5 ms·

Except projects like Blender, Grafana, and others like it started small and became big. Building something commercially successful is an additional step, it's o

by ece 4y ago

Except projects like Blender, Grafana, and others like it started small and became big. Building something commercially successful is an additional step, it's optional, but totally doable. There are distros and open source apps/games that charge on stores, which have developed a commercial component. Paying for work is a good thing to be doing.

em-bee 4y ago
blender started as a non-free commercial effort, that went bankrupt and had its source freed through a crowdfunding effort. as far as i can tell, it remains largely community funded. grafana did start small and managed to raise funding from investors. i think the blender model is the best future for FOSS though. funded by its users without making a profit. grafana's success is nice, but like most startups fail, that kind of success is not common.
- ece 4y ago
  I think there's money left on the table in both cases. Community funding will hopefully grow as users grow and the value grows, a reinforcing cycle, though projects might take time to get there I think. Projects like firejail could do commercial work, but don't.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    there most definitely is money left on the table, but with any community led project, one has to be very careful with how such money is used. some people take non-profit very seriously, and don't want to contribute to a project that is using funds to pay some of their developers when others work for free. that happened to debian. when they attempted to use some of their funds to hire developers some people got very upset. so taking advantage of opportunities to earn money has to be carefully considered. the funds are best used for things that the community has been unable to achieve. or at least a community consensus for how to spend the money should be there, lest anyone get the impression that someone is able to enrich themselves through the project. i can't think of a concrete example right now, but i seem to remember some projects that have literally fallen apart over issues like these. not every project is like that of course, and debian may be the extreme here. but for most projects where this is not an issue it is because this has been clear from the start, and the kind of people for whom it would be an issue self-selected to avoid contributing to these projects in the first place.
    - ece 4y ago
      That's fair, I do agree with the article, people work on what they want to work on. If happiness is $70k+hobbies, so be it.

by ece 4y ago

em-bee 4y ago

blender started as a non-free commercial effort, that went bankrupt and had its source freed through a crowdfunding effort. as far as i can tell, it remains largely community funded. grafana did start small and managed to raise funding from investors. i think the blender model is the best future for FOSS though. funded by its users without making a profit. grafana's success is nice, but like most startups fail, that kind of success is not common.

ece 4y ago
I think there's money left on the table in both cases. Community funding will hopefully grow as users grow and the value grows, a reinforcing cycle, though projects might take time to get there I think. Projects like firejail could do commercial work, but don't.
- em-bee 4y ago
  there most definitely is money left on the table, but with any community led project, one has to be very careful with how such money is used. some people take non-profit very seriously, and don't want to contribute to a project that is using funds to pay some of their developers when others work for free. that happened to debian. when they attempted to use some of their funds to hire developers some people got very upset. so taking advantage of opportunities to earn money has to be carefully considered. the funds are best used for things that the community has been unable to achieve. or at least a community consensus for how to spend the money should be there, lest anyone get the impression that someone is able to enrich themselves through the project. i can't think of a concrete example right now, but i seem to remember some projects that have literally fallen apart over issues like these. not every project is like that of course, and debian may be the extreme here. but for most projects where this is not an issue it is because this has been clear from the start, and the kind of people for whom it would be an issue self-selected to avoid contributing to these projects in the first place.
  - ece 4y ago
    That's fair, I do agree with the article, people work on what they want to work on. If happiness is $70k+hobbies, so be it.