[acjohnson55]

I challenge the notion that product is so precious that there's a benefit to it remaining closed source. If there is a line, I'd draw it at business process, not product.

I'm a former Artsyer. There, a good bit of core product code t is actually open source, including the entire website and iOS app. As it turns out, the real value in most businesses is the data, business relationships, the domain knowledge, and the processes. People can't use your code to steal your business, even if they want to.

It does, indeed, have some impact on code quality, although I wouldn't say there was major difference. Much of the closed source code was pretty critical in its need for correctness.

Another benefit is that as you blog or do conference talks, you can point to real life code, rather than contriving examples. So there's somewhat of a virtuous cycle of positive exposure.

I can also say that the CTO is genuinely enthusiastic about his engineers building their personal brands. Sure, they might eventually leave (like me), but on the whole, it gives people growth opportunities outside the company while working there, and definitely helps with recruiting.

[pjmlp]

> I challenge the notion that product is so precious that there's a benefit to it remaining closed source. If there is a line, I'd draw it at business process, not product.

The overwhelming commercial success of FOSS desktop software.

[AsyncAwait]

Huh? Most FOSS desktop software is not commercial to begin with, however there are companies like JetBrains that do sell quite successfully to Linux users, even as their core product is FLOSS.

[pjmlp]

Exactly, because everyone failed to monetize it.

JetBrains sells developer tools, a very niche market, specially when a large majority of FOSS is allergic to paying for tooling.

In fact I would bet a large percentage of those Linux users are using Android Studio or Community variants.

It would be very interesting to know how many of those users has JetBrains actually managed to monetize on.

[AsyncAwait]

> It would be very interesting to know how many of those users has JetBrains actually managed to monetize on.

> developer tools, a very niche market

Overall yes, but on GNU/Linux, most users are still some kind of a developer.

I don't have numbers, but JetBrains did say that most users of their products use the paid version and that their Linux business is a healthy one. I am on Linux and subscribe to all their products and have colleagues and friends that do too, so we do exist.

I also paid for Githost.io when I was using GitLab.

[ghaff]

In all fairness, developers have always mostly been allergic to paying for things. Even way back, when a lot of developer tools were proprietary and often had pretty significant price tags associated with them, the developer tools business was always a pretty tough one. Like open source software, the model generally worked best when the developer tools were effectively in support of some other part of the business. (Microsoft is a great example.)

[fipple]

Not every company is Artsy. Artsy is an Internet company, not a place where new frontiers are being conquered. It makes sense to build Artsy in the public square, not so much Waymo.

[dblock]

Artsy CTO here. Interestingly for the first 2 years we were conquering the frontier of nearest neighbor search applied to art, using some pretty new algos. Then ElasticSearch just built something 10x better and we tossed our entire codebase. I wish we just did it in the open, the advantage was quickly lost to a stronger open-source effort.

[fipple]

I mean, exactly? When you had some novel tech, you kept it to yourself. Now that you have market power, you develop out in the open. Perfect game plan.

[acjohnson55]

Or don't do it. Whatever works for you. I don't know if it would be as appropriate at my current company, but I certainly see it as an option, having experienced the benefits.