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We are 2 indie developers trying to build a sustainable business. We are trying to compete against Google. The idea that the open-source package is responsible

We are 2 indie developers trying to build a sustainable business. We are trying to compete against Google. The idea that the open-source package is responsible for our success is ludicrous. Our success came from thousands of hours of work. You’ll believe the narrative you choose. You’re entitled to that. We will always be “liars” to you because we chose to spend our time building up the paid service. You feel like we should open source all of our code, that’s fine. This conversation isn’t productive, and you seem spiteful, so I’m retiring. And I hadn’t realized that you were the creator of DB browser, that was just a recent example I’d been discussing with friends. Good luck with your chosen path. Please hug your family and take some time to relax.

justinclift 6y ago
I'm still trying to understand why your current "production" (eg SaaS) version of Fathom can't also be FOSS. Other places (eg Redash) do so, and are doing extremely well. The change from FOSS to non-FOSS, especially throwing away the goodwill you'd started out with... makes no sense. :( Popularity of DB Browser for SQLite wise, you might want to check our stats page: https://sqlitebrowser.org/stats/ https://sqlitebrowser.org/stats/ We're doing decently well, and our GitHub organisation has more active developers now than ever before. :)
arp242 6y ago
I think the biggest peeve people have isn't so much that Fathom v2/PRO is closed source, but rather the "we'll open source it soon" kind of "dangling the carrot" stuff. In the GitHub issue you mentioned "since people are confused [..]", but people are confused because your communication has quite frankly not been very good. Even today just looking at the Fathom README it's not at all clear that Fathom v2 (or "PRO") is an entirely different codebase/product which merely shares the name and branding, and not much else, and it's not clear that the "Lite" version is essentially unmaintained either.
- JackWritesCode 6y ago
  We're going to make our stance clear with our next release of Lite. We definitely made some mistakes with regards to V2. Originally we had planned to open-source it, but then we decided against it.

justinclift 6y ago

I'm still trying to understand why your current "production" (eg SaaS) version of Fathom can't also be FOSS. Other places (eg Redash) do so, and are doing extremely well. The change from FOSS to non-FOSS, especially throwing away the goodwill you'd started out with... makes no sense. :( Popularity of DB Browser for SQLite wise, you might want to check our stats page: https://sqlitebrowser.org/stats/ https://sqlitebrowser.org/stats/ We're doing decently well, and our GitHub organisation has more active developers now than ever before. :)

arp242 6y ago

I think the biggest peeve people have isn't so much that Fathom v2/PRO is closed source, but rather the "we'll open source it soon" kind of "dangling the carrot" stuff. In the GitHub issue you mentioned "since people are confused [..]", but people are confused because your communication has quite frankly not been very good. Even today just looking at the Fathom README it's not at all clear that Fathom v2 (or "PRO") is an entirely different codebase/product which merely shares the name and branding, and not much else, and it's not clear that the "Lite" version is essentially unmaintained either.

JackWritesCode 6y ago
We're going to make our stance clear with our next release of Lite. We definitely made some mistakes with regards to V2. Originally we had planned to open-source it, but then we decided against it.