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embik | 1 year ago

I seriously wonder what HN thinks is a valid business model for writing open source software. Everyone here seems to insinuate that people want to create a business and use open source as a growth hack. But how do you differentiate those from people who want to write open source (because they believe in it) and have to have a business to support their livelihood?

This is a team of eight people that tried to do everything „right“ by changing to a FOSS license (which happened four years ago) and the changes announced here sound very reasonable (changing branding and removing undocumented APIs). But all comments are dunking on them as if they haven’t even read the article.

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bayindirh|1 year ago

From my experience, people here like permissive licenses because they can grab the source and don't think about it further (and don't forget to give credit if their coffee was good that day), because it's building on top of other people's work without any effort.

I don't think it's bad intentions though. Just grab the pieces you need, assemble, add the missing parts and start a project, and earn money.

xGPL (which I strongly support) prevents this building model by forcing license inheritance, release of changes and limiting license interoperability, preventing creation of technical secret sauces, and many people think that all secret sauces are technical.

OTOH, the harder (but better in the long run) way to create value with FOSS and Free Software particular to have stellar support and reliability. i.e.: Your code can be deployed, compiled, or built upon, but you're the best source to get the software in the first place. Your presence, human relations and knowledge about the product is the secret sauce you have, but this needs more effort, is a more of a soft skill and grows like a sequoia (i.e. roots first for a decade, then start to get taller).

This is not a quick buck, but an old school proper business building, but many people don't have time for that, and since everyone wants to build fast and consume fast, this more healthier mode of making business is frowned upon.

Sometimes you need to move slow and break(through) things, but as the meme says "ain't nobody have time for dat!", which is shortsightedness in my perspective.

Wowfunhappy|1 year ago

> OTOH, the harder (but better in the long run) way to create value with FOSS and Free Software particular to have stellar support and reliability. i.e.: Your code can be deployed, compiled, or built upon, but you're the best source to get the software in the first place.

...It's not obvious to me that the person who originally wrote the software is necessarily better positioned to support the software. Everyone has the current source code, so from that standpoint it's a level playing field. Another party could come in and build a business as the premier support consultants without most of the original developer's startup costs.

Now, I'm not sure if this has ever actually happened. If it hasn't, maybe I'm wrong. I would like to be wrong.

ensignavenger|1 year ago

Hacker News isn't a single mind, so it doesn't "think" anything of its own.

Personally, I believe there are several "valid" business models that include open source contributions. Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon and even Apple all contribute to open source software. Redhat, Canonical, Suse are all companies that have open source software at the heart of their products. Blender and Godot have found viable paths as nonprofit foundations. Linux, OpenStack, Eclipse and others are all foundations that work on a different level, combining contributions from many different companies and individuals, and support multiple projects.

There are open core companies like Gitlab that are also "valid", while I personally don't prefer the open core model.

Automatic sponsors WordPress development, and makes money providing hosting and related services. Automatic competes in a very competitive market with other companies providing hosted WordPress, but they survive.

Releasing code as open source is not an automatic mint. Business is hard. Businesses that don't release a single line of open source code fail all the time. It should not surprise anyone when a company that contributes to open source fails, because companies fail all the time.

gilgad13|1 year ago

Just because you want something to have a viable business model doesn't mean it does. If you want to get paid to develop open source software, I think you have a couple of options:

1. Just don't. Work on open source on the weekends, etc.

2. Do it as part of a "commoditize your complements" strategy.

3. Work at a company that is so large they can fund open source development as part of their advertising strategy.

4. Gather together some expertise in existing open source projects and sell consulting. Crucially, you'll probably need to build on top of some existing open source install base or name recognition. Redhat didn't start the linux project or the gnu userland, Percona didn't write mysql, etc. In some sense you are now one of the leaches that posts such as this one complain about.

The fundamental piece in common here is that the open source bit isn't the main value driver for the business.

jchw|1 year ago

This framing is just wrong; there has never been, is not currently, and will never be a guarantee that you can sustain a company entirely off of an open-source offering.

If you are concerned about your livelihood then don't hinge it on the viability of open source projects to underpin your business model.

I've said it before, I will say it again.

inhumantsar|1 year ago

i think the issue is less "sustain a company" and more the unspoken qualifier "extremely valuable".

sustaining a small company offering commercial licenses or hosting or support or consulting or whatever for an open source product is not going to be that much more difficult than sustaining any other kind of small company.

the issue that I see most often are OSS devs not approaching the problem like a company would and startup founders looking to build a unicorn while also keeping some kind of purity wrt open source.

not everything needs VC investment with valuations measured in the tens of millions but everything does need some level of formal business development (even if that business is of the non-profit variety).

sofixa|1 year ago

> I've said it before, I will say it again.

Cool, and what is your proposal to people who both believe in open source, build on open source, but would also like to be able to put food on the table and enjoy their work?