How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard • Hacker News Board

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#91

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Oct 03, 2013, 2:39 AM UTC

justin_vanw wrote: post #80

tedunangst wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Violation of the LGPL? By the author?

Sure, this is possible. However, this author is not violating it. For example, if the regular version were issued with the Pro version merged into it, the author would have to provide an unmodified version in the same distribution lest he violate the LGPL. There isn't much consequence to this, unless he felt the need to sue himself. However, since the author here also owns the rights to both the regular and Pro versi…

No, this is wrong. The author's code is licensed to the author under a "license" that allows him to do whatever he wants, since he owns the copyright.

Just because he chooses to extend the LGPL to others doesn't mean he is himself bound by its constraints.

In the model you're proposing (where things have one and only one set of copyright terms that apply to everyone), how would things like Libreoffice be offered under multiple licenses simultaneously?

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#92

Post by justinlilly » Thu, Oct 03, 2013, 4:20 AM UTC

mperham wrote: post #31

Author here, thanks for the kind words. Always nice to wake up to a DDoS of my site at 2AM. :-) Recurring revenue is a pricing change I'm seriously considering, I just don't have a payment system in place that can manage my customer list and handle the annual CC charge.

You might check out recurly.com. Very solid reporting on the backend.

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#93

Post by rushabh » Thu, Oct 03, 2013, 4:40 AM UTC

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #76

rushabh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. This is pretty inspiring. We at https://erpnext.com have been looking to help govt agencies implement our Open Source ERP, but lack a forum where we can connect with such needs. Can you suggest us a way forward. I think our product can serve a great need for government organizations.

Thanks! I agree that your product has a huge market for government and other organisations. Our success comes out of a few core things: - We brought together domain experts as equals, i.e. people working in international development, water and sanitation issues (our starting market), network organisations, computer software and services, computer software marketing and communications, to solve a problem. - We say our…

Thanks for the awesome replies. They were really insightful - specially the idea to have an all round team to work on this. Surely some food for thought for a tech-only company like us. If you ever come across a need for accounting / inventory type solution, do keep us in mind, this would be something of interest.

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#94

Post by Tyrannosaurs » Thu, Oct 03, 2013, 9:21 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #6

I think there are likely a variety of contractual options other than "24/7 phone support" which businesses would be happy to pay for, on an ongoing basis. For example, you could charge $500 plus $100 per year for "maintenance", and not be any more specific than "the software will be maintained in an ongoing fashion", and now you won't be starting from $0 next January 1st. As someone who has started from $0 every Janu…

I agree with the idea but not the don't be specific. The main thing I'd say about "maintenance agreements" is make it clear what they are and aren't getting.

Does it cover upgrades to work with new versions of another OS/framework/database whatever? Does it cover new functionality? Does it cover bug fixes? If so is there an SLA? Is it limited in some way? X incidents? Y hours of your time?

There are such a range of these things that if you're not careful you end up with disappointed customers when it could easily have been avoided.

That's not to say it has to be comprehensive. Corporate organisations will pay a lot for a small amount of peace of mind, but make it clear.

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#95

Post by bjelkeman-again » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 2:46 PM UTC

rushabh wrote: post #93

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I agree that your product has a huge market for government and other organisations. Our success comes out of a few core things: - We brought together domain experts as equals, i.e. people working in international development, water and sanitation issues (our starting market), network organisations, computer software and services, computer software marketing and communications, to solve a problem. - We say our…

Thanks for the awesome replies. They were really insightful - specially the idea to have an all round team to work on this. Surely some food for thought for a tech-only company like us. If you ever come across a need for accounting / inventory type solution, do keep us in mind, this would be something of interest.

I actually made this into a blog post: https://bjelkeman.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/advice-to-y-combi...

Re: How to make $100k in Open Source by working hard

#96

Post by tjbiddle » Sat, Oct 05, 2013, 6:09 PM UTC

justin_vanw wrote: post #36

The title of this article is the opposite of what the article says. He made almost no money with open source. He made tons of money by withholding features from the open source library and instead only offering them under a commercial license as an add-on. Since this is itself a violation of the LGPL, anyone using the Pro version isn't even using open source at all, as both the original and Pro enhancements are at th…

I wouldn't say "holding back essential features" - I've used the OS version of Sidekiq in numerous projects and it's exactly what I'm looking for!