Generating Income from Open Source • Hacker News Board

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#71

Post by fossweaver » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 12:47 PM UTC

[My Opinion] I think this is completely alright as long as there is a contribution to the open source, support to the community from the companies who use OSS to generate income. There are 2 ways of looking at it. 1. Solve the operationalisation of the different OSS tools 2. Value addition on top of OSS.

For instance: Here is one such company (https://opsverse.io) that specialises on both #1 and #2.

Community and OSS are 2 things that are at the center of everything that OpsVerse does. OpsVerse provides "few clicks and you are up and running" sort of suite of devops tools entirely powered by OSS tools, and without the trouble of managing/scaling the tools.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#72

Post by pydry » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 12:49 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #56

tm-guimaraes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sourcehut seems to be an exception here, Drew not only has a profitable open source business, he not only contributes upstream, but also donate to open source projects.

There are many OSS companies. I think what the OP is (correctly) complaining about is people writing OSS and then getting upset when others sell it, or sell things based on it. I see this attitude creeping into e.g. articles on The Register. If you want to licence your software so anyone can use or resell it, don't be surprised when they do.

It sounds like OP is getting upset when people write OSS and then relicense it in such a way to restrict unfettered usage to provide or maintain a revenue stream.

E.g. Elastic search vs. Amazon (elastic search does run upon the Linux kernel after all)

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#73

Post by 4kimov » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

I'd say it's also important to remember the types of projects that are easier to monetize. About a decade ago I wrote an OSS library that gained some nice traction, and it wasn't really monetizable (granted I didn't want that anyway).

Then there's companies that write open-source software and are not only successful in charging for it, but also have funding. I run Fossfox [0] that indexes companies that have either open-sourced their main products (eg ClickHouse) or that heavily contribute to open-source (eg OpenAI). The ones that open-source their main products: some of them do use copyleft licenses, but most surprisingly go with Apache 2.0 (and of course use some dual licenses; with "ee/" directories). The one thing a lot of them have in common is providing hosted versions of their software. A lot of customers don't want the hassle of running it themselves, and do pay for hosting and support.

[0] https://fossfox.com/

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#74

Post by birk » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

Great article! I started https://polar.sh to help maintainers get more funding + insights about their customers & their needs. Long-term building tooling for managing all up sold services and customer management.

I definitely agree that 1) we need to convert companies more, but 2) it won’t happen with the traditional sponsorship/donations model. They need to be able to quantify the value of their investments.

With the first version of Polar, we aim to provide that while giving maintainers better insight on needs & funding to develop efforts that align with their vision.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#75

Post by NotMichaelBay » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 1:39 PM UTC

Kinrany wrote: post #66

FiberBundle wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is plain hypocrisy to me are the people who developed "for profit" open source projects, and are angry when they dont get paid enough, when the projects they have created rely on GNU tools, the Linux kernel (Perhaps Debian), a libre software database on so on. Why do you exclusively point out "for profit" open source projects here? What about basically any commercial software that leeches on open source softwa…

GP is pointing out that it's hypocritical to expect to be paid for open source contributions and at the same time pay nothing to upstream projects.

But they're saying that it's also hypocritical to release commercial software and expect people to pay you without contributing anything to upstream open source projects.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#76

Post by bombolo » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 1:44 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #23

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source is a technical, well defined term. If your software is ultimately not open for certain fields of endeavor, I’m willing to accept that, but labeling as if it is, and then coming up with derogatory terms such as “zealot” for people pointing out this difference is dishonest.

Definitions are not static. If the majority of people who say "open source" mean "I can view the source, it is out in the open" vs the OSI definition, then the definition of the word is the former. Just like how the word "hacker" meant one (generally positive) thing, then it meant computer criminal, and now it has come back to be somewhere in the middle. Of course it is your right to fight for whichever definition yo…

[flagged]

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#77

Post by hutzlibu » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 1:55 PM UTC

zrail wrote: post #61

teddyh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing wrong with developing software and selling it. Sure, but the FSF (and others) may have an opinion on the license given to the paying customers, in order to not restrict them. Otherwise, spot on; Open source is not a business model: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32287432 > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31293455 >

A beautiful thing about the world is that you don't have to care at all what the FSF have opinions on if you don't want to. The license you choose to provide to your users is between you and them.

Yes, but please don't call it open source then, if it isn't open in the way, that people expect.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#78

Post by shipscode » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 1:56 PM UTC

Closed source that thing and charge for it or I will. All open source makers are leaving tons of bread on that table.

I see these donation numbers where they’re netting $200/mo for some wildly successful tool. Closed sourcing it + marketing and you’ll be at $2-$3k/mo in 6 months with moderate effort.

Open source is cool for a communal app with a lot of different vectors. Openpilot for example is smart for me. For everything else though? It’s an easy way for software to become unmaintained. Good luck finding someone to work for free in perpetuity.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#79

Post by sneak » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 1:56 PM UTC

If the license restricts you to personal use only, it is not an open source license.

Re: Generating Income from Open Source

#80

Post by indymike » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

ThinkBeat wrote: post #42

[old person rant] There is nothing wrong with developing software and selling it. It used to be the norm and it is still quite common. These days "open source" is virtue signaling and expected "to be cool". That people then grump about not being paid shows that they are not particularly interested in the concept of open source. However, the term open source has been used for so many different things that is has lost…

> These days "open source" is virtue signaling and expected "to be cool". That people then grump about not being paid shows that they are not particularly interested in the concept of open source.

Most of the time when I see people grumping about getting paid for open source, it isn't the actual developer. It's someone who thinks the developer should get paid more. Usually it's a blog post to a, "Did you know critical package x is maintained by some 70 year old dude in Dubuque, Iowa... and he's on VACATION RIGHT NOW?"

That said, the article is a pretty good summary.