Open Source does not win by being cheaper
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Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#2[deleted]
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#3I've always been annoyed that companies will pay 6 figures for a support contract, but won't consider hiring a full time engineer for the same or less pay to support an open source product that does the same thing.
The support contracts are often disappointing too, like you are paying $200,000+ a year for the stupid thing and they won't even fix your problems? "That product is not our current area of focus". So frustrating.
The multiplication of effort you would see if 5 or 6 companies did this is incredible. For example the Linux kernel is an example of this working. Everybody cooperates, everyone wins.
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#4I've always been annoyed that companies will pay 6 figures for a support contract, but won't consider hiring a full time engineer for the same or less pay to support an open source product that does the same thing. The support contracts are often disappointing too, like you are paying $200,000+ a year for the stupid thing and they won't even fix your problems? "That product is not our current area of focus". So frust…
If you hire an engineer, the liability is your problem. If you donate to open source, liability is still your problem.
Both of these situations are patently unpalatable for most businesses.
Meanwhile, if you pay someone for a support contract the liability is their problem.
You see, whether a problem that comes up is fixed is actually irrelevant. The real question is how much liability you can get rid of.
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#5The problem with this business model is it creates a tension between the OSS version and the paid versions - you want the OSS version to be good, but not such a good solution that nobody feels the need to pay for your SaaS/consulting/etc. That tension seems to inevitably lead to obvious features missing or functionality/knowledge that's needed to operate at any scale coistered away as closed source so the sponsoring entity can make some money.
If the product is more infrastructural you also now have an established pattern (Elastic, Hashicorp etc) of switching to look-but-don't-touch licences to avoid being obliterated as a one-click service for the major cloud providers.
Which isn't to say the article is wrong, I just wish they wouldn't pretend commerically backed OSS is some kind of kumbaya win-win for everyone instead of being effectively a trust growth hack for startups before the need to generate revenue inevitably leads them to turning the screws one way or another on the beloved community that helped them grow.
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#6I've always been annoyed that companies will pay 6 figures for a support contract, but won't consider hiring a full time engineer for the same or less pay to support an open source product that does the same thing. The support contracts are often disappointing too, like you are paying $200,000+ a year for the stupid thing and they won't even fix your problems? "That product is not our current area of focus". So frust…
If you hire an engineer, the liability is your problem. If you donate to open source, liability is still your problem. Both of these situations are patently unpalatable for most businesses. Meanwhile, if you pay someone for a support contract the liability is their problem. You see, whether a problem that comes up is fixed is actually irrelevant. The real question is how much liability you can get rid of.
I understand the full time engineer thing. But it was never explained to me at any of the places I have been at that it was a liability thing. At every place they thought we would leak trade secrets. Was always frustrating that technically we could never even contribute the most minor of bug fixes.
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#7I've always been annoyed that companies will pay 6 figures for a support contract, but won't consider hiring a full time engineer for the same or less pay to support an open source product that does the same thing. The support contracts are often disappointing too, like you are paying $200,000+ a year for the stupid thing and they won't even fix your problems? "That product is not our current area of focus". So frust…
If you hire an engineer, the liability is your problem. If you donate to open source, liability is still your problem. Both of these situations are patently unpalatable for most businesses. Meanwhile, if you pay someone for a support contract the liability is their problem. You see, whether a problem that comes up is fixed is actually irrelevant. The real question is how much liability you can get rid of.
What liability are you referring to?
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#8The problem with this business model is it creates a tension between the OSS version and the paid versions - you want the OSS version to be good, but not such a good solution that nobody feels the need to pay for your SaaS/consulting/etc. That tension seems to inevitably lead to obvious features missing or functionality/knowledge that's needed to operate at any scale coistered away as closed source so the sponsoring…
> That tension seems to inevitably lead to obvious features missing or functionality/knowledge that's needed to operate at any scale coistered away as closed source so the sponsoring entity can make some money.
I dont think this is a problem at all.
I maintain a small module, and have had many feature requests and support requests over the years. Until I am making enough money to pay my rent, I dont feel one bit guilty about charging for these things. even down to me clicking the Merge Pull Request button. anything that takes even one second of my time, I am charging for. I put months and years of works into the code. and I put the code out in the world for free. If you want an additional feature, or any of my time, pay up.
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#9The author calls out they are specifically talking about open source solutions that compete with paid offerings. IMO, the jury is very much still out on whether open source "wins" in this regard. In the past decade we've seen a huge rise of open source products, and in the last 5 years or so we've seen many of them move away from that. MongoDB, the Hashicorp stack, Elastic, Red Hat, MinIO, the list goes on.
There are not that many truly open source, commercially competitive products remaining and many of them are fighting to prove it's a viable business model.
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you hire an engineer, the liability is your problem. If you donate to open source, liability is still your problem. Both of these situations are patently unpalatable for most businesses. Meanwhile, if you pay someone for a support contract the liability is their problem. You see, whether a problem that comes up is fixed is actually irrelevant. The real question is how much liability you can get rid of.
What liability are you referring to?
e.g. if you direct the engineer you have hired to build something that turns out to infringe on someone else's BS patents.