Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Viable Open Source Models For Early Startups?
New submitter rchoetzlein writes "I am a software developer working independently for five years on various projects, and preparing to go public with my first product. Everyone is telling me I should make it open source. I would love to, but I just don't see how an early startup can afford to become profitable on service alone. My projects are no longer small-scale hobbies, they are large frameworks, and I need to make a living. Any ideas on business models that would allow me to open source while guaranteeing I can feed myself?"
A few years we were in the same position as you are. We wanted to open source some of our technology and software but were trying to figure out how to make it work. Eventually we decided to offer both proprietary version of our software, and open source one. They are fairly identical and we offer support services for both.
The trick is, to ensure that we would convert the open source users to paying ones, we made most of the software features to do the heavy work on our servers, and then would strip the code altogether from the open source version. If users wanted to use the program they would for all practicality need to buy an yearly support contract from us, which included access to the servers hosting the code. On top of that we introduced various bugs and weird failures to the open source version, which would mean that the open source users would call our premium priced support telephone number. We needed to fine tune this over the year a bit , as we didn't introduce enough bugs in the beginning. But later we would start getting lots of support calls for bugs and it made a good amount of money.
This also made quite many sales of the proprietary version, so in overall it worked quite well. You might want to try something similar.
If you think open source is not the way to go, then why bother asking slashdot? Seriously? You won't get the answers you're looking for here.
Basically, the only reply to OSS business models is "support your product". If the product is so easy/good that no support is required, then you might as well have no product at all. Then the only thing that remains is using your free product as a showcase for your paid products, but those won't be open source.
As much as I love open source, if you don't serve specific niches or aren't a big company, you're unlikely to get far when you're a one man shop.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
If you think open source is not the way to go, then why bother asking slashdot? Seriously? You won't get the answers you're looking for here.
Yes he will.
The way I read it, ethically he thinks open source might be the right thing. Practically, it might not be a reality. He's fishing for examples of unconventional open-source money generating techniques.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
If you have a cool component or two, nothing wrong with releasing those packages, but seeking profit isn't evil, and I dont know why you would open source the whole thing
See his profile. A single comment.
http://slashdot.org/~ExpertCoder
Not open source, not closed source, not open closed source. It's a gamble regardless of what you do, the only thing you can do is play the odds.
Here's how you should do it. Say you have something like Microsoft Word. Give away the product, but only include one font and cripple most of the functions. Then offer additional fonts and functions for $0.50 each.
And make sure the included font is comic sans. Charge $0.51 for "cut", $0.52 for "paste", and $0.53 for "copy".
People will love it! They could get a usable word processor for less than $10!
Offer a "discount" for the full product with everything unlocked, and sell it for $50. Also make it so that functions can't be unlocked except by downloading extra code, and make the DRM so painful that even hackers will think twice.
Try sunsetting your proprietaryness.
Have your product be proprietary for a finite period of time, and once a particular version is EOL'ed or otherwise ceases to be commercially viable, open source it and let the public go nuts over it.
You only need to keep your leading edge keen in the market.
These troll postings are getting tiresome.
Ok the poster states:
Any ideas on business models that would allow me to open source while guaranteeing I can feed myself?"
So move to a country with a viable welfare system, Open Source the project and if you don't make enough money use welfare to feed yourself.
Hint: business models don't come with guarantees. If taking the risk of Open Sourcing it is not acceptable to you then don't. What advantages exactly are you hoping to get from Open Sourcing your product? None are stated. What are you actual goals? none are stated. This submission is full of all kinds of fail.
"Everyone is telling me I should make it open source."
Open source is about allowing more people to look at the source code, for faster/better development. My guess is that most people who're telling you to make it open source have no idea what they're talking about. In fact, even you don't seem to understand the difference between open source and free software, because you write "[...] to become profitable on service alone." Free software is NOT the same as open source software. Free software is about freedom for its own sake, not about faster/better development. Start reading here.
Why is "everyone" telling you to make it open source? Or do they make their living off evil "closed source"?
Do you have any customers? Is your product targetted at business users (who would be interested in support contracts) or consumers? There is no one size fits all open source business plan, all I can say is that as a user I'm far more ameniable to vendors who realise source code access is important.
What are you trying to do, make a living or change the world? (You generally can't do both at once; if you get rich from work, you can THEN maybe change the world.)
Let's start with the basics: What's in it for YOU? Is open source a buzzword, something you think you have to do ethically, just don't have the chops to turn it into a business, it based on other open source code? Is income something you vitally need to continue your work, to live a better life, or are you independently wealthy (I think you've ruled out the latter)?
I agree with an earlier poster: Make the core code that delivers basic utility to the user open source, if you want to use it as your "loss leader" to show them what's possible. Include all the extra features in the menus or configuration options of your program, so users can see what they're missing (clicking on it opens a window telling them it's in the commercial product, if they'd just buy it).
But, remember, open source is just a way for other people to leverage your code and make it into a competitive product...some will even violate your license agreement, and modify it to suit their customer base. Do you really want to spawn your own competitors?
I don't know what your product is exactly, but if it's a framework or something that needs to be installed on a server, just about all webhosts will pay $100+ for referrals that sign up. Wordpress makes literally millions from their four web hosting affiliate links at wordpress.org/hosting ... do that!
We use a lot of open source where I work and pay for support.
I don't think most individuals will pay for it.
more cowbell
I've worked for a company with a Open and Enterprise version. The Open version was full featured enough for a large number of customers but quite a few wanted the extra features and support of the Enterprise version.
So we made money from:
1. Customers buying the Enterprise version for the extra features.
2. Customers buying the Enterprise version for the included support.
3. Customers using the Open version but paying for the Enterprise support.
4. OEM sales: Other software companies that paid for a commercial license to the Open product (none cared about the Enterprise features) to use in their projects.
5. OEM sales: Other software companies that paid for support from our developers for assistance and new features.
Half the revenue came from OEM sales. Eventually, the company's business was acquired by two other companies that each wanted different portions of the software.
Note that company had external funding and was not expected to be immediately profitable.
I'm currently working on a product that will have 3 components. 2 of them will be open source and 1 will be closed source. The web front end and the plugins will be open source (maybe optional) and the engine that does the actual heavy lifting will be closed and pay for only. Obviously, the plugins will be of little use to anyone not using the core product, but the web front will be able to be modified to work with any of the current products on the market. I'm okay with that though, because if it turns out that I have the best web front end then people will use it and it'll give exposer to my core product that it's designed to work with even if someone modifies to work with a competing product.
I'm still debating on how I want to do the plugins. I'm thinking about using LUA, but then that would force everyone to open source their plugins. I'd ultimately like to see a little ecosystem built around the plugins that allow people to make money off of them if they choose to. So I might go with a native c++ api as well.
Maybe this is something you could do as well. I've talked with several people in the industry this is targeting and that's how I've came up with this model. They don't really care to modify the core of the product as long as it does what it's spouse to do. They care about being able to modify all of the reporting and what not which is what the front end does. So it appears to be a win win for everyone.
Posting AC because I moderated the discussion.
-wmbetts
While I understand your concerns about making your project open source, keep in mind that neither path guarantees anything. Making it open source will make it easier for it to become known and used, but you won't be able to charge for it.
Now, in your case, open source may very well be the way to go; even if you developed a great framework, most potential customers will demand a "real" company behind it; what if they buy the product, and the day afterwards you decide to stop supporting it? From my experience, companies prefer either open source from small developers, or commercial software from companies.
Of course, you can try to get some venture capital and create a company; try researching potential customers, and think the reasons why they would want to use your product; if you sincerely believe it will succeed, chances are that you'll find an investor who also will :)
Should you go for the open source way, there are alternative ways to make money, but it depends on the nature of the product; to name a few, donations, advertising (in-product, in the website), premium versions, certifications, books, toolbar installation, commercial license...
I believe parent has nailed it.
Ethically you want to do what is closest to your heart if you will, but unfortunately you need to eat, and usually this involves doing the opposite of ethical (or at least far from what the ideal-ethics tell you)
So I propose this. How about you release version 1.0 and 1.5 for example (or 1.0 and 2.0 or something) as regular closed-source software, and then when the next version comes out, you release the previous one as open source (e.g. release 1.0 and 2.0 for pay, when you release 3.0 for licensing you release at the same time v1.0 as open source)
Of course this would mean that you would have to have a road map for what you plan to introduce to your software along the years, so its easier to establish which version is to be safely released as open source without it hurting your paying customers. So, I think you would have to make significant changes and upgrades along the life of your software so it stays competitive and entices costumers to keep upgrading instead of waiting for the open source version, or in the case where the user doesn't really need the "greatest and latest" he could fallback to v1.0.
Disclaimer: I haven't actually put to work something like this, and actually this is an idea I believe I read here on Slashdot as it is, but I think, if not directly useful to you, could give you an idea of a "hybrid" approach, where certain functionality is still closed source as it requires the most of your time (so it costs more) but you still have the open version to maybe encourage some devs to take interest in this framework, or at least show your clientele that you really care about open source however economically infeasible it is for you.
I would say its on the same line of thought as "pay-what-you-think-its-worth" for games like World of Goo and such. You could effectively buy it for 1 dollar, but like me, a lot of people thought it was really nice of them to do this and since I actually enjoyed the game a lot, I payed like 15 or 20 USD (the original price). And even use that as a marketing tool.
Just my 2 bytes...I mean cents.
Slashdot. Unreadable news to annoy nerds. - wonkey_monkey
No. If you're starting a business, first and above all focus on making it profitable so you can feed yourself, pay your employees and grow it to the point where you can give something back to the community if you wish. If that means starting with closed source, do it. After 12 years I'm able to give my staff a share of the business, both I and they both use and give back to open source projects, and we can afford to give a lump to charity too. If I'd tried to do this from day one I wouldn't have got as far as day day two. You can't eat a sense of ethics.
It heavily depends on what your product is, but you've at least these possible models:
1) Fully open source with lack or light documentation. This makes your product essentially free but users pay for support and/or the docs. I can't remember any specific example of a project selling the docs but I'm sure someone will.
2) Dual License model. A very popular example is ExtJS which is GPL (v3 iirc), however, if you wish to keep some code secret (including server parts) you might need a commercial license. And of course there are support plans available, as well as SVN/GIT access to the latest (devel) version.
3) Dual License with a Enterprise version. Essentially what MySql does where they offered an open source version but if you wanted fine tunned performance, support for enterprise hardware and support then you need the Enterprise version.
4) Dual License with long term support. Some projects like Liferay or Red Hat Enterprise use free versions as beta versions - after a while they release a long term supported version for enterprises and backport the important security and bug fixes. Maybe you already know but some companies are very slow to adopt new tech and ever slower to keep up, if they can keep a 4 year old version of the software that does the job well and still get support and bug fixes, you're best pals.
5) Early access model. Another possibility is to offer early access to new versions. For instance, the Xming project (a X11 server for Windows) offers donators access to new versions much earlier. You can even create a "pool" mode where you release the new version once X dollars are donated.
Depending on your target audience and the possibility of some of the adjustments required by those suggestions you might find a suitable model or cook some solution with ideas from several.
From someone in a similar spot, I wish you luck!
One consideration to think about is that the people who are recommending you release as open source may, in reality, simply be advocating for the ability to make customizations and build on top of the framework you're developing. An open API made actually serve their needs; and may be something they haven't considered, or don't know to ask about. So, open API, proprietary framework is one possibility.
Second, consider a subscription model to a proprietary database. It's a classic business model, and can be added to most any project relatively easily. Even open source ones. On the support side, the proprietary database may be a) premium support forum, b) bleeding edge features not incorporated into the base build, c) recent bug fixes and security patches not incorporated into the base build. On the feature side, there are countless opportunities, but they'll be dependent upon your framework and what it does. For example, if you have a service that is geolocation aware, your propietary database might be a list of locations of interest.
I start with this question these days when I have an idea: How do I compete with someone offering the same/similar service without directly charging the users? techdirt readers will probably tell you this, regardless of whether or not you open source your framework: "if you can't compete with free* then you can't compete" Still good to go? ... once you are, then the questions like this:
How can I benefit by using open source license for my project?
How will I include the community in my project?
If you're worried about commercial competition, then you might simply need to choose a more restrictive open source license (gpl 3) rather than a more open license (apache/mit); you might opt to dual license as well, so that you could have a revenue stream from your "competition"..
You might check out https://www.insightcommunity.com/step2/ to get feedback on your startup project... I think you'll find it useful for posing these sorts of questions... I believe there are also some other resources that'll help you explore your business model choices.
So you've worked for five years on this but haven't yet thought about the business model until now?
Instead of asking slashdot, how about this radical suggestion: talk to a potential customer.
As in, find somebody who might actually be a paying customer. You do know who they are, right? If you don't, stop programming right away and figure it out and get at least 5 names of people with their email & telephone.
You don't necessarily do what they ask (they want the moon, documented and supported and customzied, for 99 cents), but you will find out more useful information to make your decision. Talk human-to-human, on the phone or in person.
What business model will result in getting revenue now? What are your customers' needs? What constrains their decisions to buy or not?
A suggestion: open-source common interface code necessary to link your system with a customers' existing software. Integration problems are often a big worry among customers.
I can't think of a way of guaranteeing that you can feed yourself whether or not you open-source your code! Making it as an independent software vendor is hard. Above you, you have big companies who like money and won't hesitate to offer similar software, independently developed, if it looks like you've found a good market. Below you, you have FLOSS developers who won't hestitate to offer similar software for free if it looks like your software offers useful features for users. (In some cases, these groups may overlap.)
That said, you haven't given us anywhere near enough information to answer your question. Are you talking about highly specialized software for a niche market, or general purpose software with a potentially huge market? The edge-effects of open-source development are much more likely to be useful and beneficial to you in the latter case.
What do you get out of open-sourcing your software? Free publicity is almost certainly the biggest factor. How big is your advertising budget? Also, what about distribution channels? Remember, you're competing with big companies and (if you go the non-free route) open-source developers/companies. How are people going to hear about your software, and find it if they do hear about it, and decide if they like it better than other similar software?
Making your code proprietary greatly increases your per-user income, but makes it much more difficult (and expensive) to get new users. Open-sourcing your code makes it much easier to get new users, but greatly reduces your per-user income. Independent comic artist Phil Foglio started putting his Girl Genius comic up as a free webcomic, and said that his readership grew tenfold and his sales quadrupled. But that may or may not be typical.
There's also the possibility of hybrid models, like releasing the core as open source, but charging for add-ons, or, if you think other companies may want to adapt and sell your code, offering a choice between a restrictive free license (e.g. GPL) or a commercial for-pay license. Depending on what your program is and how it works, those may or may not be viable options--you haven't given us enough information to tell.
Bottom line, though: all the cards are stacked against you no matter which way you go. And, while you've given us very little to go on, it's quite likely that even if you gave us ten times the details you have so far, it still wouldn't be enough information to make more than a wild guess. Going it independent is hard and extremely risky. There's a reason that something like 90% of all programmers are employed developing internal software that never gets licensed or distributed outside of a single company--it's one of the few ways to be sure you eat.
You could always do what I've seen a couple of projects do, release a simpler open-source version and make your pay-for version have more advanced features.
I would suggest that as you add more and more advanced features to the pay-for version, that you include some of the older features inside of the open-source version
You could also ask for donations for the open-source download through paypal(remember you can't make them pay for it if it is just open-source source code)
My parent: Acapulco, has a similar idea but he just wants the older version to be open-sourced where my idea gives you a little more control over what stays closed-sourced and what is open-sourced. Maybe you do want them to pay for a very hard to program feature or something that took you a long time to R&D, which I can understand.
Just remember if you alienate your open-source community they will leave you and you might as well have not spent the time on making some/part/all of it open source to begin with
I don't know what you are making, you didn't provide info. How popular do you expect the software to get (be realistic)? If you think it will displace Apache in 2 months, then you should make it open source and freely downloadable. But otherwise if you need to buy groceries and stuff, I think you should sell it with the source included (you can sell service contracts on top of that). Choose a license that gives you, for a limited time, a fair amount of control over their ability to sell copies of your work. You can even choose the GPL, but I dont think that's a good idea.
Whenever you release a new version of your software GPL the previous version and make it freely available .. while keeping the current version for sale at a fixed price (with source).
Again all of this depends on what you're making, and if you need to eat etc.
You don't give nearly enough detail here for people to be able to help much. Are you talking about an app for mobile devices where it'll cost a few dollars, business software for small/midsize companies, or (potentially) enterprise-level business software?
For an app, you could make it open source but sell it for a buck or two - most app purchasers will happily just get it through the relevant app store; those who will care about the open source nature will hopefully be willing to throw an (insignificant) couple of bucks to you particularly if you mention that (and the convenience of getting it that way vs. downloading/loading separately); those who could purchase but are too cheap to part with less than the cost of a Starbucks coffee are the ones who're probably more likely to pirate anyway. The biggest danger here is someone else lifting your code, rebranding and selling it themselves. (e.g. JMRI and Jacobsen v. Katzer)
For small business software, is it a turnkey app or something that requires setup? I have no great suggestions for turnkey apps unless you're offering customization/extension to clients; otherwise you're selling setup, configuration, support. Your business model here is that some of your customers COULD do this (or hire someone else to do it), but it's worth their time to have you do it. Further, whether sales of support are viable depends on the software and what it does.
For enterprise-scale, your selling point is that it will cost less for them to purchase the software and services from you than to dedicate resources to learn it. If learning, configuration, etc. are going to take someone a month plus some problems for users while things get straightened out, the cost in staff time is huge - a skilled IT person could easily be $10k/month with benefits, and if there are 500 users that lose 2 hours of productivity each for a month or two, you could be looking at six figures of total cost to do it in-house instead of getting the professional services from you to do it up front.
I used to work on software that sold (installed & configured) for $70-100k and higher. At one point early on I looked at what we were doing/selling and thought "Why are companies paying for this? We're not doing anything revolutionary here!" but it didn't take long to realize that while our larger customers COULD build something comparable in-house, it could well take a skilled programmer a year to do so assuming they had one available and idle. Basically, it was worth it for our customers to use our product instead of doing it themselves, and even at the prices we were charging the ROI was such that I wouldn't be surprised if we actually fudged numbers to make it look *worse* in some cases (I wasn't in sales, but I always thought going in and claiming a 3-6 month break-even ROI would be questionable as in "are you saying that our processes are THAT bad?")
fencepost
just a little off
I find that many provide source code that doesn't compile correctly while keeping the source that does, then sell the compiled executables as a service. Kind of a roundabout way of getting people to pay for your product up front so you don't starve. Say what you like, people are greedy.
Kickstart it.
That's what all the cool dudes are doing.
I believe this has ended, but at one point Pegasus Mail was supported largely by the sale of manuals.
fencepost
just a little off
The second line makes me curious. "Everyone is telling me I should make it open source." Really, who? Other developers? Your customers? Business partners? I'm a big fan of open source and I think it's great to contribute to open source projects in one's spare time, but the first priority should be to do what is right for the business. If that's going open source, then great. If not, then keep things locked down for now.
The thing is, it's easy to start closed-source and open later. But if you start open sourced, it's hard to but that genie back in the bottle.
Pay your bills first, consider open sourcing later, once you're established.
Why not try this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system). Advertise this and if there's enough demand for what you're doing, the pledges will roll in. Once the project is finished and released, ka-ching, it's pay day.
Most people don't know how to compile code. Simply make the source available (under GPL or whatever so that you can prevent other companies from selling your software) and still charge for the working version. Or, if you're developing mobile software, charge for the version on the App store.
If you're writing software for developers (like libraries) you're not going to be able to do it unless you can keep your costs low enough that you can get buy on the charity of other developers. I don't mean any offense, but developers aren't the most charitable lot either.
Obviously, you can't open source your product and make money off sales of the product; the two are by definition incompatible. The way that open-source based businesses make their money is on services...integration/implementation, support, that kind of thing. But these require a critical mass to exist; if there isn't a good-sized install base, there can be no demand for services. And if you take the route of putting out a great product in open source and then forking/commercializing it (like Tenable did with Nessus, for example) then you will likely piss off a lot of people, and fail entirely if your product isn't totally bananas-great. (Admittedly, Nessus is that great, which is why people still use it.) So, honestly, you have to decide between being a viable start-up company with a product or being an open-source project that may, if you're lucky, eventually result in a need for services that you can then provide a few years from now. The two do not coincide here...and just using some kind of business model will not alter the way that the laws of supply and demand interact.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Ignore what 'everyone' except paying customers are telling you.
It's very difficult to cold-sell niche services to companies who can afford to pay for them if you are a one-man business because the risk of you ceasing to trade for some reason is a deal-breaker. People sometimes talk about using an escrow type arrangement for source code to mitigate risk, but IME talk is as far as it usually gets.
Spend your VC funding wisely... more modest office rentals (Remember: MySQL AB's founder let 70% of his staff - in a subsequent company - work at home, meaning the Co. didn't have to rent as much space. See his practical exceptions to that rule - intended to keep single staff from burning out at home - eg, in his eCorner talk), modest vehicle for yourself (Eg, instead of buying a flash EV, just convert your own car to 100% electric; & install only Tier 1 (slow) charge points at home & work, for it), modest travel costs (Do you really need Business Class? Network on-line or at conferences.), etc.
Actually, you should already have worked out your (expected) revenue plans.
Finally, OSS can be released concurrently with a proprietary release (same or similar software, under a -different- license).
Some include some "secret sauce" functions -only- in the proprietary version, while reducing testing costs (on the rest of the software) - with community feedback on the OSS release.
Carefully written license conditions will preclude use of OSS version by those in your (intended) target market.
Not necessarily mentioning its existence couldn't hurt.
I once had a signature.
Open source is fine if you have something of general utility with a wide audience but limited monetization value. But I assume your software solves a specific problem for a niche market?
If your software, created by uour blood sweat and tears provides a value that you can quantify,the charge accordingly. That's what I did in 1997 and now my company sells $7 million a year in software and services, employs 60 people, most of them programmers.
Sounds like a pretty big social good to me. Now I'm in my early 40s and hope to retire in a few years.
Or, you could fail to properly value your work, give it away for free and depend on someone else to employ you until you turn 65.
Open source is a solution for certain problems. You're coming at this from entirely the wrong end, trying to find some reason to apply a solution that certain people like without identifying some reason to do so. Don't do that. If you have a reason to open source it, do. If you don't, don't.
Ethically you want to do what is closest to your heart if you will, but unfortunately you need to eat, and usually this involves doing the opposite of ethical (or at least far from what the ideal-ethics tell you)
You know, this sounds weird to me. Can an ideal that forces you to die of hunger be called "ethical" in any kind of reasonable real world moral system? That means nobody (at least nobody alive) can ever be "ethical" (or honest, or moral, or whatever you want to call it). That makes the particular ideal deeply flawed, and the moral system it belongs to is at least extremely questionable, if not completely senseless.
Now, I recognize the fact that people have and sometimes still do die for ideals - but the death is almost always caused by external factors opposed to whatever ideal they fight for, not by the ideal itself - the only exceptions I can think of are some bizarre suicide cults.
Basically sanest strategy is:
- Basic (open source) + Enterprise edition (including support).
- Provide some kind of a service based on software (access to data / analytics).
A lot depends on what your product looks like, which industry, who you target. Without more details it's hard to tell.
But basically what you want to do is use Basic(Open) Edition as a bait for users to convert for paying customers.
You want to provide basic documentation, making barier of entry as low as possible, but keep advenced options paid only.
the key here is confidence in yourself.
the guy who created ruby on rails makes his living by touring the world doing talks, lectures and training on the software that he is the world's leading expert on: ruby on rails. everyone knows that if you want advice on ruby on rails, you go to him, because he is the one that a) wrote it and thus b) has the best working map of the entire software base in the electrical memory (immediate recall) of his brain c) has the ready-to-go speeches and documentation-drone sentences down pat and *also* in the electrical memory of his brain
(chemical memory is where long-term memories are stored: they're harder to get at. you know the phenomenon. can't quite remember something, but 1 minute later or usually after a good night's sleep "bingo!" - that's chemical memory).
the main thing to remember about the free software business model is that it is a *gratitude* business model, not a "desperation / control / last resort" model. as in: when comparing free software to proprietary software, you buy proprietary software out of desperation because there *isn't* any alternative free software, knowing full well that you will get screwed, locked-in and your entire data is now hopelessly entangled in the relationship with the vendor of the proprietary software.
by contrast, you know that, with free software, the person you're entrusting your data to does *not* have you at their mercy. you notice in the posts above - the ones that have been marked as "interesting" and "informative" - they all are variants on keeping the customer entirely at your mercy, so that they *have* no choice but to come to you. that's not really good for you, or for them. apart from anything, it assumes that you _will_ be available for the rest of your life to serve at their pleasure!
so, contrary to expectations, anyone who uses your [free software] product actually *knows* this, and makes a *deliberate* and conscious decision to contact you and offer you some money for a support contract, knowing full well that you _could_ have gone the proprietary route... and didn't.
in other words, you get a better class of customer; the relationship is entirely different; you are *not* beholden to each other - each of you can walk away at any time... i could go on, but you see how it's just generally a much healthier way to do business?
all it takes is that you trust people, and have confidence in yourself. if people like what you've done, and it's actually useful, you stand a chance of making money regardless. if they don't like it, or it's not useful, then... well... they've done you a favour by not having you waste any more of your life on useless software, haven't they? in which case you could go do something more productive :)
Look, you indicate you have a fully functional framework system that's prepared to go out the door. People need to purchase this. You have zero need to open source anything here. All that does is give exactly what you've done to the very people who may want to use it. What you definitely need to do is set up a trial or limited features version. Something that everyone and anyone can get their hands on very easily to justify whether it will come close to meeting their needs. Publish a very thorough API documentation to go along with it, as well as any other pertinent documentation the end users may need.
But open source? No way, not if you want to remain a company with a unique product in the next few years.
I believe parent has nailed it.
Ethically you want to do what is closest to your heart if you will, but unfortunately you need to eat, and usually this involves doing the opposite of ethical (or at least far from what the ideal-ethics tell you)
So I propose this. How about you release version 1.0 and 1.5 for example (or 1.0 and 2.0 or something) as regular closed-source software, and then when the next version comes out, you release the previous one as open source (e.g. release 1.0 and 2.0 for pay, when you release 3.0 for licensing you release at the same time v1.0 as open source)
this is what trolltech, mysql and other companies did. it never goes down well. it's _extremely_ unpopular, and absolutely guarantees that there will be no community *other* that paid-up staff members involved in the actual development of the software.
the reason is very simple: any person wishing to help make improvements to the software knows full well that they might as well not bother, because the free software version that they're using is hopelessly out-of-date.
in the case of QT, what actually happened was that the version 3 of QT (QT3) actually developed into an independent fork. the trinity desktop team now have taken full responsibility for its maintenance. bit of a digression here, but that version is years old, _but_ it has the advantage that it's much much smaller (faster, less code) than QT4 or QT5. QT4 is severe bloat-ware that performs extremely badly on ARM9 and ARM11 platforms.
anyway the point is: the "model" you propose only really works if you're a large corporation with lots of resources and lots of money and are willing to piss people off and make even the free software community absolutely desperate and beholden to you. that works for things like mysql and qt but dude, your software had better be _really_ shit hot to make these non-community-inclusive options work.
Make it Closed, make money while building a base, then Open it later if you think fit.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So I propose this. How about you release version 1.0 and 1.5 for example (or 1.0 and 2.0 or something) as regular closed-source software, and then when the next version comes out, you release the previous one as open source (e.g. release 1.0 and 2.0 for pay, when you release 3.0 for licensing you release at the same time v1.0 as open source)
IDA Pro does (or did) something very similar to this. No one in the open source community seems to want to compete with them, so they release an older open source version and a newer paid version.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Can an ideal that forces you to die of hunger be called "ethical" in any kind of reasonable real world moral system?
Yes, some people are willing to die for their beliefs.
I can tell you right now, I would be willing to die to defend democracy, if it ever came to that extreme, and a lot of people would die to defend their families.
No one will ever die for money, but they will die for many other things. Thus ideals are more powerful than money.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As a developer, you have a limited number of productive years, before family, lack of time, and brain cells makes you overpriced and uncompetitive. Global outsourcing will make this worse. You owe it to yourself to make a bundle of money now so you'll have something to pay off the house with and retire on. And besides, software becomes obsolete quickly, so if you think you'll make money eventually if its "free" to start, you're kidding yourself.
Just today I tried 3 "free" programs to do the simple task of merging mp3 audiobook files together.. they all sucked. I then spent $10 on one and it worked like a charm on the first go. The number of profitable companies that don't give away their entire product is vast. If it is worth something, charge for it. Willing buyer, willing seller. There should be a name for this concept.
Your examples are not what's he's talking about.
Are you saying that if in a proper democratic election it was voted to have you killed, say everyone decided that your race just should go away, you'd be fine with it?
Would you fight to defend a system that is trying to kill you? And would you still consider the system ethical when when it's doing that?
Are you saying that if in a proper democratic election it was voted to have you killed, say everyone decided that your race just should go away, you'd be fine with it?
Of course I wouldn't be fine with it, are you insane?
The problem in that situation isn't democracy, it's the people you're living with. "Democracy doesn't guarantee good government, it guarantees the government the people deserve."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That was the ghostscript model. Each version was opensourced two years after being sold. Sales were to printer manufacturers.
-- hendrik
You could say "after we've reached $X, we'll open source it. Those who pay now get exclusive access to each upgrade ahead of it's open-sourcing.
Once it's open-sourced, you live out of donations/support/SaS.
Paying support+warranty is important for some (corporate) clients though.
I'm working on an open source hardware project (robotics dev board) right now, and the conclusion I've come to sadly means I'm not technically eligible to use the OSHW logo on my design. CC licenses are great for OSHW, but what the consortium doesn't like is that I'm defending myself by using a -NC clause. It lets me share the hardware schematics, driver code, etc. openly, but I'm protected from someone with more cash on hand cloning my design at larger volume for profit.
Ethics are perforce abstract. They are something you reach for, not an absolute without contexts. For instance, if your ethics tell you to help others eat, that in no way means you need starve to do it.
Shooting the shit out of your example.
Again with the frameworks... The only thing I kinda like with the Apple Store is that it gives a focus on applications so developers have an incentive to build something that does something.
Unfortunately lots and lots of startups and open source projects are still spending cycles on yet another framework instead of creating actual value. This is not a problem that is specific to startups however - even in-house IT developers tend to spend time on frameworks and libraries if management or architects are not cracking the whip properly.
To make a long story short this is a symptom of what is wrong with IT:
-Sysadmins tend to make rules that are preventing business to optimally leverage hardware and software that has been paid for
-DBAs tend to value theoretical constructs (such as 3NF) before actual software or business requirements
-Developers tend to write frameworks and libraries instead of applications that bring value to the business (expecting that other developers will use those frameworks to create applications, which does not happen because the other developers also work on frameworks)
This is why people that can "align IT with business" are making the big bucks.
lucm, indeed.
but they will kill for many other things like...money
FTFY
CAPTCHA: mucilage (definitely a snotty way to treat other people :P)
Almost as clueless as the asshat who blamed this on Bill Gates.
HAND YHBT.
My problem is this. How can one spend time writing a piece of software wanting to base it on a business model BEFORE the business model was actually considered? The whole post smells of "lets get /, posters wound up over nothing" but moving back to the question how does one fund a serious operation without taking in bare business concepts? Is the world so Gen Y these days that money has now actually started growing on trees?
To answer the question open or closed source? I'd consider how valuable is the software first. If you're out to make money and its so valuable and unique that other people will profit from it without returning thing benefits back to you, close it and move it. If its commodity software open it up, let the tech world tinker with it for free.
As for the FOSS lovers out there, my statement is this, the world makes money from selling tobacco, alcohol, weapons, oil, blah blah blah. Selling something you busted your ass on creating which only helps other businesses MAKE MONEY ANYWAY is not unethical - get a fuckin haircut before posting your responses, thank you!
Stop being so fucking full of yourself, and you may have a change.
If your project is actually rock star quality, open source or proprietary won't make a diffence.
Now let's get back to your 15ms of fame.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
We don't know much about your product, but you hint at a "framework". This is a different kind of software, one that will be used by other developers to directly build upon. A free, fully open and documented framework, no matter how good, has very little chance of success, as there are already so many competing frameworks. Now imagine the chance of success a proprietary framework has.... unless you are Microsoft, I don't see how anyone could do this.
Ethically you want to do what is closest to your heart if you will, but unfortunately you need to eat, and usually this involves doing the opposite of ethical (or at least far from what the ideal-ethics tell you)
Why is it ethical for hundreds or perhaps thousands of people who do not even know you (most of whom will never even say "thanks", some of whom might even hate you if they met you) to use the product of your work for free? Why is it unethical for you to be compensated for thousands of hours of work?
Giving something away for free may well be a laudable act of personal generosity, (unless you are a huge software company attempting to kill your smaller competitor by giving away a free web browser, in which case some of the very people on Slashdot who say this is ethical will blast you as evil) but that does not make the choice to not give your work away for free unethical in any locale I am aware of that does not have Rod Serling standing in the corner smoking.
I suspect that a large number of the people who are always saying everything should be open-sourced and handed out for free are living in mom's basement on an allowance, or living on government assistance, and have therefore never become familiar with the basic laws of economics. 5-year-olds always think everything ought to be free because they have never had to work and people have always provided everything to them for free. Adults know that food, shelter, clothing, medicine, etc. all cost money (because the people who provide those things also need money for the things they need) and it is therefore honest and ethical for one man to compensate another man for the products of his labor. In ancient practice, people spent most of their time struggling to provide themselves with the things they needed to survive. In advanced societies we specialize; I do not hunt and kill animals or plant and harvest crops or make clothes or build shelters.... I do narrow very technical things for which I receive "money" which i then give to people who specialize in providing me with meat and grain and a house, etc. This is not unethical.... this is extremely ethical as it respects each person according to his/her talents and work and advances civilization. This system has fed, clothed, housed, and healed more people than any other system in the history of planet Earth.
At this moment the parent post is modded -1. I have a problem with this, because -1 means that the post is either malicious or off-topic or otherwise a complete waste of people's time. The OP was neither - it is a rendition of one person's experience with how his startup addressed the question posed by the submitter. Moreover, it is probably not a unique experience - other startup companies have likely adopted similar tactics, so what he posted is valuable for the purposes of opening this up for discussion.
You mods strongly disagree with what his company did. Fine, that's but that should not a matter of moderation. Leave the post visible and allow posters to criticize what he said/his company did, through the content of their posts.
I don't know that that's the case.
I'm in a situation similar to the submitter. I'm working on a software suite, and I'm in a position to open source it, but we can't take a complete bath on the project either.
So, we're doing it either way, and I'd like to open source it, but it's hard to make sure it works for everyone.
If the pay what you want model is so great why is World of Goo going for 10 USD on Steam today?
It depends, if it's a framework, it can be like qt, gpl or pay. Drupal failed as a closed source product, but pays people and is better (more modules available) now that it's open.
Mozilla makes its money not with support, but with advertising (probably not viable for most projects).
The reality is, there is no guarantee the poster will be able to feed a family either way, and plenty of closed source start ups fail, with some becoming viable when opening (I think one of the databases went that route).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
No one gives a motherfuck what you think about anything. You're pissed because someone is making a profit while you eat shit sandwiches with your other open sores buddies. Go fuck yourself, fucktard. Fuck you in the ass!
I hope more open sores projects go this way. Turning that faggot shit into nothing more than a gateway to real code instead of the dick smoker version.
This is actually pretty interesting. This guy has spent a lot of time hating open source projects. "Open sores" - coming up with that means he's been spending a lot of time thinking about/hating open source projects. It's actually fairly clever. And the level of hate is impressive too. "Go fuck yourself, fucktard. Fuck you in the ass!" Usually you only get this level of anger if you shoot someone's dog or something. That's how much this guy hates open source projects.
But - and here's the interesting part - he sounds teenager-ish age. Early 20's at best. "Turning that faggot shit..." That kind of a thing. This is some kid somewhere. But he's mad about something that should only upset CEOs and CTOs, free software eating into a profit margin. What kid of his age cares about that? It's like having Bill and Ted give a state of the union speech.
It would be fascinating to know exactly why this kid hates open source so much. Did Richard Stallman run over his grandma or something? Was he a fifteen year old Wunderkind that had a million dollar startup that got shot down because someone put a similar app on SourceForge? Was his mother frightened by a picture of Linus Torvalds while she was pregnant with him?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The problem is, if you enjoy writing the framework, you might not enjoy running the service. Running the service might be technically as interesting as flipping burgers at a burger bar.
You know, after your first paragraph I thought we may have a reasonable discussion; unfortunately, after your second, I realized I need to wait for you to learn how to read first.
People with a proper understanding of ethics understand that there is an ethical hierarchy. You can take any unethical action which satisfies a higher element of the hierarchy, and consider it ethical. Usually feeding your family and yourself is ranked quite highly. Thus, you may ethically steal to feed your family, etc.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
If an incumbent competitor is open source, there may be *marketing* reasons to figure out an open source business model. It can create some buzz and there's certain publicity channels (e.g. slashdot) that won't discuss purely proprietary software.
Also with any product which depends on community-driven content, the software is kinda irrelevant. You just don't want someone else to take it and out market you.
The problem in that situation isn't democracy, it's the people you're living with. "Democracy doesn't guarantee good government, it guarantees the government the people deserve."
The trick is to develop systems that are non-zero-sum and work despite greedy actors. Free Market Capitalism and Open Source are two examples of this.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The notion that doing work for pay is unethical is ludicrous beyond all recognition. "unfortunately you need to eat, and usually this involves doing the opposite of ethical".
No, usually it means you're doing honest work. I don't know or care where this idea came from, but the idea that all effort spent on software development is somehow free currency, that anything done in the digital domain should always be free for any and everyone to access and use, is the most self-entitled idea I have ever heard of. No, you don't get things that other people do for free. Or if you do, you're not getting it because of some basic fucking human right. You're getting it because someone felt that they wanted to share (or, as is more likely the case in the open source community, they wanted to engage the community in helping to build something of benefit to everyone). You're not getting it because anyone fucking owes you anything, and you're pretty damn lucky there are good people doing good work you can work with. It is not guaranteed, and every project that is NOT open source is NOT unethical. That is a completely and utterly bankrupt fucking idea that leads to no one ever doing any work whatsoever.
Sorry to burst your bubble but give up now and walk away. I developed the first AOP product before Hibernate came along. I spent most of my time attempting to explain to developers why they needed my framework for persistence. Once Hibernate came out (with extremely similar *cough* API) as open source, I knew it was over. You can't compete with open source. Here's what I learned, developers and IT organizations hate to pay for frameworks because they all think they could write it themselves. Developers rarely pay for tools and even more so for frameworks. I hope your single. Good luck!
ADVERTISING.
Plane and Simple.
I'll show you. Send me a message from my contact page at www.socio-psyfi.com
That one is a bit overdone.
But, it works for me. And it can be done in a much mellower fashion.
Many firms play for referrals from your site. Some want people to buy something. Each one is different.
I'm way ahead on the learning curve with this.
You can do it yourself: Or we can work together.
Do what Netsuite does, provoke an API that allows for bolt ons and leg space for separation yet boast flexibility.
The philosophy of open source though admirable is not the only means to channel 3rd party contributions. Entire industry subsets are created under Netsuite/Salesforce because of this approach. Consider their licence fees are fairly reasonable that most of the time on consultation and integration and the software part of it makes very little difference.
Saas, might not be everyones cup of tea ... That's probably the only limiter for you.
That's a mixed bag. Zimbra vs Exchange springs to mind and is the complete opposite. Software where open source has given a marketing edge would only be something very niche and hold no direct value to the customer.
The secret to selling software has nothing to do with code quality or even platform. IT managers couldn't be assed tinkering with code so the only advantage to selling open source is to market to integrators and entice them to stick with your product. My post above deals with alternatives such as APIing the software.
Open sourcing on a positive note allows for long term sanctity of the code, allows for freedom, and for the preservation of the code itself holds a grand philosophical value. Freedom trumps billable hours for some and that's why for the life of my a cannot understand why it wasn't originally decided before the project was started.
No version of IDA has ever been open sourced but they do provide a severely outdated version (5.5) as a free download.
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Another option might be to evaluate existing open source friendly companies who (1) have a working business case and (2) can strategically benefit from your framework. Negotiating a deal with them could land you a secure salary while still allowing you to do what you love, evolving your software under an open source license. If you take a look at Apache, for instance, top level projects are supported by a number of companies pay-rolling key contributors. I guess it depends whether you see your labour over the past years as your key to riches or a vehicle to do what you love.
Most people (FOSS fans included) don't give a shit wether a piece of software is FOSS or not. They just want to be able to get it fast and not get in their way when I try to buy or use it.
If you have a piece of software that I can use and that solves a problem, I'll, and most other people, will shell out money. However, if your checkout gets pissy with me just because I live in a different country or continent, or if you add pointless obsticles (for instance obfuscating script code like some PHP web system or so) I will move to an inferior FOSS solution if that is the one that doesn't waste my time.
If you're product is scripted (server side web stuff or such), don't obfustcate and give me a fair licence. If your software is compiled, offer me a zero fuss update process (i.e. automatic) and don't get pissy with me just because I'd like to install it on my Laptop, Desktop and on my workbox at the office at the same time. Or live on the other side of the pond.
You can add in a 'if this company dies, the produkt goes OSI-compliant FOSS, sourcecode and all' clause - that is perfectly fine and a nice touch to prove your spirit to non-fanatics, i.e. 99.9999% of your potential customers.
Bottom line:
Build a good product and ask for fair money.
If it solves the problem and your service isn't shit, people will buy it.
Then what licence it has, most actual customers will care squat about.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If you want to go open source you need a "value add". I've got my own software company where we use a lot of open source software and maintain an open source component but decided not to open source the entire product. We didn't see services as a value add because we felt we'd be able to grow more quickly by leveraging integrators as a channel which is hard to do when you're in competition with them. We also didn't see support as a value add in our market. I would try to find your "competition" in both the commercial space and the open source space and see what they've done as a model.
Zimbra is very atypical because it's software where businesses need just one teensy-weensy feature that's not offered open source. It's the mobile device support. Everyone I know in small business pays for Zimbra solely for that feature. They'd be broke long ago if they open sourced that. There are other closed-source features that are useful in larger businesses and in the enterprise, too. But the mobile support is probably the very thing that earns them most conversions from unpaid to paying customers.
Mozilla is funded by Google. They'd vanish if they weren't. Whatever advertising service google gets from Mozilla is IMHO not worth the money -- other than if they didn't pay mozilla, someone else would, like say yahoo or microsoft. And google understandably would have none of that.
While I daresay a large proportion of /. will love with the idea of going open source, I would approach it from a different angle altogether.
My angle would be to - at least initially - forget about OSS. Instead, consider "What's my business model? How will I turn this project into something that makes me money? Who's going to buy it and why will they buy this over either buying something else or using a free equivalent?"
The reason I say this is if you're just starting to go it alone, you've got an enormous number of things on your plate. How good are you at web design? Copy writing? Sales & marketing? What you think might appeal to people may not be what your prospective customers think! There's a whole stack of things you've never had to worry about before, and right now you probably ought to be reducing those things. Adding "oh, and I want to use a distribution model that is famously difficult for startups to make work!" is giving yourself extra work for little good reason.
Some possible options are:
Closed source on Windows and Mac, open source on Linux? (Tuxracer, QCAD)
Or close sourced release for say five years, release as open source after making a profit? (Blender, Netscape)
Or release application close sourced binary, libraries it's based on as LGPL open source?
Basically, the only reply to OSS business models is "support your product". If the product is so easy/good that no support is required, then you might as well have no product at all.
Please can we stop repeating this fallacy? That is not what support means. When people talk about paying for support in open source does not mean paying for someone to answer the phone and tell you how to use it. It does not even mean paying for training (although that can be a good business model too). It means paying to turn a product (software) into a solution (something that directly addresses a real need).
Very few off-the-shelf software packages do exactly what the user needs without any customisation. Even something like MS Office generates a huge amount of business for people writing business-specific templates, macros, wizards and so on. In a big company, you'll have customised interfaces for generating all of the standard forms of document that the company requires. Someone had to write all of these, and that person got paid. They would have been paid just as much if the company had been using OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. By the way, this is one of the reasons why MS Office doesn't do as badly as you'd expect in TCO calculations: for a big company the cost of customisation is a significant part of the total cost.
The more esoteric the software is, the more that it's going to need time (and therefore money) spent integrating it into a business. This is how companies like IBM make most of their money. It doesn't matter to their business model if the software is proprietary or open: if it's open then it means that they get lots of reusable building blocks for free, but the final solution is so tailored to their customer that they won't be selling it more than once anyway. Look at SAP: their software is proprietary, but it doesn't have to be because their entire business model involves charging a lot of money to customise it. They could give away a stock install for free and still charge a lot for the customisation.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
OMG, it's like open source can use capitalism and competition to its advantage.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
People with a proper understanding of ethics understand that...
Hmm; reads as the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
Want to re-think that one, Skppy? Windows, OSX, iOS, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Semantec yadda yadda yadda ...
Vertical market integration with a killer application that is venture capital funded with full capitalization coming on I.P.O.
The future payout attracts the capital, the killer application is the fuel, execution stages are they keys in the business strategy
You're going to need to adjust your business model a lot over the next few years until you iron out all the wrinkles (or even drastically change it). No business model survives contact with the market unchanged. Even if you're copying another software business's model, your product will be different which will affect your implementation of that model.
Open-sourcing your code cuts down the available choices for your business model, maybe not by much, maybe by a lot, depending on your market.
Even if your customers won't just grab your code and compile it, there's the chance that a 'competitor' will grab your code and offer your product to their customers.
Copyright laws (and licence agreements based on them) can protect you, but only if you can afford to go to court. Small businesses cannot afford to go to court, so don't rely on licences to prevent bad people from ripping your code.
However, your customer base may require your code to be open-source before they'll buy it. If so, you'll have to go with that.
The biggest threat to a new software product is obscurity not piracy, so if open-sourcing your code will help you promote your product it's probably worth doing.
So my advice would be to keep it closed until you're happy that opening it won't completely screw up your business, either because your business is doing well and you can take the risk, or because it's going badly and you've nothing to lose.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
You say "everyone is telling you to make it open source". Well, I don't, so it's not everyone. But why are they telling you this? One advantage of open source is that these people can build on your work without paying you. Wait - that is an advantage for everyone except you!
Just ask yourself: What is in it for me? Assuming that you have a husband or wife and two children and want a nice home and decent food on the table for everyone, and a good education for your children, what's the best way to achieve this?
The two advantages _for you_ from open source are these: You can use open source software made by others as part of your software (and in that case we don't need to discuss this because you _must_ open source your software), and that others may add value to your software by contributing. On the other hand, anyone can take your software without paying you. If the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, you open source it, otherwise you don't.
1) As a sort of broad suggestioon, I suggest you consult on your project. Selling people customizations, training, support etc.
2) You really do not provide much information. I suggest that when a person suggests to you that you should open source your product you ask them how. Without a doubt many of the people making the suggestion are throwing about bullshit without really knowing what they are talking about, but there may be some people who see a real possibility for your stuff. By asking you will get these peoples ideas, and if they happen to be the former well you've unearthed them.
Yes. Can someone do something truly charitable? Altruistic? No. Ayn Rand
Look at folks who have done it recently. http://developmentseed.org/
The tl;dr seems to be build software that supports much desired "custom" solutions, open source said software while being the people everyone hires to build said custom solutions.
Free Market Capitalism is non-zero-sum only in your wet dreams. Capitalism of any stripe only works due to imbalances in distribution of resources which are artifical in nature. These imbalances are always due in one way or another to the use of force and/or coercion and/or deception. IOW, it's the precisely the greedy actors that make it function.
You had me going along until you tried to slip that garbage in. Nice try, though.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Okay, but all you've done is say "charge for support and customization". I'd add a third category: training. But, the original commenter's argument still holds: you still need a product that needs support, customization, and/or training.
> Very few off-the-shelf software packages do exactly what the user needs without any customisation.
Nonsense. The majority of off-the-shelf software packages do not and should not need any significant customization, support, or training. I have lots of software and lots of games. Do you know the number of times I've had to get support, customization, or training for them? With the exception of reporting bugs (because I'm nice and I want them to improve their product) the answer is Never. Never in my thirty years of buying software.
The only time I've can remember needed help forums is when I'm developing software using a library and I can't get it to work, but that's me as a developer, not me as an end-user. In no cases have I actually paid anybody for that support.
It was pretty deliberately meant as an insult to those whose framing of ethics resolves to 'whatever the bible says'. But maybe it was too subtle.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Free Market Capitalism is non-zero-sum only in your wet dreams.
Oh yeah? The world has the exact same wealth it had 500 years ago?
Here's how it works.....a bunch of rich people in England pool their money together to build a hydroelectric dam in Argentina. Suddenly they are selling electricity to people in Argentina. The Argentinians now are better off because they have electricity, and the English are better off because they made a profit. Win-win. There is more wealth for everyone.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The worst thing you can do is rush the decision and the implementation of your business model.
In my case, the core of my software (MSS Code Factory) was always intended to be open source. However, the intent was not to launch the company/business branch of the project (Singularity One Systems, Inc.) until I had at least a couple of the proprietary support modules in place for commercial databases.
Timing would not turn out to be in my favour, however, as I was laid off last year, so I rushed getting "the company" off the ground. As a result, the company was ready to go before the proprietary extensions were, so I'm scrambling to finish at least one of the proprietary support modules so I can earn revenue from it (Oracle 11gR2 support.) I don't think I've got a bad business model, but I really shouldn't have been launching the company until May or June of this year, not January as I ended up doing.
In a nutshell, I'm using a variant on the MySQL model, where there is a open source component as well as proprietary "enterprise" modules. The open source component provides the core application code with a PostgreSQL persistence implementation, and the proprietary modules will provide the support for the commercial databases (Oracle 11gR2, Sybase ASE 12.5, DB/2 UDB, and SQL Server.)
Another distinction between the open source and commercial support is that open source will provide basic SAX parsers to enable database loader/initializers, but the commercial version will also use the SAX parsers and XSD schemas to implement cache/node synchronization. That means that you'll be able to do client-server applications with the open source implementation, but if you want synchronized data clusters, you'll need to pony up for commercial support options.
I'm one of those people who believes all software should be released as an open source core, with profits made from the support and enhancement of that core. Eventually the commercial modules will become open source as well (when I can afford it), while new modules will take on the commercial enhancement component that generates revenue.
I also believe that anyone wanting to customize and integrate the core should pay for the privilege of doing so, and opted for a dual GPLv3/commercial license model as a result. I've had many people crying and complaining that I won't release it under Apache or BSD licenses, but to me that's just someone with a great idea for a profitable enhancement that wants to get the core code for free (as in beer.) I'm not stopping them from producing a GPLv3 product enhancement; just stopping them from stealing the code for hidden use in their own product.
But I've never been one naive enough to think I could ever come up with a business model that would make everyone happy. There will always be people who think you should give them your lunch as well as your code, and there will always be people who think you should hold on to your code until you turn enough profit to "afford" to open source.
There is no easy answer, but one thing I do know for sure: you shouldn't open source software until you've come up with a viable business model for developing and supporting that software in the future. It may take time to ramp up the revenue stream so you can live off your product, and perhaps the revenue stream will never be big enough to allow that. But the biggest mistake you can make is to open source just on principal without thinking things through and figuring out a way to earn a living from your efforts.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"My projects are no longer small-scale hobbies, they are large frameworks, and I need to make a living."
Well, then do it the way any other else's.
Research your market so you know what's sellable and what is not, to whom and why.
Then target your product to the lowest hanging fruit and focus your advertisement campaign to it (I mean it! You might think at the beginning that your product is targetted to other developers just to find that it is in fact targetted to their managers which are the ones that sign the checks -you need quite different selling points).
Offer solid quality at competitive price and build a strong brand to support it.
Have your ears wide open so you hear what your customers *and* your prospective customers have to say.
And, finally, if you want to make money out of programing, never program[1] for free.
Heck, is there any other way?
[1] I meant exactly what I said: that's nothing to do with the license you happen to attach to what you program, but don't open the editor unless there's somebody willing to pay for the effort.
Your post is plain bullshit. You should visit Cuba and then turn on these three brain cells behind your vision balls.
Fallacy #1: Environmental costs are not real costs, and may be safely ignored.
Thanks for playing.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
"Democracy doesn't guarantee good government, it guarantees the government the people deserve."
Hehe, to quote H. L. Mencken: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Open source doesn't necessarily mean "free as in beer".
Just because you're willing to give away your source for free doesn't mean that you don't have a right to charge for your product. What about providing source upon request (open source) and charging for the compiled product.
Most of the populace probably won't know how or want to go through the trouble of compiling the source themselves. Thus, you will have satisfied your need for money, while at the same time satisfying your desire to "give back" to the "community". Just a thought. Cheers, -Mark
Your reason for thinking that capitalism is a zero-sum game is because environmental costs are ignored?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
When people talk about paying for support in open source does not mean paying for someone to answer the phone and tell you how to use it. It does not even mean paying for training (although that can be a good business model too). It means paying to turn a product (software) into a solution (something that directly addresses a real need).
Quite right. The problem is that anyone can supply this service. Sure, the people who develop the software are often the best solution builders. But often the developers miss out on this work either because there's more work than the developers can handle, or because others can do it for less. The developers earn nothing from this work.
That's one reason.
For Fallacy #2, I suggest you work out just how those rich people in England got that way to begin with.
(Hint: "Property is theft".)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Here's a hint for you. You're falling into the trap Richard Feynman warned about. You actively seek information that supports your position, and ignore information that doesn't. It's a dangerous trap, get out of it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yes, but that can also be an advantage. You can market it as avoiding lock in. If you don't want to - or don't have the manpower to - do a particular job for a customer that's built their company on your solution then they aren't stuck, they can go elsewhere without having an expensive migration. It can also help to grow the market. If you're just a small startup then you can probably not handle more than half a dozen moderately big clients at a time. On the other hand, you and a dozen other small companies may be able to fill the demand. As you grow, your expertise with the system probably means you can start undercutting others, or maybe start subcontracting some of the better ones...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I heard u say u wrote some books - what's their title & publisher then? Watch him run.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2787367&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=39697575
barbara.hudson@unjava.com from http://slashdot.org/~Barbara%2C+not+Barbie = barbara.hudson@barbara-hudson.com from http://slashdot.org/~tomhudson proves that assertion. It'd be pretty easy to mod herself/himself up with a 2nd account and to mod others down with it too.
Point well taken. But how about (and I have absolutely no idea if these companies you mentioned tried anything liked thir or not), releasing "version lines", so you actively maintain and fix bugs for v1 line, and sell v2. Or maybe as another poster said, which I know would amount to crippleware to some extent, but that's another discussion, have some "freemium" approach in that v1 is the same as v2 bugs-wise, but not feature-wise. So you backport to v1 all the bug fixes you...uhmm..fix.. in v2, except of course those which have something to do with an unsupported feature.
Of course this means solving a host of other problems, considering you have to keep two similar-yet-different codebases, still, I'm interested in what you think of this. Maybe as you say, him alone could not handle it, but may be a small team could?
I mean, there *must* be some way of satisfying both needs of what I would say is a big group of developers, wanting to contribute their grain of salt but not completely ready to embrace full-blown oper-source models. Or are we coming to a point where you basically have no real choice (regarding successful penetration in the market) between going RH style open source or traditional closed source? is there really no other viable way of doing this? (and I ask sincerely, no sacarsm intended)
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