This is not very convincing as a reply to the risks pointed out in the previous post. The choice of the word "try" seemingly recognizes the risk of failure, but you seem to ignore the serious consequences of such a failure for founder and employees. I mean, this is not a game.
It's already hard to build a successful business. Odds are already thin for you to succeed. Why choose a model that worsens it?
Open Source was not created as a funding source to for-profit ventures. That's what these businesses are doing: raising labour funds for free to fund a profitable product. That's not the spirit and the purpose of Open Source.
You are misguided. Here's what the company that employs me does:
- develop an open source product. Open to contributions, but most of the dev is done by employees.
- sell support and consulting on this product
- sell pre-packaged open source extensions to this product, with support
Totally withing the free software / open source spirit. The world gets great open source software for free (not open core: truly and completely open source), and the business behind it is sustainable as well. We also donate to some open source projects that we use, chosen by employees.
At some point, if you want open source to take over, you need it to grow and strive, and having it supported by business is a great way of getting this. The world probably cannot be run only by side projects.
Not saying that all open source companies behave this well, but it's not an impossible outcome.
Presumably jraph's goal in writing their comment is to convince us that starting an Open Source company is a good idea -- but they haven't succeeded, for the reasons mentioned. If they want to convince more people, then they should come up with counterarguments to the top level post's arguments (and if they don't want to convince more people, that's fine too).
No, I haven't succeeded because I haven't tried yet. However, I am surrounded by open source companies that succeeded.
The comment I responded to obviously reasons theoretically, and confuses some things. I will answer two aspects of it:
> Open Source makes "competing" with an existing company trivial, but with none of the invested costs. So the first mover, the program author, is always at a strategic disadvantage
That's not true. You can't just take some open source program developed by someone else and make money out of it. Let's say I develop open source product P. I offer support and consulting. Let's say you want to compete with me on P. You initially lack the expertise and the notoriety. If Alice and Bob want to get support or consulting for product P, they'd better turn to P experts, which is the company that builds P, me. For you to get customers, you need to prove the world that you are an expert. It takes spending time with the code, and also on marketing. But while you are spending time on this, I am too. You will also fatally need to contribute improvements to the product you are selling to make your customers happy. Actually, if you start contributing, it's a win for both of us and our companies can even be friends.
I'm not making this up. That's actually where I work.
> This is not an accident- it is baked into the very point of open source
So we just countered this. I'm not saying there's no risk. but that's not "by construction".
> There's a reason that very few people in the bazaar actually make decent money. There's a reason the cathedral has treasures.
And now we are confusing development methods, not "open source vs not open source". You don't need to be organized in "bazaar" to build free software. Look how, for instance, SQLite, as open as you could dream, manages very well with their non contribution policy. They are profitable. They have a "first mover advantage".
> These are two pretty distinct concepts, and the (traditional) motives for those two things don't merge terribly well.
Well, they can.
But my biggest argument is that you don't need to believe me. Many "actually open source" companies have succeeded. So, what gives?
I don't need to actually build an open source company to prove my point. Others have been doing well. Maybe me in the future, that's not completely excluded. Thing is, being employed also has advantages.
indeed
> just try
I did say "please" try, the nuance is quite important :-)
You know, I think the views differ because we have two problems:
1. How can I create a profitable company
2. How can I make my open source work sustainable
If you only target 1, open source might not be the more immediately easy solution.
I'm aiming at 2, and 1 is one way to do it: given I want to live from open source work (because of my convictions), can I do it by building a company?
The answer is: it might be harder, but yes.
If you don't care about open source, my comments here are just mostly annoying.
And licensing one's product seems to amplify that risk.
> based on a few opinions of HN comments
What if someone does do that? As a HN commenter I can't bypass the possibility that somebody takes my comment at face value without conducting proper research and analysis.
HN comments (and really all content on the Internet in general) should be written responsibly. I am not saying that GP didn't write their comment responsibly.
> nor it's their responsibility to outline the full extent of risks involved
But then you can't raise complaints when somebody does outline the full extent of risks involved.
Someone not conducting proper research is doomed to fail at building a company anyway.
You should be careful in writing HN comments but you should not feel responsible for a business failing. Someone reading should also read comments from anyone, one's writing does not go unchecked for long on HN.
