|
|
|
|
|
|
by 0xbadcafebee
1105 days ago
|
|
|
I don't believe there's such a thing as an Open Source business. Open Source is a license style. It's not a business plan or a commercial industry. I also believe that good Open Source software requires not operating as a business. In "true" Open Source: * There's no stakeholder but the user and the maintainer.
* Nobody holds back features to go into "the Enterprise product".
* Nobody prioritizes features that the whale customers are asking for.
* There's often no "contributor agreements" or "team consensus" required to take a contribution, so it's often much faster to merge in new work.
* People from all over the world that have a passion and desire for the product, that actually get shit done, with no concern for their resume or title, become the maintainers.
* The project's design can change frequently with major overhauls, versus carrying one codebase along indefinitely because it would be too costly to overhaul it.
* It's not subject to the whims and needs of a profit motive, or growth at all costs; it can stay dinky and small or grow as contributors arrive.
* Ends up smaller and more composable, and are easier to replace when they die than big commercial Open Source offerings with a million features.
* is a Bazaar, not a Cathedral; an organic mix of different components that evolves naturally, survives longer as a whole and fits together better.
A true business product needs a value proposition, a problem to solve, marketing/advertising/sales, and support that's worth paying for. Getting the source code is never the problem somebody has. Even if they have it, often a better product will solve what they need. OSS is more of a distraction to the business than a competitive advantage.The only thing you gain from an Open Source business is marketing. If you do it right, you'll hire more committed nerds and can sell B2B to other nerdy businesses. But that's not a super consistent revenue or hiring stream. |
|
|