[HN Gopher] Should I open source my company? (2022)
___________________________________________________________________
Should I open source my company? (2022)
Author : AnhTho_FR
Score : 306 points
Date : 2024-01-22 09:40 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (supabase.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (supabase.com)
| kevingadd wrote:
| IMO, no. Maybe with a sufficiently restrictive license. If your
| core product is good enough and you permissively license it, odds
| are someone else with more money is just going to repackage it
| and sell it without throwing any money your way.
|
| On the other hand if your product isn't good enough then the
| decision doesn't matter since it won't take off either way. :)
| serial_dev wrote:
| (2022)
| szundi wrote:
| Try not to be Jeffed
| guappa wrote:
| AGPL?
| cuuupid wrote:
| This is a really good in depth article but misses one thing so
| many projects miss: just sell to the civil government.
|
| USG has so many programs (eg NSF grants) for tech and the
| disjointedness of civil agencies, IC, and state govts means they
| end up procuring a dramatically large landscape of software. The
| regulatory and compliance bar to entry is not nearly as high as
| you think especially if you are teaming your first few contracts.
| It is solid, guaranteed revenue to fund your project for usually
| 3-5 year commitments, and usually massively profitable.
|
| I wish more open source companies took advantage of this, because
| usually fully private sector companies will end up baking open
| source libraries into their project and sell it at gigantic
| markups, pocketing everything. eg:
| https://x.com/ssankar/status/1749202248700420587?s=20
|
| When I was in govt I saw so much software that was basically open
| source maps + open source db for $12m. To give another frame of
| reference, I've seen OCR on PDFs carry a $2mm price tag, and a
| tool like weights & biases carry $30mm (all $ per annum).
|
| There are even other incentives here beyond deploying software;
| for example prioritizing fixing certain bugs or security flaws in
| your software -- eg IC would have paid big $$ for safetensors.
|
| I'll even highlight four ways Supabase could do this: - Cybercom
| (direct) - DOS (direct or teaming) - VA (thru a PWS) - direct to
| govcon software powerhouses
|
| And three ways to do this: - cold email GS 14s/15s or equivalent
| - hire an ex-GS15 - find a solicitation that fits on SAM.gov then
| use GovPro.ai (white glove) or rogue (diy) to put together a
| response
| huijzer wrote:
| > just sell to the civil government.
|
| From what I've seen, governments and startups typically don't
| go well together. By the time the government bureaucracy has
| finally approved the contract, most startups would already have
| been out of money.
| cuuupid wrote:
| This is a myth that's exaggerated by specific anecdotes
| around sole-source (which is where you work with the govt and
| they put out a notice saying they intend to go with you).
| Because of there not being constraints on time there and them
| needing to allow others to protest this makes timelines
| highly random.
|
| Most are not like this, usually the government puts out
| solicitations (RFI/Q/Ps). They have a set deadline by which
| they have to answer your questions, a set deadline for bids,
| and a set deadline (usually 30d) by which they have to select
| someone.
|
| You can also game this by emailing people around september,
| which is when they are getting ready to close their budgets.
| They need to spend any surplus, and I've seen many prominent
| civil agencies (won't name and shame) throw around $1-2mm on
| a same-day contract with vague constraints.
| count wrote:
| At least in a bunch of the defense agencies, books close
| for new stuff mid-August. The Aug-Oct timeframe is used to
| finish executing already in-flight stuff. And if you miss
| the 10/1 deadline, you're waiting at least until Feb (for
| many reasons...), assuming Congress has passed a budget.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Just started doing government research contracts. If this is in
| anyway similar, I'd be wary. The contracts can be lucrative,
| but there is just a ton of red tape where you need to have
| people experienced in dealing with it. It isn't for everybody
| and it does take a lot of time and negotiation.
| cuuupid wrote:
| Yep, for most PWS contracts there are base personnel
| requirements. That being said for research the bar is pretty
| high, for regular industry it's pretty low:
|
| - experience in the field (or agency-based past performance)
|
| - clearance (usually public trust for civil, which can be as
| short as 1-2 week turnaround)
|
| - citizen, US based, with data centers/software inside the US
|
| There are stringent requirements for software the higher up
| you go (esp to DoD & then IC) but requirements most will meet
| and build towards while still making $$$. You don't need to
| have 20 TS/SCI engineers who have IAT L2 and IL6 infra with
| an ATO at the agency to start with (or even know what those
| words/acronyms mean), but a vertical in govt will naturally
| enable that over time.
| codingdave wrote:
| While I agree that government is an overlooked market, I would
| not start with the federal government. Massive bureaucracy
| aside, they are the largest, slowest and most difficult
| government entity to deal with. And there are literally tens of
| thousands of other government entities in the USA alone -
| schools, towns, counties, states, water and fire districts,
| libraries, etc.
|
| If you want to get into the public sector, think small and
| wide, not all-in on the biggest one.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| If it's good it's good. There are a lot of reasons it might not
| be, though.
|
| The most lucrative sector of government (in the world) is the
| US Department of Defense.
|
| Not only are they incredibly bureaucratic and schedule-
| sensitive, they are _obsessed_ with secrets.
| drekipus wrote:
| I've actually been thinking this a bit for one of my products.
|
| I'm thinking: I will give it a closed source grace period, then,
| by that time, it should either be:
|
| 1. A dud, so close the offering, show the source.
|
| 2. Working well, in which I can open-source and rely on brand
| recognition to carry forward the business.
|
| Releasing as AGPL3 at least means that I get some code
| contribution back, (right? Right?!)
| sneak wrote:
| Free software is a gift. You shouldn't give it expecting
| anything back.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Life is also a gift.
|
| Free software is a gift from anonymous folks. A gift from a
| friend can come with moral obligations - depending on your
| cultural background.
| mindwok wrote:
| I love this topic, and I love Supabase. But I'd love to see a
| take on this from a purely business perspective, because so many
| companies lately have started out like this (Red Hat, Mongo,
| Elastic, Hashicorp, etc) and then walked it back after they
| became a success / went public.
| brabel wrote:
| Supabase is just getting started... in 10 years, what do you
| think are the chances they'll follow the exact path of those
| other companies which have been around much longer? To be
| honest, I think that's actually the only path to a sustainable
| company. Start open source so you can get a good name and free
| contributions from the community, and then when you've got a
| foothold on the market, change your license so you can stop
| other companies from exploiting your work (and the work of your
| contributors) at your expense.
| zurfer wrote:
| For me the main question is not, is the code good enough or will
| competitors copy, but how can we make enough money to build a
| sustainable business?
|
| The quoted and beloved open source projects are not good
| businesses: PostgreSQL, Python, Bitcoin, React
|
| Mongo and Elastic are great, but exceptions. There are more
| successful closed source database companies than open source
| ones.
|
| Open source companies are hard. However, they are super valuable
| for users.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| Mongo and Elastic have changed there licenses to the "service-
| side public license" (SSPL) which is a particular own flavor of
| AGPL. The OSI has stated that this isn't an open source
| license. [1]
|
| Barring a discussion about whether or not a license is "open
| source", what matters is that these businesses asserted that
| commonly used licenses - (A)GPL, Apache, MIT,... - are leaving
| ample room for competitors to setup their own managed / hosted
| services and compete with them through scale (e.g. Amazon's
| Open Search offering undercutting ElasticSearch).
|
| [1] https://blog.opensource.org/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-
| source-l...
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| He writes: "But my code is bad: This is just ego. The person who
| spends the most time thinking about you is you, and the person
| who spends the most time stressing over your bad code is you as
| well."
|
| In most places in life this is valid, but in the developer
| community I disagree. Developers love talking shit about each
| others code.
|
| Still yearly ritual here to bash the "Clean code" book.
| guappa wrote:
| Not true. When I happen to having to fix stuff or have to
| decode insane json, I curse other developers.
| flurdy wrote:
| The article then also contradicts itself slightly with that for
| hiring look at their previous public contributions.
|
| However, I get their point for both cases. Looking at
| contributions gives a glimpse of that person. However with a
| grain of salt.
|
| And the imposter syndrome is strong in public contributions. I
| get it, and agree with the article, don't worry.
|
| I am working with a gov client at the moment so back to coding
| in the open again, and it is great. I am not worried that my
| quick one-line comment on a PR for a tiny repo is now public.
| Or pushed typos. It happens.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| This sentence goes well with the one at the end of that
| paragraph:
|
| > Toxic community members who complain about bad code instead
| of making suggestions to improve it are not the people you want
| in your community anyway.
|
| If someone finds your code and goes out of their way just to
| shit on it, they can get fucked. I'd be handing out blocks for
| that.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| We have been thinking about this for our product; we are
| definitely (and have this openly on our site) going to open
| source all under MIT or Apache (whatever we like by that time),
| but for now, but either of those, not AGPL or open-core or
| something like that), we find/found (not my first rodeo) it
| completely impossible to make money with that type of arrangement
| _as a product_ (consultancy sure). Supabase had bucketloads of VC
| money, as do almost all 'big' open source projects. If you are
| bootstrapped, this is not going to pay the bills for quite a
| while especially on an ambitious / hard project. People only can
| work for free for so long and with closed code, a small team in
| constant contact etc you can move a lot faster by cutting the
| overhead needed for a successful OSS project.
|
| It would be interesting to hear a story like this from a project
| of _similar_ size that has $0 funding, has been founded in the
| last 5 years, has a fulltime team >1 and exists for 3+ years and
| still would recommend this approach. How are they making ends
| meet? Things like Redis simply don't happen anymore. At least; I
| haven't seen any. Hell, even trivial projects, like langchain,
| get in 10s of millions of VC and those would be my candidates for
| actually being able to do it as a few-man-band while getting in
| money via different sources.
| sneak wrote:
| One can release all code under free software licenses without
| being or trying to be "a successful OSS project" and its
| associated overhead.
|
| All of my software is released as public domain (free software)
| and none of it is a successful open source project or
| community. Free software is first and foremost an ideology, and
| a practice or feature second.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Absolutely agree and I do with my own code, but I need to eat
| and haven't managed to do that from open source. So yeah,
| that's why we pledge to open in a set time or set revenue
| stream, but I am not rich enough to just work for nothing in
| the meanwhile. That doesn't mean that I don't open most
| things I do in private.
|
| Edit: forgot 'don't'
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| Sourcehut is AGPL, maybe not as used as something like Redis
| but has managed to employ >1, is profitable (according to last
| report 2022) and has been around for 3+ years.
| imiric wrote:
| One aspect I don't see mentioned is that it's not just about open
| sourcing your codebase. Many companies make the mistake of using
| open source as a marketing tool to attract users, and as a funnel
| into their commercial plans. They prioritize working on what
| makes them money, instead of being good maintainers of their open
| source product. They don't know how to build and nurture their
| open source community, and treat open source users as second-
| class compared to their commercial users.
|
| Don't do this. The OSS product needs to be as featureful as your
| commercial product. It's fine to offer some commercial value
| added features and services that would only be useful for
| enterprise customers, but these shouldn't be core features of the
| product. You can have priority support for your paying customers,
| but don't leave OSS users with "community support" only. At the
| end of the day, the company does need to make money to survive,
| but treat all your users with the same respect. If the product is
| good enough and solves a genuine problem, you won't have
| difficulties monetizing.
| asmor wrote:
| You can go for adoption / mindshare and consulting, or you can
| go for selling the product. There's very little in between when
| even the largest expected adopters can only derive little
| convenience from paying you.
|
| "If the product is good enough and solves a genuine problem,
| you won't have difficulties monetizing." is wishful thinking.
| Look at Elastic, MongoDB, RHEL and HashiCorp - all with amazing
| adoption - having trouble attracting paying customers to pay
| them over someone else and subsequently having to remove the
| ability of others to monetize their product.
| imiric wrote:
| > Look at Elastic, MongoDB, RHEL and HashiCorp - all with
| amazing adoption - having trouble attracting paying customers
| to pay them over someone else and subsequently having to
| remove the ability of others to monetize their product.
|
| Those are still service problems. If you as the author of the
| project can't build a solid moat around it that entices users
| to use your commercial service over someone else's, that
| means you haven't done a good job at it, and others have.
|
| It's a difficult balance to keep OSS users happy, while also
| making the best commercial offering. Not many companies do
| this right. I think Grafana has done a solid job of
| monetizing the open core model. I struggle to think of
| others, but I'm sure they exist.
|
| EDIT: Another example might be Automattic. I'm not a
| WordPress user, but AFAIK it has a very healthy open source
| community, and wordpress.com is _the_ place to use it
| commercially. Doesn't WP run something like half of all web
| sites?
| arccy wrote:
| wordpress has a horrible reputation in software/plugin
| quality, so you pay someone else to run it for you.
| brabel wrote:
| > I struggle to think of others, but I'm sure they exist.
|
| Do you also struggle to think of businesses who are not OSS
| but successful? I think the list of non-opensource
| companies that became big is much, much larger - to the
| point I think it's fair to say successful OSS companies
| (from the perspective of making money, at least) are the
| extreme exception.
| imiric wrote:
| That goes without saying. Building a successful company
| is hard enough. Doing it based on an open source product
| is even harder. But companies that do this right generate
| far more good will from their users than companies
| building strictly closed source products. This is a good
| thing for users, customers, the company and its
| shareholders. But for this to work, it's important that
| the founders believe in open source as something more
| than just a business strategy.
| asmor wrote:
| This is simply not true. There's an initial cost of getting
| your engineers familiar with a codebase, sure, but that's
| still substantially less than building and maintaining the
| damn thing. Someone outside the project maintainers will
| always have a smaller cost basis for the tradeoff of not
| controlling what goes into the code (a power you say they
| shoudn't abuse - and most of the examples I named did, i.e.
| Terraform Cloud integration) and not being able to say
| "from the makers of <thing>".
|
| I don't think that's enough, especially if the other
| company is AWS.
|
| Also, Wordpress has a lot of competitors. Pantheon and
| Pressable come to mind in the enterprise space, with every
| commodity webhoster using Plesk for a less managed but very
| budget experience.
| imiric wrote:
| > Someone outside the project maintainers will always
| have a smaller cost basis for the tradeoff of not
| controlling what goes into the code
|
| How do you figure this? Nobody will know the product, its
| users and their needs better than the original authors.
| They have a distinct advantage over any competitor who
| only offers a commercial wrapper around it. Not to
| mention that they have full control over the direction of
| the product, and can at anytime introduce a new feature
| their commercial service takes advantage of from day one.
| Their competitors could also fork the OSS product, but
| it's very likely that the OSS userbase stays with the
| original authors.
|
| Again, for this to work the authors need to be both great
| OSS stewards, and great business leaders. Not many
| companies do this correctly.
|
| > I don't think that's enough, especially if the other
| company is AWS.
|
| By the time AWS takes notice of your product, you should
| already be quite successful at your own business, in a
| way that they can't compete. The companies AWS stole
| lunch from didn't do this properly, and their only
| recourse was a license change.
|
| > a power you say they shoudn't abuse - and most of the
| examples I named did
|
| Yes, I'm not arguing those companies don't exist. I'm
| saying that it's not in their best interest to do so,
| considering how much community backlash can hurt them.
| You also ignored my two examples of companies which I
| think do this right, and have successful businesses.
|
| > Also, Wordpress has a lot of competitors.
|
| Sure it does. Hooray for open source.
| https://wordpress.com/hosting/ lists some of them. The
| goal for the original authors is to offer the _best_
| service so that customers will want to choose them over
| the competition. Or maybe they can focus on a certain
| slice of the market, and leave others to cover the rest.
| The pie can be big enough for everyone. This is not
| unlike any other company. Competition will always exist.
| But again, the original authors will always have an
| advantage. Not knowing how to do this properly speaks
| more about the company than about open source. This isn't
| impossible, just very difficult.
| guappa wrote:
| I think mongodb was more of a fad than a product.
| threeseed wrote:
| The company made over a billion in revenue last year.
| android521 wrote:
| The business model of supabase is to market themselves as an open
| source company but in practice, no one in their right mind will
| try to self host for production. (you know, some subtle missing
| documentation or some subtle bugs or some subtle missing
| important features). So they get the praise for being open source
| but in fact, it is never practical. It is just marketing scheme.
| yadascript wrote:
| I don't agree this is _just_ a marketing scheme but in any case
| it 's still a much better situation for consumers than
| companies with closed-source products.
| portaouflop wrote:
| I know people who are running Supbase in production for
| Enterprise customers so that claim is just false.
| k__ wrote:
| Open source isn't just about self hosting.
|
| It also allows developers to look at the code that's actually
| running, even if they don't run it themselves.
| sesm wrote:
| To me looking at the code doesn't do much if I can't patch it
| k__ wrote:
| Considering the state of the average docs, I usually prefer
| code.
| sesm wrote:
| Right, but even if I have the source code but can't patch
| the version that I'm running, that's not very useful to
| me.
| vasco wrote:
| It allows you to look at some code, if that's the one that's
| running or not is a different story.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _some subtle missing documentation or some subtle bugs or
| some subtle missing important features_
|
| Unless you're implying that Supabase are for some reason
| deliberately releasing separate defective software to the open
| source community... to... convince users that using their
| commercial services is a good reliable option??? I can't really
| figure out how or why any business would go to the effort of
| doing this. It seems patently easier to be a legit open source
| company.
|
| Assuming you're not implying the above & I've just
| misinterpreted... everything else in your comment paints
| Supabase in an eminently positive light.
| dingi wrote:
| They might not release a separate version for OSS, but I've
| seen this pattern in some "OSS" companies. They allow the OSS
| version to lag behind in terms on bug fixes and security
| updates. Some things are hard to achieve without paid
| support. These days it's not unbelievable that they are doing
| it on purpose. After all, we've seen some vocal OSS companies
| go proprietary after gaining some traction. The lesson is
| that you absolutely cannot trust corporations to uphold OSS
| ethos once they get a reasonable amount of traction.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _The lesson is that you absolutely cannot trust
| corporations to uphold OSS ethos_
|
| I'm absolutely with you here but I think this is a matter
| of least worst situations: I still think an OSS corporation
| trumps a non-OSS corporation regardless.
|
| > _These days it 's not unbelievable that they are doing it
| on purpose._
|
| I think there's a bit of a leap between a company - at a
| management level - deciding to "go open-source" for mainly
| marketing/branding/image reasons & that same company
| actively endeavoring to make their open-source product
| deliberately worse.
|
| It's still likely (& common) that profit incentive will
| lead to paid plans receiving more investment & QA than
| open-source offerings. But again, this is a least worst
| outcome imo. A semi-abandoned corporate OSS project isn't
| very different from a semi-abandoned personal individual
| OSS project - maybe even better as there will typically be
| less social reluctance to build a community fork.
| jddj wrote:
| Thought experiment: You sell a hosted solution and also
| release your software as open source.
|
| Daily, you are bombarded with decisions for how to
| allocate resources. In each of those, do you lean towards
| the option that makes it easier to self host rather than
| spending those resources on other things?
| lucideer wrote:
| This is exactly my point.
|
| There are systemic reasons for these systems to be
| underresourced - there's absolutely no need for theories
| about deliberately crippling OSS offerings.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| So let's entertain that this is in fact the case: it makes no
| sense in practice to self host for production. Even if that is
| the case, you're still better off building on top of an Open
| Source product because you're in a much stronger position in
| being able to fork than hoping that the company you rely on
| will stay around and not charge you to death.
|
| A lot of products we all use underwent complex business
| changes, but the Open Source ones still are here for us to use.
| MySQL had a tumultuous past and yet there is a very active
| version of it hanging around under a new business.
|
| The marketing angle is for the company to leverage, but the
| open source nature of it is for the user.
| tuyiown wrote:
| I'm with you on this one. <<Proper>> open source software are
| installable with distributions package manager with workable
| defaults, albeit opinionated but crafted with minimum care for
| a targeted usage.
|
| Maybe it's not viable for commercial purpose, but status quo
| hurt open source software hard by a strong erosion of what to
| expect of it, without clear long term benefits for companies
| choosing such a scheme.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| I disagree: just because something is open source doesn't not
| imply the authors have any duty to also provide packaging and
| distribution _as well_.
|
| Distribution is an orthogonal concern. The fact that many
| existing things are nicely distributed is a pleasant bonus,
| not a necessary condition.
| tuyiown wrote:
| > open source doesn't not imply the authors have any duty
| to also provide packaging and distribution as well
|
| If the authors are using open source as a selling point and
| marketing relay for broad audiences, I think there is a
| moral obligation to.
|
| For projects with little awareness, niche, or "just a
| hobby, won't be big and professional", yes sure, I would
| never think to have any opinion, nor bothering them.
| fuddle wrote:
| Officially, it's open source as long as "the code is released
| under a license in which the copyright holder grants users
| the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software
| and its source code to anyone and for any purpose".
| kordlessagain wrote:
| You clearly don't get the difference between business models
| and raising interest. It's interesting that a service I would
| use has open code because, you know, transparency is important.
| That lazy or incompetent users can't get complicated software
| running doesn't mean a scheme is in place, either.
| archibaldJ wrote:
| good points.
|
| Realistically, it feels like the actual utility of an open-
| source project is based on:
|
| 1. it being educational: so everyone can look into its source &
| learn from its design pattern, etc, or build upon or borrow
| parts (eg to be modified) and to be used in their own projects
| - but the practicality of it will really depend on how
| decoupled and well-designed the system is
|
| 2. in favour of competition (so more possible start-ups / big
| corps can clone their systems/services) and as consumers we
| will obviously benefit from that
|
| 3. llm can access & train on its source code
|
| I think point 3 is most interesting. And I'm also super curious
| how true point 2 is and to what extend
|
| Point 1 is really cool too - esp when it is done wonderfully
| (Linux, React for example) but it really depends on so many
| levels
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| What do LLM's have to do with code licences, and since when
| has the utility of code depended upon an LLM instead of, you
| know, its own utility?
| spacebacon wrote:
| What he is saying is that LLM's released into the wild to
| train can anonymously steal from his code to improve their
| own utility outside of licensing boundaries.
| aljgz wrote:
| There are actual benefits to a product like Supabase being
| opensource, some are: 1- Peace of mind. You might not choose to
| host it now, but you have one more way out, if you don't like
| their service (of course they also should provide access to
| your raw data) 2- Quality of code. If you have ever dealt with
| really bad code that works apparently well, you know how
| important it is to have code that you can proudly release to
| public. 3- Possibility of contribution. This is something I
| dismissed until it happened to me, in multiple occasions: you
| have a problem (missing feature, bug, performance problem,
| etc), you request it, or even contribute it. For most closed
| source projects, you're lucky if there is a transparent channel
| to request features.
| speedgoose wrote:
| I used one of their open source work in a project:
| https://github.com/supabase/wrappers
|
| It's appreciated since SaaS on AWS wasn't a possibility.
| paulgb wrote:
| One advantage of using open source products, even if you only
| use the commercial version, is that they place a limit on how
| "evil" the company can become: at some threshold, people might
| decide to put in the effort to fork it (like MariaDB).
|
| My company has had people straight up tell us that they are
| comfortable using our managed service for that reason.
| suslik wrote:
| I heard good things about self-hosting it through elest.io.
| codeptualize wrote:
| I think you are missing the point.
|
| The open source part, especially it being Postgres, makes it
| possible for me to move away if I choose to do so, while
| picking and choosing the parts I want to keep. This ability was
| crucial for me, I would not have used Supabase otherwise.
|
| If you look at Firebase for example, there are countless
| stories of how difficult it is to move away.
|
| Even if I won't self host Supabase, I can just take my schema,
| take my data, and put it elsewhere fairly easily as all the
| postgres extensions and everything is open source. I have the
| ability to move away from Supabase completely, and people have
| done this successfully before (see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36004925).
|
| Some people do actually self host btw, and supabase is adding
| more options like hosting on Fly.io.
|
| Besides this there are other advantages:
|
| - I run Supabase locally for testing (using their docker images
| and CLI)
|
| - We run Supabase in GH actions for automated testing and
| migrations
|
| - I connect directly to the db, and use postgres tools for
| various things, backups, snapshots, db admin tasks.
|
| - There are community clients for many different languages
|
| Sure, it's also marketing, as these are all great benefits that
| really had a big impact on my decision to build on Supabase.
| Open source is more than just self hosting.
| clbrmbr wrote:
| Any thoughts on (F)OSS models for IoT?
|
| We've usually got some hardware and firmware closely bound
| together, with traditional model being selling hardware with
| proprietary firmware.
|
| Any examples?
| Towaway69 wrote:
| What FlowFuse[0] does is market Node-RED[1] as the Open Source
| offering, obtaining contributions for various devices from the
| community and incorporate those into their commerical offering.
|
| IoT has the problem that many devices but few users per device.
| So who is going to make the effect to build an integration for
| third-party software? The FlowFuse model is to allow the
| community to do that while they (indirectly) upsell that work.
|
| FlowFuse also provides the SaaS solution for commerical gains.
|
| [0] https://flowfuse.com/ [1] https://nodered.org
| dingi wrote:
| Yeah yeah. Haven't we already seen this going on again and again.
| Companies love OSS until they get some amount of traction in the
| market. And they'll jump ship to being a proprietary vendor right
| away after that. Can't believe people fall for this shit all the
| time.
| palata wrote:
| Companies exist for profit. If open sourcing helps them getting
| to a point where they will make more profit, they will open
| source. If later going proprietary helps them make more profit,
| they will, too.
|
| Still what they released as open source stays open source, so
| it's still a win. Also if contributors don't sign a CLA, then
| it makes it harder for the company to go proprietary. To me
| that's the only thing: contributors _should not sign a CLA_ :
| either contributors keep their copyright, or they should not
| contribute for free.
| szundi wrote:
| Being opensource helps finding bugs in something you rely on if
| it does not go away fast enough. Sometimes I had success with
| this, although not ideal, one more option.
|
| Even if for profit and all
| hoc wrote:
| From a Firebase perspective they might think that they never
| should have documented their concepts and APIs in the first
| place... :)
|
| So a bit of the right words to the matching user base and with
| good points. Just that you always need to draw your own
| conclusion from your unique position.
|
| Kudos for the the nicely adapted Jurassic Park scene.
| opengears wrote:
| No
| Beefin wrote:
| i think the biggest moat OSS companies have is production-grade
| infrastructure hosting.
| gadders wrote:
| >>When we discuss open source business models with other
| founders, there are three complaints that come up again and
| again. These are:
|
| - People might criticize my messy/bad/unfinished code
|
| - Hackers will find and exploit security holes
|
| - Competitors will steal my Intellectual Property
|
| I think they are missing a 4th item which is "Amazon/AWS will
| commercialise and sell a service based on my code and not pay me
| anything."
| flurdy wrote:
| That is covered further down in the "Late stage" paragraph.
| Basically, you are already winning if the big ones try to
| emulate you, though some advanced planning to mitigate this is
| needed. But it should not be the focus nor worry at the start,
| if I interpret the article correctly.
| gadders wrote:
| I would suggest (and I've run zero companies and I'm just
| going by what I read on here) that if you want to open source
| your project, from the start pick a license so that big cloud
| companies can't commercialise your product for free.
|
| People seem to get really salty when companies change their
| license further down the line to prevent this.
| sneak wrote:
| Those licenses aren't open source.
|
| People get salty because those license changes are from
| open source to source available (like the BSL).
|
| Some of us (myself included) even consider licenses like
| the AGPL to be nonfree.
|
| Free software can be used for _any purpose_ , including
| competing with the original authors. If you can't do
| whatever you want with the software, it's not free
| software.
|
| If you want to open source your software but you want to
| put restrictions on what people can do with it, then, well,
| you don't want to open source your software (and IMO the
| free software community would be better off without your
| free software cosplay).
| segfaltnh wrote:
| But as a commercial consumer, I still value source
| available offerings quite a lot. I can debug my own
| issues with them, I can see how well they're built and I
| know thousands of eyes are looking at them.
|
| Depending on the software, I agree it's not as good for
| me as free software, but it's not worthless.
| sneak wrote:
| It's not worthless, but I try to avoid supporting
| proprietary software companies.
|
| Being selfish isn't a good look, especially when starting
| out as free software (Docker Desktop, I'm looking at
| you).
|
| I even strongly dislike actual free software releases
| with companies that have proprietary stuff alongside (so-
| called open core). It means that the people doing it
| don't give a shit about software freedoms, otherwise
| they'd never consider releasing nonfree software.
| Mattermost is in this category (and further demonstrates
| their disdain for software freedoms by shipping
| nonconsensual spyware in their foss stuff and closing PRs
| that remove it).
|
| It's really shady to position yourself as an open source
| company and then release _any_ proprietary software.
| duggan wrote:
| Do you carry this philosophy through to your professional
| life? As in, do you only work for companies that produce
| open source software? If so it's an admirable stance, and
| I hope you're successful.
|
| I imagine it's tricky (or at least unstable) to earn ones
| living working only for entirely open source companies,
| but maybe there are more opportunities out there than I'd
| realized.
| dartos wrote:
| I can't speak for everyone, but I'm at a point in my
| career where I can be a bit more picky about the jobs I
| take.
|
| I'm currently looking for a new SWE position and I prefer
| places that have active open source projects.
|
| I'd take less pay to work at somewhere that maintains and
| releases free software.
| sneak wrote:
| It's not strictly absolute (I still use and even
| occasionally buy proprietary software) but yes, generally
| speaking, I either only work for companies that release
| free software, or strongly advocate for my clients to
| build and release only free software. I've convinced (or
| been part of the process that convinced) several projects
| to release free software that otherwise would not,
| including some famous ones that have been on the
| frontpage of HN recently.
|
| I am personally responsible for at least 3-4 startups
| never making/releasing anything but open source stuff. I
| advocate for the basic idea of software freedom in all
| contexts.
|
| Usually "business guys" try to interfere, but it's almost
| always from the misguided idea that the code is somehow
| valuable. People get this weird idea that their source is
| worth money (it never is). Most companies are valuable
| because of their ability to execute, not their code
| (which is rarely reusable outside their org anyway, and
| even if it is, not in their market).
|
| Think about it: if your code were valuable, how is it
| that a few people were able to make it from scratch in a
| few months? It's obviously your _staff_ who are valuable,
| not the code (which someone else could also make from
| scratch for low cost if they needed to, just like you
| did).
|
| It's the same misguided emotion that makes people think
| startup ideas are inherently valuable. It's the ability
| to execute, not your so-called "intellectual property"
| that is where the value is.
| aatd86 wrote:
| Are you free to work for me... For free? :-)
| Zambyte wrote:
| They clearly meant free as in press, not costless.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| To me AGPL is still very open, but it sure limits stuff.
| Gotta be even more careful with it in an enterprise
| setting than GPL. Can deploy it internally, but must be
| _internally_ and it's a constant risk.
|
| I haven't found a reason to deploy one yet. One use case
| I have seen is to have some sort of commercial/AGPL
| double distribution, perhaps with the AGPL release
| lagging behind.
| mcny wrote:
| Sorry, so I must have misunderstood AGPL then? Assuming a
| well written software, your configuration values can
| still be secret, right? As long as you give all your
| users the source code you got and the changes you made to
| the code (not the configuration), you should be ok? It is
| crazy to expect someone to ask for things like your
| database password or your exact configuration like sync
| intervals.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| No you are right. I just meant that if you deploy a GPL
| service internally and the service somehow makes its way
| outside the organization, you don't have to distribute
| the source code or anything.
|
| But with AGPL, you now have to. Ensuring compliance is
| costlier.
| mcny wrote:
| Why is compliance costlier? There are companies that
| don't comply with GPLv2 for months and there is no cost
| as far as I can tell
|
| previously on HN,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31713525
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Compliance is costlier if you actually spend resources
| trying to comply. What you are referring to is the cost
| of non-compliance.
|
| Maybe the joke swoshed by me. :)
| reaperman wrote:
| I'm confused how someone would generally consider the
| AGPL to be non-free, but still perceive the GPL as a free
| license.
|
| In either case you don't have to pay for the software,
| can modify it however you'd like, and run it wherever you
| want. You just have to share the modified source code.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If anything, the AGPL is the modern incarnation of the
| ideals of the GPL. If SaaS business had been a big thing
| in 1989 I'm sure the original GPL would have contained
| wording similar to the AGPL. It's just that back then
| nobody though of people hosting software as a threat to
| the free flow of software improvements.
| dartos wrote:
| This entirely
| lupire wrote:
| Not clear.
|
| Stallman already carved out exceptions for "appliances"
| that had computer chips, like microwaves. Stalllman
| wanted is own _general purpose_ computer to be libre, not
| freedom to control other people computers (Cloud).
| reaperman wrote:
| So, I think yours is a reasonable position. I hear it and
| integrate it into my thinking.
|
| I have two thoughts on what you bring up, the first is a
| story I remember about Stallman being really frustrated
| with firmware on a printer (not drivers on a "general
| computing" device). I think reading this story[0] should
| be reasonably self-explanatory and not require additional
| exposition or warrant in this HN thread.
|
| My other thought is that increasingly, our "general
| computing" applications are moving to web apps / cloud
| apps, and not stored on our devices. So while you may be
| correct about RMS, and maybe he wouldn't have cared today
| about the concerns AGPL addresses, I personally wonder
| that he would, and think its at least reasonable for many
| people to generalize his FSF philosophy to cover general
| computing experiences that aren't hosted locally but are
| still part of the primary computing interface that we use
| to interact with our current general computing devices.
|
| 0: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/201cthe-printer-
| story201...
| p_l wrote:
| Free software theoretically is against EULAs and about
| empowerment of end users.
|
| AGPL is an EULA that is additionally really badly
| written, especially compared to clarity of GPLv2-only.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| The AGPL is the GPLv3 with only the addition/modification
| of section 13. Outside of section 13, there are only 5
| words changed in the rest of the terms of the license and
| those 5 changes are the introduction of the word 'Affero'
| between 'GNU' and 'General Public License'.
|
| > 13. Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU
| General Public License.
|
| > Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if
| you modify the Program, your modified version must
| prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely
| through a computer network (if your version supports such
| interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding
| Source of your version by providing access to the
| Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge,
| through some standard or customary means of facilitating
| copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall
| include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by
| version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is
| incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.
|
| > Notwithstanding any other provision of this License,
| you have permission to link or combine any covered work
| with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU General
| Public License into a single combined work, and to convey
| the resulting work. The terms of this License will
| continue to apply to the part which is the covered work,
| but the work with which it is combined will remain
| governed by version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
|
| Section 13 only states that someone/something interacting
| over a network is considered a user (and that you can
| combine GPLv3 and AGPLv3 works). That is the only change
| compared to GPLv3. It does not otherwise change what
| rights the user has or what is considered a corresponding
| source (i.e. what the licensed work contaminates). Those
| are word for word identical between the GPLv3 and the
| AGPLv3.
|
| If you have an issue with what rights/restrictions the
| AGPLv3 provides a user of the software, that issue is
| with the GPLv3, not the AGPLv3.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure why the downvotes.
|
| Yes, the AGPL was essentially intended to plug the SaaS
| (maybe it was still being called application service
| providers at the time) loophole seen by some whereby
| delivering a network service wasn't considered
| distribution--and therefore didn't trigger copyleft
| provisions--with the GPL (either v2 or v3).
|
| A lot of work went into GPLv3 and a lot of legal niceties
| were added as well as the watered-down TiVoization
| language but really isn't a lot of practical difference
| between GPLv2 and v3.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > Some of us (myself included) even consider licenses
| like the AGPL to be nonfree.
|
| I was with you up until this point.
| wongarsu wrote:
| As a private person and startup founder the things I
| value about open source from a practical perspective are
|
| - being able to just read the source to figure out what's
| going on
|
| - being able to fix bugs
|
| - being able to add features I need
|
| - being able to upstream those changes so others can
| profit and help maintain them
|
| - being able to self-host the software
|
| Open Source ticks all those boxes, whether it's on the
| "laissez-faire" end of the spectrum (BSD) or the
| "Stallman" side of the spectrum (AGPL). (though the more
| "Stallman" a license is the fewer situations where I can
| use it). But the BSL also ticks all those boxes. I get
| it's not as ideologically pure, but it still meets most
| of the ideals of the original open source/libre software
| movements.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| BSL doesn't necessarily allow you to self host. Without
| additional grants, it doesn't allow production usage
| until the license converts.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If I make a paid twitter clone using a BSL-licensed
| database under the hood, I'm allowed to self-host the
| database for this purpose, in both production and dev
| environments.
|
| What the BSL prevents me from doing is offering paid
| hosting for others, or offering a product that competes
| with it (e.g. if postgres would be BSL, supabase couldn't
| use postgres under the hood since the products kind of
| compete with each other).
| candiddevmike wrote:
| You can't use BSL software in production without an
| additional usage grant:
|
| https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting/
| sofixa wrote:
| In practice are there any BSL adopters that don't give a
| usage grant for production use? All those I've
| encountered only forbid stuff like hosting to compete
| with the original software creator, not actually using it
| in production.
| sea-gold wrote:
| It may not be common, but I did find these (fairly
| popular projects) which don't appear to allow production
| usage: https://github.com/fingerprintjs/fingerprintjs/blo
| b/master/L...
| https://github.com/exaloop/codon/blob/develop/LICENSE
|
| Here are some others: https://github.com/search?q=%22Busi
| ness+Source+License%22+%2...
| wongarsu wrote:
| You are right for the pure BSL. I was misremembering
| because e.g. Hashicorp just give a blanket Additional Use
| Grant for production use that doesn't compete with the
| licensed product [1]. MariaDB is a lot less generous,
| e.g. restricting you to less than three production
| servers for MaxScale.
|
| So the ability to self-host BSL code depends a lot on the
| chosen Additional Use Grant. I don't mind Hashicorp's,
| but the one publicly offered by MariaDB is pretty
| restricting.
|
| 1: https://www.hashicorp.com/bsl
| gadders wrote:
| I get your philosophical point point and I'm not enough
| up on various licenses to debate the AGPL.
|
| I'm coming more from a "build a company and feed your
| family" point of view but everyone has to balance their
| own priorities/ethical positions.
|
| I guess at least if the license is set at the outset
| people can choose to engage or not, rather than having
| what they may percieve as a "rug pull".
| jraph wrote:
| > Some of us (myself included) even consider licenses
| like the AGPL to be nonfree
|
| Which definition of free do you use?
|
| You may have valid criticism against AGPL but non-free
| isn't one. It's free according to the free software
| definitions and the open source definition. It's
| recognized as free by the two organisms providing
| relevant definition (OSI and GNU) and by all the relevant
| actors, including Linux distributions and even big
| proprietary companies (including GitHub).
|
| I think you are misunderstanding the meaning of "for any
| purpose". It only applies to what you do with it when you
| _run_ it. It does not mean you can do anything you want
| with the source code. It is very important to understand
| this aspect correctly when developing software or for a
| free software / open source enthusiast.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| AGPL is absolutely free software as long as the GPL is
| considered free software and should not be put into
| comparison with licenses like the BSL.
|
| The only real limitation on the AGPL compared to the GPL
| is section 13 which states that you need to make the
| sources for said AGPL program available to any user who
| interacts with it. Otherwise the license is practically
| identical. Otherwise the license is essentially identical
| to the GPL.
|
| If you diff the licenses, you'll see that other than
| section 13 and s/GPL/AGPL/g, the actual license terms are
| identical (if you diff sections 0-12, only the addition
| of the word Affero to the first line of section 0 will
| come up). The preamble and afterwords are different but
| they aren't actually part of the license (only the
| sections between the lines `TERMS AND CONDITIONS` and
| `END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS`). As for the differences in
| those sections, the preamble provides context for why the
| license exists compared to the GPL and the afterwords
| provide a recommendation as to how to provide source
| access.
|
| So in effect the AGPL is identical to the GPL with the
| addition of requiring that you make sources available to
| any user "interacting with it remotely over a computer
| network". Contrary to popular belief this doesn't mean
| you need to provide sources for everything that touches
| it over a network, just that anybody/anything that
| interacts with it over a network be granted access to the
| AGPL source (and corresponding sources). The requirement
| for what is considered part of corresponding sources is
| exactly identical.
|
| That requirement:
|
| > The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code
| form means all the source code needed to generate,
| install, and (for an executable work) run the object code
| and to modify the work, including scripts to control
| those activities. However, it does not include the work's
| System Libraries, or general-purpose tools or generally
| available free programs which are used unmodified in
| performing those activities but which are not part of the
| work. For example, Corresponding Source includes
| interface definition files associated with source files
| for the work, and the source code for shared libraries
| and dynamically linked subprograms that the work is
| specifically designed to require, such as by intimate
| data communication or control flow between those
| subprograms and other parts of the work.
|
| TLDR: The only practical change in the licenses for a
| piece of hosted software is that under the GPL the user
| is the server operator/host and under the AGPL the user
| is the actual user/client. Whether a given piece of
| software gets "contaminated" by a AGPL work is no
| different than if said AGPL work was licensed under the
| GPL instead.
| patrickaljord wrote:
| > Free software can be used for any purpose, including
| competing with the original authors. If you can't do
| whatever you want with the software, it's not free
| software.
|
| That's like saying a free society can only be free when
| individuals are free to do anything they want including
| harming/limiting freedoms of other individuals. Well, no,
| most free society limits your freedom to harm other
| people or bans you from limiting other people's freedom.
| The AGPL prohibits you from limiting other people's
| freedom.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I honestly don't get why more people don't just use the
| AGPL.
|
| Mastodon et al prove it works.
| Kalium wrote:
| I would hesitate to characterize a service running on
| grants and donations as a good model for your typical
| startup to imitate.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Why not? It is one of the most sustainable models if you
| want to maintain quality and avoid enshittification.
| Kalium wrote:
| The VC-oriented financial model (that is, your typical
| startup) is fundamentally incompatible with Mastodon's
| non-profit financial model. As a result, very different
| choices around licensing, funding, and business structure
| are good fits.
|
| Each tool has its use and serves its specific purpose.
| What works for Mastodon might not work for others trying
| to advance different goals.
| pc86 wrote:
| The primary goal of a startup is to make money through
| acquisition or IPO, and the primary goal of business more
| generally is to make money selling a good or service.
| Grants and donations don't really fit into that, and
| isn't the topic of this whether or not to open source the
| code of a commercial venture?
| j1elo wrote:
| Well, Mongo decided it doesn't really work. At least not
| for them, anyway. This is one of the most notorious case
| of relicensing from Open Source to source available
| cases, so it might be interesting for you to look into
| the reasons (it happened around 2018).
|
| In the end, the AGPL is huge but not a silver bullet.
| p_l wrote:
| It's a legal mess that doesn't work if your application
| isn't a website, and even then it's a problematic thing.
|
| Honestly, for considerable portion of its use, it works
| mainly because nobody looks too closely or trieso
| actually enforce it.
|
| The other considerable portion was/is bait&switch schemes
| involving dual licensing and having developers sign
| copyright transfer forms to parent org, which benefits
| from selling commercial license when someone runs afoul
| of compliance.
| linuxftw wrote:
| For my money, dual licensed AGPL is the way to go. All
| source is available under the AGPL, but also available
| via a paid commercial non-open source license.
|
| The only real drawback is ensuring any outside
| contributions can be utilized this way, such as with a
| CLA.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's the thing. You can dual license however you want.
| But if no one from the outside actually contributes what
| have you accomplished really? (Other than being able to
| say you're open source.) Of course, a great many open
| source projects in general are one person or one
| organization.
| nsagent wrote:
| That's what I ended up doing recently [1]. I'm doubtful I
| would even know if someone did end up breaking the
| license agreement though.
|
| [1]: https://pl.aiwright.dev/about/license/
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > People seem to get really salty when companies change
| their license further down the line to prevent this.
|
| I think a lot of people get salty when a company changes
| their license to a source available license but still try
| to call it open source and free ride on the goodwill that
| open source software engenders.
|
| Don't call a license open source if it isn't and reasonable
| people will be fine with it.
| gadders wrote:
| I did say pick a license from the start. I'm not
| criticising people for having different philosophical
| positions on licensing.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I was addressing the point about the "saltiness" when
| licenses change. I wholeheartedly agree that making a
| thoughtful choice the company can live with from the
| start is the best policy.
| jackbravo wrote:
| I agree that when a big cloud company tries to emulate you,
| you are already winning on a normal company. But maybe not
| for a venture-backed/big-exit-strategy startup. And probably,
| those early investors are the ones recommending against fully
| open-source business models.
| londons_explore wrote:
| And the main one:
|
| It's really hard to make any money by giving your product away
| for free...
| addandsubtract wrote:
| If you open source your product, your business product
| becomes hosting / maintenance / consultancy.
| grotorea wrote:
| Yes that's what you sell but if you also have development
| costs and your freeriding competitor doesn't, how often do
| the finances of it work out?
| jraph wrote:
| It may be difficult to freeride, you still need to know
| in depth how the product exactly works if you want to
| provide consultancy and support.
|
| Freeriding would break on the first tricky support ticket
| or the first feature you'd need in the product that isn't
| there yet. You get to know the product well enough if you
| start contributing and interacting with the main
| contributors, at which point you stop freeriding and you
| become a partner instead.
|
| The other way to do this would be to get an agreement
| from the main developers so you can be supported on your
| consulting and support activities, in which case you also
| become a partner.
|
| I tend to think both outcomes as beneficial to the main
| devs, who can always stop collaborating if it turns out
| they are not.
|
| Now, if your product is something for which nobody needs
| support or consultancy, you risk having the MongoDB-
| Amazon issue.
| bashauma wrote:
| > Now, if your product is something for which nobody
| needs support or consultancy, you risk having the
| MongoDB-Amazon issue.
|
| ...So, that is the problem isn't it?
|
| Basically, well-written software and documentation are
| meant to reduce the amount of support and consulting
| needed by users. Assuming your point is true, then for a
| company that sells support and consultants, enriching
| documentation, etc. would be an action in direct conflict
| with its own interests, wouldn't it?
|
| The MongoDB people are very passionate and have built a
| great software, documentation and user community... to
| the point where they no longer need to sell their own
| support. Therefore, it is my understanding that Amazon
| has decided to use their "support".
|
| (If you're saying that it doesn't matter to the users if
| the company lives or dies when there is already
| functioning software and community, that may be true)
| jraph wrote:
| > ...So, that is the problem isn't it?
|
| Yep, it is a risk, but it's also not applicable in every
| case. Now, I'm not an expert and I'm not sure what are
| the exact boxes to check to avoid the issue but we for
| sure don't have it. It is definitely something to
| carefully consider when creating an open source business.
| I guess Amazon wants to provide nice developer tools and
| improve its cloud offer to attract people to its cloud
| solutions, but our product is not for such developers.
| Amazon is not interested in providing support and
| consultancy for XWiki (we know this for a fact since they
| use XWiki and sponsored important features). It does not
| scale that well, unlike providing MongoDB.
|
| > would be an action in direct conflict with its own
| interests, wouldn't it?
|
| One could think this, but it's not actually the case. I
| guess we already have enough support work that's not
| related to a lack of documentation such that we don't
| need to increase it artificially. We are actually
| incentivized to reduce our support work. Companies will
| usually need to be reassured by a support contract in any
| case.
|
| We are big users of the documentation ourselves and we
| have every incentive to write good documentation because
| of this. Lack of documentation actually increases our
| cost of operation, because all of a sudden, if you need
| to know something, you need to find out the relevant
| developers, who might have left (but probably not because
| people usually stay), and wait for their reply, or wait
| for someone to look into the relevant code.
|
| There's also no policy of keeping any documentation
| secret. On the contrary, we are encouraged to publicly
| document what we do. So when we document, we do it
| publicly, except for internal processes.
|
| Our documentation is far from perfect, but it's because
| of a lack of time or diligence, not because we are
| incentivized to keep documentation secret.
|
| What's more:
|
| - a good documentation is a good look for someone who
| seeks to adopt our product
|
| - the same values that push us to do it the open source
| way pushes us to also publicly document things.
|
| - when documentation is lacking or help is needed, you
| can always reach us on our public chat and our public
| forum, and the product team is in reality usually quite
| responsive. And so if the documentation is good, there
| are fewer questions to answer. Of course, there are
| limits, questions that look like support questions will
| be invited to talk to our support team. Unless someone
| else in the community does answer the questions for free.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Has it ever worked, i.e. Is there any company which could
| pay market rate salary without any extra funding or being
| subsidized by other parts of company? Docker, terraform,
| elasticsearch, many DBs etc tried it but it never generated
| good revenue to pay developers outside of VC funding. See
| their revenue after they begin removing free stuff[1].
|
| Even supabase is an awesome product but they needed $116M
| of external funding[2] to support their development which
| looks like unsustainable model for open source.
|
| [1]: https://prismic-
| io.s3.amazonaws.com/sacra/fc6f34f9-d598-4b53...
|
| [2]: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/supabase
| jraph wrote:
| Yes, I work for XWiki [1] which works exactly like this.
| It's been running since 2005. Don't expect FAANG
| salaries, the company is small and doesn't have
| investors, but the salaries are decent and the working
| conditions are great.
|
| To my knowledge we don't have any competitor that takes
| XWiki and provides support and/or consultancy. I don't
| think it would be possible to freeride on our product
| because it would require expertise they would only have
| if they contributed to the project and it also requires
| brand recognition. We are of course the reference, people
| trust us because _we_ are the main developers.
|
| Many features have also been sponsored by customers so we
| do receive money to develop big parts of the product
| itself.
|
| [1] https://www.xwiki.com/
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Looking at the pricing page[1], it looks like open source
| is missing many features like LDAP and extensions. Is
| that correct?
|
| [1]: https://xwiki.com/en/pricing/
| jraph wrote:
| Everything we do is open source, including the LDAP
| feature ("custom" consultancy aside, where the highly
| specific parts are often not public). Most extensions are
| free, some are paid (including the convenient LDAP app),
| but all are open source, including the paid ones. XWiki
| is not open core.
|
| In particular, the core code for dealing with LDAP is
| there [1], open source and gratis, and the paid app that
| provides a nice UI for it is... paid but also open source
| under LGPL and the code is here: [2].
|
| You can actually clone the code, strip the license
| management, compile it and install it on your own
| instance, but people usually just pay and they also get
| support.
|
| It's pretty much like OSMAnd Plus, which is paid on the
| Google Store, but the actual source code is still free
| software.
|
| So yes, we actually _sell_ free software (and free [?]
| gratis has its full meaning with us), and it turns out
| convenience makes it so that it works out.
|
| Usually organizations big enough to want to use LDAP can
| usually fork off a few bucks and will be glad to support
| us.
|
| Of course it would be nicer if it were free and it's
| always a delicate balance to decide what should be a paid
| app / feature, but at least it's always open source ,
| with all the relevant rights to users it implies: the
| right to take the code, adapt it and/or go find someone
| else if they are not happy with us.
|
| As someone convinced that free software is the right way
| to do software, I think this is a sane way to fund free
| software, and good to take.
|
| It's also way easier to handle than donation for an
| organization that would like to send us money, it's easy
| to justify.
|
| [1] https://github.com/xwiki-contrib/ldap/
|
| [2] https://github.com/xwikisas/application-
| activedirectory/
| conradfr wrote:
| Ionic seems to be doing OK.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Ionic has raised $25M from external funding.[1]
|
| [1]: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ionic/compan
| y_financ...
| awalias wrote:
| >It's really hard to make any money
|
| Open sourcing your code doesn't necessarily mean that you're
| giving your product away for free.
|
| The value in a lot of businesses (most?) is in the
| distribution and my core argument in the post is that being
| open source actually gives you an edge here, _especially_ in
| markets where your competitors are unwilling to take this
| approach.
| nprateem wrote:
| Business value only matters if you can capture it.
| awalias wrote:
| Probably poor word choice from me but when I reference
| superior distribution I'm assuming 'value-capture'.
| nprateem wrote:
| I thought you were saying you'd have greater distribution
| if you give stuff away free, but in that case it's much
| more difficult to capture value from it. Everyone wants
| free stuff.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| > - People might criticize my messy/bad/unfinished code
|
| As someone who has created and maintained open source projects
| (most recently Willow[0]) for two decades I get a kick out of
| this.
|
| Of course when interacting with users and feedback I keep it
| polite but in my head I'm thinking "You like to talk. I
| actually DID this. Shut up or submit a PR".
|
| Surprise surprise they almost never do.
|
| Keep actually producing and shake the haters off!
|
| [0] - https://heywillow.io/
| jasonmarks_ wrote:
| What is the financial backing that affords you the ability to
| offer your product for free? Everyone still has bills to pay
| AFAIK
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Two prior successful startup exits.
|
| I also do consulting and advisory work in adjacent spaces
| so this is pretty much my lifelong dream - spend my other
| time just doing open source projects I think are
| interesting.
| tristan957 wrote:
| You could just pick a better license like the GPL or AGPL.
| Cloud companies eating other open-source products up is purely
| the inability of those products to choose licenses that
| actually protect their work.
| hobofan wrote:
| > If after 6 years, Google tries to steal your lunch, you should
| have a brand, a team, and a community, that have spent the last
| few years preparing for a David versus Goliath-type fight.
|
| From my experience, for procurement people all of that (brand,
| community, team, DX) will matter close to 0 in comparison to
| compliance, etc, if you are going head-to-head with an existing
| supplier like Google.
| awalias wrote:
| Great point! I should probably add that to the article. In our
| case (Supabase) we have indeed spent the last few years working
| on compliance (SOC2, HIPAA, GDPR etc.) in order to meet these
| requirements so your comment here is on point.
| brap wrote:
| The list of main complaints against OSS they present here is
| (conveniently?) missing the biggest one, in my opinion:
|
| Your users can just host their own version instead of paying you.
|
| It seems like many OSS companies mitigate this by leaving out
| features from the OSS version or making the deployment more
| difficult than it should be. I'm not complaining, I think it's
| fair, but this is the reality.
|
| It's funny how they don't address this one, but instead they list
| "oh no my code isn't pretty" as a valid complaint against going
| OSS. Who cares.
| imiric wrote:
| This depends on the product. Sometimes self-hosting is not just
| a matter of starting some Docker containers, but takes work and
| resources to scale and maintain properly. It might not even be
| a matter of the OSS version lacking features, but about the
| nature of the product itself.
|
| For example, you can self-host WordPress if you want, and it's
| a perfectly capable product. But if you want to outsource the
| complexities around it, scale it easily, properly secure it,
| etc., it's worth considering using wordpress.com instead.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Isn't that a reflection of how bad WordPress is? That they
| haven't prioritised security and ease of use in the
| development of the product.
|
| This model definitely leads to some perverse incentives.
| imiric wrote:
| No, there are maintenance issues with hosting WordPress
| that go beyond just the product. You need a domain and TLS
| cert, storage, bandwidth, a curated list of plugins, and an
| easy way to scale it all. None of this is core to WordPress
| itself. I'm not a WP user, but see all the features on
| https://wordpress.com/features/.
|
| Grafana and its ecosystem of apps are another example.
| Sure, you technically could host and maintain it yourself,
| but Grafana Cloud streamlines all of that, which is worth
| paying for. This doesn't mean that Grafana products are
| intentionally limited, but that the commercial product
| offers value added features some users are willing to pay
| for.
|
| The fact that some companies take advantage of this model
| doesn't mean that the model itself doesn't work. They're
| just not good companies to begin with, and don't understand
| open source.
| hellcow wrote:
| The optimal architecture for a 1-user self-hosted project
| is very different than something built to serve 100k
| people, which is very different from a company serving 10M,
| and again for 5B.
|
| Do you shard and partition the DB? Do you introduce a
| message bus? Do you add a caching layer? What about k8s and
| Terraform and Helm vs simply creating a single VM?
|
| These are all very different levels of complexity to
| standup and manage. Some require entire teams to manage
| them.
|
| Regardless of intentions, there's no "one-size-fits-all"
| solution to architecture and infrastructure decisions.
| awalias wrote:
| Maybe I should have addressed this one more directly in the
| post.
|
| >Your users can just host their own version instead of paying
| you.
|
| The main value in Supabase (the hosted service) is we do the
| hosting, maintenance, monitoring, compliance, security etc.
| which otherwise requires (expensive) in-house expertise.
|
| This should be enough without needing to resort to deliberately
| leaving out features, and I think this generalizes to other
| products as well (sentry, plausible, the-open-source-strava-
| alternative, etc.)
| water9 wrote:
| No unless you like, giving away the goose that lays the golden
| egg. How successful would Coca-Cola be today if they open sourced
| their company?
| sneak wrote:
| The recipe for Coca-Cola is publicly available and is not
| legally protected or exclusive in any way. Many people make
| extremely similar cola beverages. Their business value is in
| brand and marketing, not any exclusive method of producing the
| product.
|
| You have inadvertently chosen a perfect example of why free
| software is better than proprietary software.
| sylware wrote:
| open source is not enough anymore... humanity needs "lean open
| source"... and stable in time.
| throwaway63467 wrote:
| I mean Supabase was initially a glue layer on top of existing
| open-source tools, not sure if they could've kept it closed
| source even if they wanted (though I guess most of the licenses
| of the stuff they used would allow it).
| awalias wrote:
| This is true! Supabase db after all is "just" Postgres. In fact
| it's one of our product principles to adopt existing open
| source projects before writing our own.
|
| You're also correct on the second bit, everything in the stack
| is MIT, apache2, postgres licensed so it would have been ok to
| run a closed fork if we'd have been that way inclined.
| jWhick wrote:
| The author is clearly a utopist, advertising and trying to
| promote his own oss views. However, while oss has its growing
| niche it's clear that it isn't for everyone. The thing to ask
| yourself before going oss path is what are you gaining by going
| oss and what are you trading for that gain. For supabase it's
| clearly beneficial to be oss, they are a niche database, and by
| going oss they can benefit a lot from integrations, not to
| mention they are basically ripping off the evil firebase. So by
| going oss they are perceived as heroes. On top of that who would
| use another closed firebase that isn't from google? They can't
| compete on pricing, nor the scale. I think supabase were even
| advertised as open source firbase at some point.
|
| However if you are not ripping off some popular commercial tool
| and making it open source, and making open source as your main
| differentiator, in that case there is very little to gain by
| going oss. You might as well get most of authors advertised "oss
| benefits" by just having great developer experience and docs,
| while giving very little in return.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Open sourcing your company doesn't make sense, in my view, unless
| you're targeting developers or you're building a product that no
| one would realistically self host anyway, with Supabase being a
| prime example of both. For just the latter, Plausible Analytics
| is one, where one _could_ self host (I in fact do, via
| Coolify.io) but you 'd lose out on updates unless you build your
| own CI/CD system to pull and merge updates from their releases.
| gdcbe wrote:
| I understand you can give 1000's of reasons why it's fine. But
| it's still IMHO a sad reality that a giant cooperation cannot
| play it fair by being a corporate sponsor of the open source
| projects that they more or less wish to directly use as a
| service...
|
| I get that legally this is fine but ... Common... adapting FOSS
| for your own use cases in your basement or little company is
| still very different then a giant cooperation outcompeting you
| before you ever had a change...
|
| There might be room for a license to make FOSS software more like
| BSL if used by a company above a certain revenue threshold or
| w/e... Perhaps legally that's impossible, otherwise I have no
| idea why such a template does not exist yet.
| snowstormsun wrote:
| I think many companies probably don't like to be open source
| because
|
| - they like the idea of "security through obscurity". Open source
| means more work patching found vulnerabilities, so they rather
| not publish their code and instead tick check-lists for
| compliance and do blackbox pentests which makes them look secure.
|
| - like to do marketing that exaggerates the innovation of their
| product. That's difficult to do if everyone can see the code.
| nevodavid wrote:
| If you are interested in learning about open-source marketing,
| check: https://gitroom.com/blog
| jimjag wrote:
| Open Source is not a business model.
|
| Open Source is a licensing and development model.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Open Source is a licensing and development model.
|
| With traits of a religion.
| dboreham wrote:
| All of software development has those traits. Arguably
| everything humans do is like that.
| gumby wrote:
| In this case the ends drive the means. "Should I open source my
| company" is a decision like "should we write our code in C++?"
|
| Without starting a flame war there are good and bad reasons to
| choose an implementation language and they should be driven by
| your business needs, whatever they are.
|
| The same is true for how you plan to license your code and what
| business model you build around it.
| martypitt wrote:
| I love Supabase, commercial open source in general, and agree
| with lots of this post.
|
| However this comment feels off:
|
| > In software ideas are cheap. Value is almost always created in
| execution of ideas.
|
| I've heard this phrase around things like "I have this cool idea
| for a startup - will you sign my NDA before I tell you about it?"
|
| However, when you're open sourcing your software, you're not just
| providing an idea, but a significant portion of execution of that
| idea too.
|
| Sure, code isn't the full execution - that expands to sales /
| marketing / support / etc.
|
| However, the article is a little glib towards the value of the
| code, suggesting it's worthless without sales / marketing /etc. I
| don't think that's true.
| codegeek wrote:
| "suggesting it's worthless without sales / marketing /etc. I
| don't think that's true."
|
| Code is not worthless but it almost is without
| sales/marketing/talking to customers. If I could split the
| value, it would be 90% sales/marketing/customer validation and
| 10% code. I run a low 7 figure bootstrapped SAAS (not open
| source) and I can tell you that code is mostly shit anyway and
| keeps evolving.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| I think code is worthless once it has been created. This is
| because the cost of copying is zero. You can't copy a house for
| zero but software yes.
|
| The process of creating the code and solving all those little
| unseen problems is for what developers are paid.
|
| Hence selling software is so profitable. If you don't sell
| software, you won't make money with it. Software is not like a
| physical object in a our shared reality.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > Once your project reaches significant scale, you might find
| yourself in a situation like Elastic, or Mongo, where large cloud
| providers are offering your product with a superior distribution
| model.
|
| > Secondly, and more constructively, you should prepare for this
| eventuality by finding areas where you can outcompete anyone.
| Most cloud providers are notoriously bad at Developer Experience
| for example, so take advantage of that and make DX one of your
| core competencies. If after 6 years, Google tries to steal your
| lunch, you should have a brand, a team, and a community, that
| have spent the last few years preparing for a David versus
| Goliath-type fight. Make sure you're not blindsided by something
| like this by planning for it from the beginning. You have enough
| time and focus on your side to construct a winning strategy.
|
| Consider Google Firebase, which runs on Google Cloud and can
| access services from Google Cloud[1], but has a separate
| frontend, focused on DX rather then features, and imagine Amazon
| Supabase.
|
| [1]: https://firebase.google.com/firebase-and-gcp
| lmeyerov wrote:
| There is some tricky big assumption being made here around
| sustainable profitability that misses our lived reality,
| especially given challenges like US developer salaries.
| Paraphrasing, OSS companies need lightning to hit twice, first
| for the OSS and then again for the company.
|
| In our case, the Graphistry team loves and breathes OSS every
| day. We helped start what became the massively popular Apache
| Arrow and Nvidia RAPIDS projects, release our Python & JS clients
| as OSS, and PyGraphistry[AI] is a graph Swiss army knife,
| including tools like GFQL the only embeddable & dataframe-native
| & GPU-accelerated implementation of the Cypher graph query
| language..
|
| ... But we sustainably grow primarily by selling cloud/on-prem
| self-hosting licenses to enterprises, govs, and data companies to
| our GPU graph viz server. Thankfully, after years of grinding,
| that business is growing well. As a natural experiment, our
| alternate SaaS hosting revenue does support a tiny team... but
| not the majority of our team. Most of our innovation cycles would
| disappear without our self-hosting license revenue.
|
| There's some cross of winning lottery ticket, SaaS market
| profile, and technical defensibility getting missed in the
| article that I can't put my finger on. Our launches of Louie.AI +
| GFQL are changing the OSS viability story in our particular case
| (I'd love to chat w successful founders here!), so I'm not saying
| it can't work, but our experience to get to this point makes me
| worried for new founders reading the article.
| dcow wrote:
| Are the companies that buy your on prem solution buying the
| source code or the support? In other words if you said to them
| "hey the source is open now" would they say "oh cool we'll be
| canceling our contract"?
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Fair question! A good chunk would cancel, and at a minimum,
| switching to free sw / paid support would drop our product-
| related revenue by ~70-80%.
|
| Then again, we could make the software worse to trigger
| higher support hours, as complained by others in the thread
| about some OSS companies. Or really lean into it, going to
| full-blown consulting. However, switching to a consulting
| business has all sorts of negative externalities that can
| easily destroy the strengths and joys of a product culture.
| We actually _do_ provide a growing side of professional
| services and roadmap acceleration for Graphistry & louie.ai
| (graph viz, graph AI, genAI, for data-intensive operational /
| investigative scenarios). By having our product licensing
| revenue the majority, we get to make sure there is stronger
| positive mutual alignment between us and our users, and our
| software and their long-term mission.
|
| As another natural experiment, I was interviewing someone
| from a company in the same space a few days ago that doesn't
| have this discipline. While our company is younger, our tech
| roadmap has been literally years ahead every year, and the
| software they deliver has no real upgrade path.. alignment
| helps when you care about your craft and customers. (And for
| HN'ers, it's a 5X+ on valuation multiple.)
| dcow wrote:
| If you said "our source is now available under the AGPL, if
| you'd like to keep using the software without reverse
| licensing modifications and your patents you'll need to
| remain on your current plan", how many would walk? Or
| similar, "our software is open source but still requires a
| license for commercial use" would 70-80% give you the
| middle finger and say okay sue us then? Just curious if
| there is a dual licensing strategy that could work for you.
|
| I mean think about it, the companies you've sold the
| software to have now seen your sources. If they could take
| the code and do it better themselves and it was just a
| question of "knowing the secret sauce" then wouldn't 70-80%
| of them have done so (if your claim is accurate). There's
| something else happening here. They're paying for your team
| to maintain the software and provide continual updates.
| Getting the source code is most likely an implementation
| detail to the purchaser. Open source doesn't mean free as
| in free beer. It's a myth that you can't charge a company
| for an open source product.
| auggierose wrote:
| I think you got a pretty clear answer to that already in
| the parent answer. Of course, you could keep insisting
| that open source should work for them.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| A deeper question would be to examine if your product
| mindshare would grow significantly if your product were
| open source, and if this growth would lead to a combination
| kf the following that would overcome the loss is
| subscribers: 1) Contributions from the community (bug
| reports, code, promotion, documentation, and feedback are
| all valuable contributions, but they take work to leverage,
| and some companies choose not to put in the work). 2) More
| users means more potential subscribers to the cloud and
| support licenses. (What percent of these new users would
| convert to paid support licenses or cloud hosting
| customers?). 3) Other new ways to garner financial support
| from the community? (Patronage, paid feature development,
| ???).
| lmeyerov wrote:
| I agree with those perspectives, they're questions we
| talk about and analyze:
|
| - We do in fact operate multiple OSS repos. Despite their
| usage, most, as with most OSS in general, do not get
| significant code-based contributions. Our proprietary
| repos are even more complicated (e.g., distributed GPU
| code, webgl shaders, and "boring" enterprise bits), where
| we'd expect even less involvement. Instead, they see
| other values from the OSS community like easier bug
| reporting and, as you say, easier for folks to see if the
| tool is for them. Writeups like Supabases misses this
| nuance in practice, focusing just on the rarer lottery
| ticket scenario. (Which is natural to come from a
| marketing / devrel person that got hired after-the-fact:
| selection bias in action.)
|
| - Our customers do pay for feature development even
| without the OSS
|
| Most of all, as you say, maybe marketshare can grow! But
| in my original point, now that's counting on lightning to
| strike twice, once for OSS and then again for the
| company. That's a very big decision when many people's
| lives -- and their families -- are making bets here.
| We're actually reexamining the economics of this question
| now that much more is known and we have more stability.
| Much trickier than the blogpost makes out!
| dboreham wrote:
| Thoughtful post, thanks. However, this tripped me up: "our GPU
| graph viz server" -- I couldn't understand how you a) scale
| graphviz[1] on a GPU and b) make money hosting graphviz. Quick
| read of your web site cleared that up :)
|
| [1] https://graphviz.org/
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| Are there many success stories for open source targeted at end-
| users? E.g. imagine if Photoshop is open source, would Adobe be
| financially successful?
| dboreham wrote:
| No?
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Pro tip: Name your company "Open___" then don't open source it.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| I feel like the third point (competitors) is a major concern that
| was just brushed aside. The 'just out-innovate them' approach
| might work if your startup is well funded with a very capable and
| nimble development team. But what if you are a fledgling startup
| with very limited resources. You have a very small team that
| struggles to do a fraction of the features on your 'TO DO' list.
| You don't have millions of VC dollars that enables your team to
| keep the wolves at bay.
|
| It wouldn't even take a tech giant like FAANG to outdo your
| project after forking your source. A medium-sized company could
| throw a dozen programmers on the project and their fork would
| surge ahead of the original with respect to features, support,
| and distribution. They could out-market you as well.
| cuu508 wrote:
| It would be interesting to see examples where this scenario
| played out.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Probably not. Release your code publicly so people can read and
| contribute. Require paid licenses for commercial use over X
| numbers of seats where X is pretty generous and keep it free at
| the lowest tier. Those are hard things to claw back later without
| people completely losing their shit. Then the really hard part is
| to instill a culture inside your business that they paying
| customers are funding all the development and don't just obsess
| about the enterprise use case at the expense of all else. Keep
| showing the free tier people that you're listening to them. And
| that's what you'll fail at.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Does it provide more value for your business than it distracts
| from your business? That's a difficult calculation. Personally, I
| love open source, but I wouldn't open source a business unless I
| needed to.
| dcow wrote:
| On the topic of open sourcing your core business, founders often
| worry that a competitor is going to take their source code, fork
| it, and directly compete with them. But, is there an actual
| example of this happening for real and the fork winning out and
| killing the incumbent in the market? I mean there's a fork of
| Signal that doesn't require a phone number (which is Signal's
| heinous transgression if you poll HN) and we're all still using
| Signal. And all you have to do to prevent bigcorp taking your
| stuff is slap the [A]GPL on it for "free users" (while still
| allowing others to purchase the source code under a more
| permissive license should they require it).
| chandmkhn wrote:
| `And not one of them were ever required to solve a LeetCode
| problem over Zoom.`
|
| I can see some motivated developers benefit from this. But now
| those devs are working on someone's "open sourced" company for
| free thus growing someone's company in exchange for employability
| elsewhere. I can't shake of the feeling of borderline
| exploitation when I see the phrases 'my company" and "open
| source" next to each other.
| seanwilson wrote:
| What about for desktop apps? Are there good examples of this?
| Unless you can offer some cloud/online/support service to go with
| it, there'd be no reason for most to pay?
| dboreham wrote:
| OSS is a thing you _buy_ , not a thing you sell.
| freeopinion wrote:
| I think the question is meant to mean "Should my company open the
| source of its software?"
|
| But for me, answering the question as asked provides the path to
| answering the question as reworded. To me, the question as asked
| is about the nature of the software the company uses, not sells.
|
| I personally will always choose an open source product over the
| alternative, even if I happily pay for support or just donate to
| support the project. Unfettered access to the source is
| fundamental to me, even for software I never intend to alter.
|
| I know this seems to many like an extremist position. But I don't
| like the idea that I am not allowed to tear down my microwave or
| doorknob or transmission. I might never be able to put them back
| together in working order. Or I might be able to find a gear with
| a missing tooth and execute a $2 repair instead of a $90
| replacement. Or I might invent a new frakenstein microwave with a
| tranmission.
|
| Extending the featureset of a web server or understanding why my
| plugin is crashing the host app, etc. are important to me. I
| think they are important to society. So I hold on to my open
| source extremism. If you show me the hottest new tiny web server
| that can do HTTPS/4 with built-in AI in just 5Kb, I will be
| intrigued, but if it isn't open source, I'll stick with my
| current stack.
|
| With this mindset, the software I produce is open source. And
| sometimes people pay me for it.
| lgkk wrote:
| Really like the pointer to the well known security. First time I
| actually saw anyone mention it on something popular.
| astro- wrote:
| I'd say that open-source works best for companies when they don't
| open the main thing. Meta building React in the open is a good
| example. The community gets a well-maintained library. Meta gets
| free testing, code contributions and potential hiring pipeline.
| When trying to compete with Meta, React gives you virtually no
| advantage. There's no incentive to leave important features out
| of the public codebase. Both Meta and the community benefit.
|
| Would it make sense for Meta to open the codebase for
| facebook.com? Aside from studying/scrutinising the code, the only
| other thing you'd be able to do with it is to change the logo and
| try to compete with Facebook.
|
| In this example, it's still probably not enough to disrupt them
| thanks to the social graph and infrastructure complexity. But you
| could imagine moments where even Meta gets nervous when anyone
| can start competing with feature parity from day one.
|
| Over the long-term, it's more likely that Meta would want to keep
| some features private. It's also less likely that they would get
| lots of quality contributions back. If you're running a fb.com
| clone in production, you're likely trying to compete with them on
| some level. This leads to a weird relationship with the community
| and limited value for both sides.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I think the distinguishing question is, "Is the company's
| software a _tool_ used to fulfill the company 's goals, or is the
| software _itself_ the goal of the company? "
|
| If your answer is the latter, then you have more problems in
| store than open-source viability. You aren't genuinely
| testing/dogfooding your product. Your product goals will trend
| away from real customer value and toward implementation
| convenience, self-compatibility, 3rd-party incompatibility, and a
| closed-minded product vision. The only way to keep this business
| model viable is to monopolize your market. But will it be _you_
| monopolizing, or will it be FAANG?
| glitchc wrote:
| Well, Microsoft invented the "sale of proprietary software as a
| license to end-users" model. Red Hat, on the other hand, offers
| value-added services on top of open-source software. It's easy to
| compare their relative market valuations.
| jdwyah wrote:
| Just kicked off a project to explore open-sourcing what we've
| built (VC funded). I'm considering a different tack which I think
| may be interesting.
|
| We have a lot of client libraries, already open sourced. Then we
| have the hosted APIs and DB which are not open. Making all the
| close-source stuff open, feels like a big effort, with an unclear
| reward and more likely that we just end up with a hard to install
| OS project, since it feels like the hosting expertise _is_ part
| of the core value prop.
|
| What I'm excited about though is whether we could take the hosted
| piece out of the equation and find something that is pretty
| different, but has its own niche. For us this would be replacing
| the web UI and DB hosting of the paid product, with a CLI and
| simpler git based hosting for an open source version.
|
| ie If you want hosted feature flags, we think you should use the
| hosted thing, but if you want gitops style feature flags (100%
| reliable), then use the OS version.
|
| I like the idea that we could really focus on making the open
| version great in its niche, but have a super clear line about
| what is paid / hosted, to help us avoid the complexity of always
| needing to decide how to nerf the OS version.
| brylie wrote:
| We are building some educational video games and considering
| starting a company to help sustain the effort. If possible, it
| would be great to publish the source code and game assets as
| free/open software and free cultural works. However, I'm not sure
| about a business model to fund continuous research and
| development. Is anyone here working on or aware of any open
| source game studios with sustainable funding/revenue? Any other
| advice or consideration about licensing and business models?
| Thanks in advance :-)
| fuddle wrote:
| I'm not sure if an MIT license is sustainable long term. I see
| most open source companies adapt AGPL, open core or source
| available licenses.
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