times like this (forgive me if I am missing some context about this specific case, but I think this point applies in gene…
Compare that to Plausible: Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible started in 2019. Not sure when [name redacted] started. Clicking on "blame" for the readme file in the repo, I see a commit from 5 years ago. I can very much empathize that adding a "buy" button is a hump to get over when you just wanna build something cool and share it with like-minded people. I have the same issue with every project I build. I gues…
Plausible also has a co-founder who does marketing, and is evidently very good at it. That's perhaps a more important factor in success than simply offering a paid plan.
It looks like success was far from guaranteed before he was hired ($400 MRR and not growing). https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-saas#february-looking-...
I don't understand why do developers provide hosted version for free? That too when you are short of cash. You have already provided opensource sw, whoever wants to use it can selfhost and bear the infrastructure costs. You can also provide paid version of it for people who don't want to self host. If you do want to subsidize have some other source of income. IT almost feels like self-inflicted pain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free software is a gift. It does not create an obligation when one receives it.
Free software is generally considered "free as in free speech". Doesn't always imply gratis, as people still need to pay their bills.
> I really hate to Jimmy Wales people about this Have a case of beer on me, mate.
Hey, I see an intense dislike for Jimmy Wales in this thread. Is there anything well written I can read about it to inform myself?
Isn’t this obvious candidate for a paid SaaS? Maybe someone more familiar with matter at hand can enlighten me on why the developer doesn’t simply make the hosted version a paid-for service instead of asking for donations?
> why the developer doesn’t simply make the hosted version a paid-for service Because it's not always simple and being a good developer in many cases doesn't overlap with being good at marketing or business as it's not what they are passionate about. There's a good blog post about Plausible Analytics before and after the marketing co-founder joined, wasn't able to find it right now though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a different take. I think it's a warning to people that use the software: they can either chip in a little bit, or have no expectation whatsoever for there ever to be another release. I think that there is an ethical obligation here on the part of active users to donate at least $2 each, assuming that the developer isn't making up a story.
Free software is a gift. It does not create an obligation when one receives it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why the developer doesn’t simply make the hosted version a paid-for service Because it's not always simple and being a good developer in many cases doesn't overlap with being good at marketing or business as it's not what they are passionate about. There's a good blog post about Plausible Analytics before and after the marketing co-founder joined, wasn't able to find it right now though.
Is it this one: https://plausible.io/blog/blog-post-changed-my-startup
Compare that to Plausible: Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible started in 2019. Not sure when [name redacted] started. Clicking on "blame" for the readme file in the repo, I see a commit from 5 years ago. I can very much empathize that adding a "buy" button is a hump to get over when you just wanna build something cool and share it with like-minded people. I have the same issue with every project I build. I gues…
> Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible also has a co-founder who does marketing, and is evidently very good at it. That's perhaps a more important factor in success than simply offering a paid plan. It looks like success was far from guaranteed before he was hired ($400 MRR and not growing). https://plausible.io/blog/open-source-saas#february-looking-...
It undermines the nominal reason for the enterprise's existence (competition) but once a single competitor begins practicing it, everyone else also has to- not to any benefit, but just to maintain their status quo.