7 ms·

Open Source Business Challenges and Reality

162 points by lleyton 3y ago

lleyton 3y ago
A rough English translation of the original Japanese note by Rui Ueyama, the creator of the mold linker. A reflection about trying to build a profitable business on open source.
thumbuddy 3y ago
I wonder why giving your product away for free is just so difficult to monetize.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  open source doesn't necessarily mean you're giving it away for free. often the product is actually a service and having the source isn't necessarily useful to consume said service.
  - FeepingCreature 3y ago
    If people can't grab the source and use it to run the service, where is the incentive to improve the source? So this may be "open source in name only" - it has an open license, but it doesn't actually build an open ecosystem around it.
  - WJW 3y ago
    Sure but in this particular case the product is absolutely being given away for free. There is no service attached to having a faster linker, you just grab the code and off you go. The only monetization it has is basically a big sign saying "please pay something if you want to", and not enough people want to.
- 6510 3y ago
  You need a second product or service that can't be given away for free. It needs to fit perfectly: Buying B with A should make sense in some sub set of cases. B must not be required to use A. I've seen only one free software that solved the puzzle completely perfectly* It does mean it can be done but it seems hard enough that one should probably explore picking B before A. * IIRC It was a desktop Payroll software that only displays ONE advertisement for a lone but only when you have insufficient funds to pay your employees, it does a credit rating based on previous salaries paid and previous financing, there are no forms to fill out as your info is already in the application. I think one can also pay the installments from the application. In that situation the offer seems completely perfect. A button to press that completely solves your problem when you have it.
- breck 3y ago
  You're being downvoted but I think this is good harsh feedback. Open source, public domain products are better. Lots of engineers understand that and want to make those things. But the laws currently incentivize doing things the wrong way. We can either change the laws, or go back to first principles and see if there might be open source business models that haven't been tried yet.
  - thumbuddy 3y ago
    I don't care if I get down voted for my opinions on the internet :). My view on it is simple... The way the current internet is set up, it'd be really difficult to make these types of projects profitable. Even if you make more laws, it'd be super hard to find people violating said laws, and even harder to bring them into court as a company struggling to get started. Big and even medium size companies play these games all day.
    - breck 3y ago
      To be clear I think we need fewer laws. Specifically I think IP laws need to be abolished. Software development, academic research, et cetera should be done in the open and public domain. Less monopoly profits for a few, better information and software for all.
      - thumbuddy 3y ago
        I'm cool with that, but expect it to be even harder to monetize OSS without taxes funding it...
derekkraan 3y ago
This is a great read. I think we can learn as much (or more) from the failures as we can from the successes [1]. Developer tooling is also just a very difficult business to be in [2]. [1] https://codecodeship.com/blog/2023-04-19-parker-selbert https://codecodeship.com/blog/2023-04-19-parker-selbert [2] https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/economics-developer-tools https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/economics-developer-tool...
nologic01 3y ago
The consolation, if any, is that monetising any type of software is actually hard and getting harder no matter what business model. Otherwise the profitable "big tech" companies of today would not be mostly advertisers or infrastructure providers.
- cxr 3y ago
  > monetising any type of software is actually hard It's not that much different than other fields—there is an endless supply of businesses/orgs for which for which it is almost an insurmountable obstacle to get them to acknowledge something that they could be doing to better serve their own self-interests and then get their approval to take appropriate action. (In limited circumstances, it can be easier with software, because devs can coast on the desire of SMBs to feel like they're on the forefront of progress because they're buying in to an app for something that didn't have an app before—or if there was an app, then a newer, shinier sort of app—no matter how shitty and regressive the new app actually turns out to be...)
  - DannyBee 3y ago
    Developer tools is a much smaller market than people think. It's consistently missed total market value estimates and been revised down, too, no matter whose numbers you use. Depending who you ask, it's not even a 10 billion dollar market yet (or has just reached it). Most of that money is also concentrated in people like Atlassian. It's a remarkably small pie.
    - cxr 3y ago
      I follow (what's on the surface of) your comment, but I don't see how your comment follows mine.
      - DannyBee 3y ago
        You are saying that monetizing software is not particularly different than other things. I"m saying one difference is that lots of other things have a bigger market in which to operate. It is easier in a big market to get a small slice of the pie and be okay. (it may not be easy to get the slice, but once you do, it's enough). In developer tools, getting that small slice will still not be enough to be okay. In other words, it is different from other fields - you say "there is an endless supply of businesses/orgs for which for which it is almost an insurmountable obstacle to get them to acknowledge something that they could be doing to better serve their own self-interests and then get their approval to take appropriate action." That's true, but in other fields, to have a viable business, you don't have to get as many of these folks + whoever is left, to be successful enough. In developer tools, you do, because the overall market is worth a lot less, and so are individual customers.
endisneigh 3y ago
people generally don't want to pay for anything, so it's difficult. though there are some success stories like Gitlab, most open source businesses end up changing their licensing to not be pure "open source", e.g. CockroachDB and MongoDB. Though at least in the former case they have a time provision that converts it back to AGPL IIRC.
- aatd86 3y ago
  Developpers are so cheap. Aren't they supposed to be paid handsomely or is that just a myth?
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    If it weren't for all this freely licensed software, maybe the paid alternatives would be more attractive. Proprietary UNIX was all well and good, but ultimately a cancer to businesses and users. Businesses and users funded an alternative, and the people selling proprietary UNIX all gave up the ghost. In any case, if you're trying to get developers to pay for your software, you're targeting the wrong crowd. Developers know the per-call cost of your service, they know that you're scamming them at some level of your product. If you sell a fart button app for a dollar, you better believe someone will make their own version out of spite. If you want to get paid for your software, sell to the business and not their employees. The frugality of software developers is ultimately just a force of good, giving less fortunate developers better tools and keeping the paid options honest.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - aatd86 3y ago
      Do they? More often than not people are users of libraries and not necessarily well versed in the amount of time and knowledge required to build them. In my experience, there is a non negligible number of devs who overestimate their own knowledge. And I believe this leads to a trend toward underestimating the value and the costs of software in terms of money or time. Then the only ones who can afford to compete are those who have a job which is basically a subsidy at this point.
zokier 3y ago
Funny how the author found out how to make big bucks from OSS but then just decided to quit that > Between 2013 and 2019, I was at Google developing the "LLVM lld linker". lld linker as open source software is kinda successful, and if you have a very large development scale, you definitely need to use it as a standard tool. > [...] I could've got several hundred thousand dollars from the engineer job I retired (I was a Google Staff Engineer) Software in general, open source or not, is not good business. If salaried job is not for you then consulting/freelance is pretty much the way to go for software engineers. Either way, you are selling your expertise and time instead of the end result.
- cornercasechase 3y ago
  Who would you say is capturing the value created by this software, and how can we fix it so that value goes to the people who wrote the software? Not sure I have an answer but that shareholders and executives get the vast majority of the gains points to an extremely broken system.
  - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
    End users are capturing the value. But of course that's the point of open source; you're voluntarily avoiding the proprietary software strategies that let you capture more value from your users. I don't think it has much to do with shareholders or executives.
  - WJW 3y ago
    > how can we fix it so that value goes to the people who wrote the software? Not giving away the software for free would be a good start. There are many ways to charge people for software.
  - zokier 3y ago
    Software doesn't create value by itself, people using software creates value. With open source software anyone is free to use software to create value for themselves. Of course Pikettys r>g still applies insomuch it applies to anything, but that is not really related to software anymore.
VincentEvans 3y ago
Personally, in the past I never had a problem with paying a reasonable price for software if I end up “owning” it as the result of the payment, allowing me to use it in perpetuity. I especially liked some products that came with “lifetime updates”, eg FL Studio, where a purchase entitles you to future updates providing bug fixes and new features free of charge. I also like Jetbrains subscription model that allows me to use the current version forever even if I stop paying subscription. But as the time went on - more and more restrictions were put on the purchase: can’t install on multiple computers in a household, the key cannot be reused when reinstalling, immediate absolution when continuous operation requires paid updates, and finally - full on subscriptions that don’t result in ownership. As the result of all this my desire to buy software ran out.
- EvanAnderson 3y ago
  I’d be fine with just “let me run the software in perpetuity”, ideally without automated updates. Software that matters enough for me to pay for is going to become part of my workflow, and a tool in my toolbox. I don’t want my tools disappearing or changing arbitrarily. I’ve always seen software development and maintenance as a service. The idea of free lifetime updates always struck me as unsustainable. Having a reasonable bug-fix and free update lifetime for a given version doesn’t strike me as unfair. A company offering free lifetime updates raises a red flag in my mind re: their long-term viability.
  - VincentEvans 3y ago
    In case of FL Studio - there’s a core product that remains free and receives updates, and there various add-ons and content that you can pay for if you choose to. It’s not all that different to how some game producers continue to update and bug-fix the game, as well as on occasion introduce new features - while releasing expansions that you need to pay for if you want to play it. Example - Diablo 3 which saw 3 or 4 expansions since it was released a decade or so ago. Or Fallout 4. That model obviously works for some - and the makers of FL Studio celebrated their 20th anniversary a while ago. One of the benefits to them - is that they don’t need to support old versions of their software, all customers have the latest version available to them free of charge.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
The way this economic system works is that there are owners and laborers. The way to make a lot of money is to be an owner. However, open source mainly makes you a laborer. Support contracts are paying you for labor. It is similar to starting your own plumbing business. Yes, you can make a comfortable lifestyle, but you don’t really own anything apart from your labor, and if someone else comes in offering a better or more convenient deal, businesses will go with them.
DannyBee 3y ago
This is not really the right takeaway. It's true, but sort of misses the key issue. A better takeaway would be - there are not a lot of things that move the needle enough for people to want to pay a lot for them when they have alternatives. mold isn't one of them for the majority of customers, and developer tools overall is a tough business to make money in. Rui is a genius and an amazing programmer, but even within Google, the llvm ld work was done for particular reasons (I was Rui's director for many years, and was responsible for approving and funding the work). Speed was one of them for sure. But it wasn't the only one, and more importantly, we had particular use cases and clients where the work would move the needle. We had lots of data and knew where and when we could improve things, whether through LLD or other things. Otherwise we would not have done it. For a random customer to want something like mold, and to pay for it, they'd usually have to have data that suggests it's worth it. Most of them don't even have data at all, let alone the ability to say "if we use mold, it will move the needle for us overall". Sure, you can spitball the time you will save in compilation, but as lots of research shows, that doesn't mean the overall process necessarily gets any faster. Some will buy it anyway - some people will take it on faith, some will think it's cool, some are specialized enough that it matters. But overall, if you want people to pay for things, at a minimum, for most people, you'd have to be able to help them see that it will enable them to do something like "get features out faster", not something like "link your programs faster". The latter is a means to achieve the former, not an end unto itself. Developer tools is also not a large market overall in the relative scheme of things (look at devops market sizing and CAGR compared to anything else), and never has been. It has consistently missed estimates, too, no matter whose numbers you use. It's not even a 10 billion dollar market yet, or is just barely one, depending who you ask (estimates are 8-10.4 billion). Most of this money is eaten by large players (Atlassian, etc). So you are also already working at a disadvantage.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  This hits pretty hard, but reasonates as true in many orgs. Trying to see where else we have the same dynamic, CI came to mind. CI is often pretty slow, and I've had jobs where it take 20 min for the full results (lint, compile, tests, etc) to come out. It was a pain point raised to management, we complained of lost productive hours against it, and tbe answer was to trim down tests and split the cose base, instead of "just" paying for faster CI instances. I'd expect other orga to take more sensible choices, but in general getting budget for tooling feels hard.
milar 3y ago
It’s a tough product to monetize. Sadly many of the most important, highly-technical OS projects (like this) are hard to monetize, while many less-important, yet highly valuable to some niche (e.g., a job queue) might make money.
- imiric 3y ago
  Exactly, this is the main reason. The most successful OSS business model is the service model. Release your core product as OSS, and build the best commercial SaaS around it. The author is wrong when they say: > Some enterprises make open source projects then provide cloud services. [...] But, regarding this business model, it is weak because it is vulnerable to the other services like AWS providing the open source software as a service, and actually that is happening a lot. Licenses like the AGPL level the playing field, so any competitors must also publish their changes to your software. The crucial aspect, then, is to make your SaaS objectively the best on the market, which should be easier for you, since you're the primary expert of your software. It also drives innovation by keeping you on your toes to always innovate and improve both the core and SaaS around it. You can also go the Redis and Nginx way and use a separate commercial license, but this is a murky legal topic. The important part of this open core model is to truly offer a compelling OSS product. Don't try to swindle users with crippleware, nagware, or prioritize business features over OSS ones. Give the best support you can, have great documentation, and make the OSS tool easy to use, with clear market advantage over the competition. Then your SaaS offering should be the icing on the cake that includes premium features that are mostly relevant for businesses. This is how you attract those huge corporate contracts. The main issue with mold is that a service can't be easily built around it, and that it's a very niche and technical tool. The product needs to be something that's appealing to a large audience. Even if it's a developer tool, an improved linker is not something many developers will flock to. The author is clearly smart and talented. But this product failing to be monetized is not related to OSS business models. Monetizing OSS is more difficult, sure, but there are many companies that have done it successfully. I'd suggest looking into what they've done differently.
ksec 3y ago
I still wondered, had mold or now sold in MIT license been available for $1M would Apple have actually pay for it.
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
I don't believe there's such a thing as an Open Source business. Open Source is a license style. It's not a business plan or a commercial industry. I also believe that good Open Source software requires not operating as a business. In "true" Open Source: * There's no stakeholder but the user and the maintainer. * Nobody holds back features to go into "the Enterprise product". * Nobody prioritizes features that the whale customers are asking for. * There's often no "contributor agreements" or "team consensus" required to take a contribution, so it's often much faster to merge in new work. * People from all over the world that have a passion and desire for the product, that actually get shit done, with no concern for their resume or title, become the maintainers. * The project's design can change frequently with major overhauls, versus carrying one codebase along indefinitely because it would be too costly to overhaul it. * It's not subject to the whims and needs of a profit motive, or growth at all costs; it can stay dinky and small or grow as contributors arrive. * Ends up smaller and more composable, and are easier to replace when they die than big commercial Open Source offerings with a million features. * is a Bazaar, not a Cathedral; an organic mix of different components that evolves naturally, survives longer as a whole and fits together better. A true business product needs a value proposition, a problem to solve, marketing/advertising/sales, and support that's worth paying for. Getting the source code is never the problem somebody has. Even if they have it, often a better product will solve what they need. OSS is more of a distraction to the business than a competitive advantage. The only thing you gain from an Open Source business is marketing. If you do it right, you'll hire more committed nerds and can sell B2B to other nerdy businesses. But that's not a super consistent revenue or hiring stream.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  intentionally reducing the scope of possible scenarios and declaring analysis completion .. does not fit and is counterproductive to others that are engaged in alternatives to that scenario.
ezekg 3y ago
Slap an "Enterprise" tag onto the name, e.g. "Mold Enterprise" with a few features directly applicable to larger orgs and you have yourself a business. Dual-license it to where all code in an ee/ directory [0] falls under a non-open-source enterprise license, and all other code is open-source. [0]: https://github.com/search?q=%5C%22ee%2F%5C%22+directory+path%3ALICENSE*&type=code https://github.com/search?q=%5C%22ee%2F%5C%22+directory+path...
didgetmaster 3y ago
>The period is not fixed for the open source licenses, so if you change the license for the latest version, the old versions are still under AGPL. Therefore, even if I change the license for mold, anyone can just fork the old open source version and continue to develop it easily. This is a major issue for anyone considering offering their software with an open source license. There are many licenses to choose from and you have to get the first one right. You can't just pick one and later switch it to something more suitable.
- eikenberry 3y ago
  You can just pick one later as long as you understand that you are doing it for it's future impact and not it's current impact. Of course people who want the old license will just fork your old version as they are pretty much the same as you just re-licensed. But 5 years down the road your forking your old version won't be meaningful as your product will have evolved significantly and not be the same product anymore. Copyright licenses are long term by their nature (ridiculously long term) and their impact is best understood in those terms.
hudon 3y ago
The way I would play this is use my potential skills in open source to boost my reputation, experience, and credibility, and then be able to charge more for consulting gigs after the fact. Not profit from the OSS directly, but build up my image and business from it indirectly. I’m assuming Rui could get some sweet contracts now that his skills are plain for all to see, that would afford him the lifestyle he may be looking for that a salaried job couldn’t offer.
latchkey 3y ago
I read the comments and I think that people are missing the crux of the issue: mold is a product, not a business. In the end, it doesn't matter if it is open source or not. As an engineer, you're stuck trying to sell the product, which isn't a service. The service would be support and that's what he was rather successful with, given it was only one single niche product. If he had taken mold and built it into some sort of larger service (maybe a CI/CD system? or something that did analytics on how mold improved developer happiness), I think he might have seen something closer to the 'big profits' because then it would be easier to justify paying for.
BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
IMO this problem is bigger that software, their licenses, and the users the underlying problem is digital assets, their lack of natural exclusivity, and the users and makers of the digital assets in a capitalist market environment. i.e. this is not about 'the business of open source software'. the real problem is about 'digital assets in a (capitalist) marketplace' meaning this won't get fixed by considering how to do open source software into a business. we must consider a much larger perspective: "how to have digital assets in a marketplace?" and a preceding hopefully obvious "but why do that in the first place?" some possible 'viable' options that I've seen that explore this question in a more full sense: - NFTs ( but I have a weird taste in my mouth 'saying' this) - API economy (redefining 21st century api-culture? ahhaah get it? it's bee joke) neither is overwhelmingly convincing... however I do know what I want: megaupload of all culture. we have the technology, but not the social-political capacity
nevertoolate 3y ago
ChatGPT: I know link-fu! The really sad part is that LLMs are eating up the knowledge and give nothing back.
sublimefire 3y ago
Let's be clear that it is a successful model that generates an amount of revenue ~78k per year. It definitely works but the yield is a bit low it seems. It is hard to definitely nail down the amount to hours worked but the money is there. A couple of more similar products would be the way to increase the profits. The issue seems to be with the approach taken to have a single AGPL license. I've heard of other similar businesses that would just use double licensing and would sell copyrighted "parallel copy" of the product to the blue chip customers. This way the company gets a proper license but publicly you still maintain AGPL for the masses.
musicale 3y ago
The pivot to macOS/iOS was interesting, but then he got semi-Sherlocked (technically not since Apple had already been trying to solve the same issues) which is a huge risk for any Apple developer tool - if not any app on Apple platforms.
singpolyma3 3y ago
This reads like they're maybe just not ready to be an entrepreneur, unrelated to open source or not. Single, small, niche product with no investors to pay back and no employees pulling in $78k/year after only a few years is a pretty good result and the reaction should be to try to grow it (second contract, more sponsors, second product, etc) not write it off as a failure.

162 points by lleyton 3y ago

A rough English translation of the original Japanese note by Rui Ueyama, the creator of the mold linker. A reflection about trying to build a profitable business on open source.

thumbuddy 3y ago

I wonder why giving your product away for free is just so difficult to monetize.

endisneigh 3y ago
open source doesn't necessarily mean you're giving it away for free. often the product is actually a service and having the source isn't necessarily useful to consume said service.
- FeepingCreature 3y ago
  If people can't grab the source and use it to run the service, where is the incentive to improve the source? So this may be "open source in name only" - it has an open license, but it doesn't actually build an open ecosystem around it.
- WJW 3y ago
  Sure but in this particular case the product is absolutely being given away for free. There is no service attached to having a faster linker, you just grab the code and off you go. The only monetization it has is basically a big sign saying "please pay something if you want to", and not enough people want to.
6510 3y ago
You need a second product or service that can't be given away for free. It needs to fit perfectly: Buying B with A should make sense in some sub set of cases. B must not be required to use A. I've seen only one free software that solved the puzzle completely perfectly* It does mean it can be done but it seems hard enough that one should probably explore picking B before A. * IIRC It was a desktop Payroll software that only displays ONE advertisement for a lone but only when you have insufficient funds to pay your employees, it does a credit rating based on previous salaries paid and previous financing, there are no forms to fill out as your info is already in the application. I think one can also pay the installments from the application. In that situation the offer seems completely perfect. A button to press that completely solves your problem when you have it.
breck 3y ago
You're being downvoted but I think this is good harsh feedback. Open source, public domain products are better. Lots of engineers understand that and want to make those things. But the laws currently incentivize doing things the wrong way. We can either change the laws, or go back to first principles and see if there might be open source business models that haven't been tried yet.
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  I don't care if I get down voted for my opinions on the internet :). My view on it is simple... The way the current internet is set up, it'd be really difficult to make these types of projects profitable. Even if you make more laws, it'd be super hard to find people violating said laws, and even harder to bring them into court as a company struggling to get started. Big and even medium size companies play these games all day.
  - breck 3y ago
    To be clear I think we need fewer laws. Specifically I think IP laws need to be abolished. Software development, academic research, et cetera should be done in the open and public domain. Less monopoly profits for a few, better information and software for all.
    - thumbuddy 3y ago
      I'm cool with that, but expect it to be even harder to monetize OSS without taxes funding it...

derekkraan 3y ago

This is a great read. I think we can learn as much (or more) from the failures as we can from the successes [1]. Developer tooling is also just a very difficult business to be in [2]. [1] https://codecodeship.com/blog/2023-04-19-parker-selbert https://codecodeship.com/blog/2023-04-19-parker-selbert [2] https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/economics-developer-tools https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/economics-developer-tool...

nologic01 3y ago

The consolation, if any, is that monetising any type of software is actually hard and getting harder no matter what business model. Otherwise the profitable "big tech" companies of today would not be mostly advertisers or infrastructure providers.

cxr 3y ago
> monetising any type of software is actually hard It's not that much different than other fields—there is an endless supply of businesses/orgs for which for which it is almost an insurmountable obstacle to get them to acknowledge something that they could be doing to better serve their own self-interests and then get their approval to take appropriate action. (In limited circumstances, it can be easier with software, because devs can coast on the desire of SMBs to feel like they're on the forefront of progress because they're buying in to an app for something that didn't have an app before—or if there was an app, then a newer, shinier sort of app—no matter how shitty and regressive the new app actually turns out to be...)
- DannyBee 3y ago
  Developer tools is a much smaller market than people think. It's consistently missed total market value estimates and been revised down, too, no matter whose numbers you use. Depending who you ask, it's not even a 10 billion dollar market yet (or has just reached it). Most of that money is also concentrated in people like Atlassian. It's a remarkably small pie.
  - cxr 3y ago
    I follow (what's on the surface of) your comment, but I don't see how your comment follows mine.
    - DannyBee 3y ago
      You are saying that monetizing software is not particularly different than other things. I"m saying one difference is that lots of other things have a bigger market in which to operate. It is easier in a big market to get a small slice of the pie and be okay. (it may not be easy to get the slice, but once you do, it's enough). In developer tools, getting that small slice will still not be enough to be okay. In other words, it is different from other fields - you say "there is an endless supply of businesses/orgs for which for which it is almost an insurmountable obstacle to get them to acknowledge something that they could be doing to better serve their own self-interests and then get their approval to take appropriate action." That's true, but in other fields, to have a viable business, you don't have to get as many of these folks + whoever is left, to be successful enough. In developer tools, you do, because the overall market is worth a lot less, and so are individual customers.

endisneigh 3y ago

people generally don't want to pay for anything, so it's difficult. though there are some success stories like Gitlab, most open source businesses end up changing their licensing to not be pure "open source", e.g. CockroachDB and MongoDB. Though at least in the former case they have a time provision that converts it back to AGPL IIRC.

aatd86 3y ago
Developpers are so cheap. Aren't they supposed to be paid handsomely or is that just a myth?
- smoldesu 3y ago
  If it weren't for all this freely licensed software, maybe the paid alternatives would be more attractive. Proprietary UNIX was all well and good, but ultimately a cancer to businesses and users. Businesses and users funded an alternative, and the people selling proprietary UNIX all gave up the ghost. In any case, if you're trying to get developers to pay for your software, you're targeting the wrong crowd. Developers know the per-call cost of your service, they know that you're scamming them at some level of your product. If you sell a fart button app for a dollar, you better believe someone will make their own version out of spite. If you want to get paid for your software, sell to the business and not their employees. The frugality of software developers is ultimately just a force of good, giving less fortunate developers better tools and keeping the paid options honest.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - aatd86 3y ago
    Do they? More often than not people are users of libraries and not necessarily well versed in the amount of time and knowledge required to build them. In my experience, there is a non negligible number of devs who overestimate their own knowledge. And I believe this leads to a trend toward underestimating the value and the costs of software in terms of money or time. Then the only ones who can afford to compete are those who have a job which is basically a subsidy at this point.

zokier 3y ago

Funny how the author found out how to make big bucks from OSS but then just decided to quit that > Between 2013 and 2019, I was at Google developing the "LLVM lld linker". lld linker as open source software is kinda successful, and if you have a very large development scale, you definitely need to use it as a standard tool. > [...] I could've got several hundred thousand dollars from the engineer job I retired (I was a Google Staff Engineer) Software in general, open source or not, is not good business. If salaried job is not for you then consulting/freelance is pretty much the way to go for software engineers. Either way, you are selling your expertise and time instead of the end result.

cornercasechase 3y ago
Who would you say is capturing the value created by this software, and how can we fix it so that value goes to the people who wrote the software? Not sure I have an answer but that shareholders and executives get the vast majority of the gains points to an extremely broken system.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
  End users are capturing the value. But of course that's the point of open source; you're voluntarily avoiding the proprietary software strategies that let you capture more value from your users. I don't think it has much to do with shareholders or executives.
- WJW 3y ago
  > how can we fix it so that value goes to the people who wrote the software? Not giving away the software for free would be a good start. There are many ways to charge people for software.
- zokier 3y ago
  Software doesn't create value by itself, people using software creates value. With open source software anyone is free to use software to create value for themselves. Of course Pikettys r>g still applies insomuch it applies to anything, but that is not really related to software anymore.

VincentEvans 3y ago

Personally, in the past I never had a problem with paying a reasonable price for software if I end up “owning” it as the result of the payment, allowing me to use it in perpetuity. I especially liked some products that came with “lifetime updates”, eg FL Studio, where a purchase entitles you to future updates providing bug fixes and new features free of charge. I also like Jetbrains subscription model that allows me to use the current version forever even if I stop paying subscription. But as the time went on - more and more restrictions were put on the purchase: can’t install on multiple computers in a household, the key cannot be reused when reinstalling, immediate absolution when continuous operation requires paid updates, and finally - full on subscriptions that don’t result in ownership. As the result of all this my desire to buy software ran out.

EvanAnderson 3y ago
I’d be fine with just “let me run the software in perpetuity”, ideally without automated updates. Software that matters enough for me to pay for is going to become part of my workflow, and a tool in my toolbox. I don’t want my tools disappearing or changing arbitrarily. I’ve always seen software development and maintenance as a service. The idea of free lifetime updates always struck me as unsustainable. Having a reasonable bug-fix and free update lifetime for a given version doesn’t strike me as unfair. A company offering free lifetime updates raises a red flag in my mind re: their long-term viability.
- VincentEvans 3y ago
  In case of FL Studio - there’s a core product that remains free and receives updates, and there various add-ons and content that you can pay for if you choose to. It’s not all that different to how some game producers continue to update and bug-fix the game, as well as on occasion introduce new features - while releasing expansions that you need to pay for if you want to play it. Example - Diablo 3 which saw 3 or 4 expansions since it was released a decade or so ago. Or Fallout 4. That model obviously works for some - and the makers of FL Studio celebrated their 20th anniversary a while ago. One of the benefits to them - is that they don’t need to support old versions of their software, all customers have the latest version available to them free of charge.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

The way this economic system works is that there are owners and laborers. The way to make a lot of money is to be an owner. However, open source mainly makes you a laborer. Support contracts are paying you for labor. It is similar to starting your own plumbing business. Yes, you can make a comfortable lifestyle, but you don’t really own anything apart from your labor, and if someone else comes in offering a better or more convenient deal, businesses will go with them.

DannyBee 3y ago

This is not really the right takeaway. It's true, but sort of misses the key issue. A better takeaway would be - there are not a lot of things that move the needle enough for people to want to pay a lot for them when they have alternatives. mold isn't one of them for the majority of customers, and developer tools overall is a tough business to make money in. Rui is a genius and an amazing programmer, but even within Google, the llvm ld work was done for particular reasons (I was Rui's director for many years, and was responsible for approving and funding the work). Speed was one of them for sure. But it wasn't the only one, and more importantly, we had particular use cases and clients where the work would move the needle. We had lots of data and knew where and when we could improve things, whether through LLD or other things. Otherwise we would not have done it. For a random customer to want something like mold, and to pay for it, they'd usually have to have data that suggests it's worth it. Most of them don't even have data at all, let alone the ability to say "if we use mold, it will move the needle for us overall". Sure, you can spitball the time you will save in compilation, but as lots of research shows, that doesn't mean the overall process necessarily gets any faster. Some will buy it anyway - some people will take it on faith, some will think it's cool, some are specialized enough that it matters. But overall, if you want people to pay for things, at a minimum, for most people, you'd have to be able to help them see that it will enable them to do something like "get features out faster", not something like "link your programs faster". The latter is a means to achieve the former, not an end unto itself. Developer tools is also not a large market overall in the relative scheme of things (look at devops market sizing and CAGR compared to anything else), and never has been. It has consistently missed estimates, too, no matter whose numbers you use. It's not even a 10 billion dollar market yet, or is just barely one, depending who you ask (estimates are 8-10.4 billion). Most of this money is eaten by large players (Atlassian, etc). So you are also already working at a disadvantage.

makeitdouble 3y ago
This hits pretty hard, but reasonates as true in many orgs. Trying to see where else we have the same dynamic, CI came to mind. CI is often pretty slow, and I've had jobs where it take 20 min for the full results (lint, compile, tests, etc) to come out. It was a pain point raised to management, we complained of lost productive hours against it, and tbe answer was to trim down tests and split the cose base, instead of "just" paying for faster CI instances. I'd expect other orga to take more sensible choices, but in general getting budget for tooling feels hard.

milar 3y ago

It’s a tough product to monetize. Sadly many of the most important, highly-technical OS projects (like this) are hard to monetize, while many less-important, yet highly valuable to some niche (e.g., a job queue) might make money.

imiric 3y ago
Exactly, this is the main reason. The most successful OSS business model is the service model. Release your core product as OSS, and build the best commercial SaaS around it. The author is wrong when they say: > Some enterprises make open source projects then provide cloud services. [...] But, regarding this business model, it is weak because it is vulnerable to the other services like AWS providing the open source software as a service, and actually that is happening a lot. Licenses like the AGPL level the playing field, so any competitors must also publish their changes to your software. The crucial aspect, then, is to make your SaaS objectively the best on the market, which should be easier for you, since you're the primary expert of your software. It also drives innovation by keeping you on your toes to always innovate and improve both the core and SaaS around it. You can also go the Redis and Nginx way and use a separate commercial license, but this is a murky legal topic. The important part of this open core model is to truly offer a compelling OSS product. Don't try to swindle users with crippleware, nagware, or prioritize business features over OSS ones. Give the best support you can, have great documentation, and make the OSS tool easy to use, with clear market advantage over the competition. Then your SaaS offering should be the icing on the cake that includes premium features that are mostly relevant for businesses. This is how you attract those huge corporate contracts. The main issue with mold is that a service can't be easily built around it, and that it's a very niche and technical tool. The product needs to be something that's appealing to a large audience. Even if it's a developer tool, an improved linker is not something many developers will flock to. The author is clearly smart and talented. But this product failing to be monetized is not related to OSS business models. Monetizing OSS is more difficult, sure, but there are many companies that have done it successfully. I'd suggest looking into what they've done differently.

ksec 3y ago

I still wondered, had mold or now sold in MIT license been available for $1M would Apple have actually pay for it.

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

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

mistrial9 3y ago
intentionally reducing the scope of possible scenarios and declaring analysis completion .. does not fit and is counterproductive to others that are engaged in alternatives to that scenario.

ezekg 3y ago

Slap an "Enterprise" tag onto the name, e.g. "Mold Enterprise" with a few features directly applicable to larger orgs and you have yourself a business. Dual-license it to where all code in an ee/ directory [0] falls under a non-open-source enterprise license, and all other code is open-source. [0]: https://github.com/search?q=%5C%22ee%2F%5C%22+directory+path%3ALICENSE*&type=code https://github.com/search?q=%5C%22ee%2F%5C%22+directory+path...

didgetmaster 3y ago

>The period is not fixed for the open source licenses, so if you change the license for the latest version, the old versions are still under AGPL. Therefore, even if I change the license for mold, anyone can just fork the old open source version and continue to develop it easily. This is a major issue for anyone considering offering their software with an open source license. There are many licenses to choose from and you have to get the first one right. You can't just pick one and later switch it to something more suitable.

eikenberry 3y ago
You can just pick one later as long as you understand that you are doing it for it's future impact and not it's current impact. Of course people who want the old license will just fork your old version as they are pretty much the same as you just re-licensed. But 5 years down the road your forking your old version won't be meaningful as your product will have evolved significantly and not be the same product anymore. Copyright licenses are long term by their nature (ridiculously long term) and their impact is best understood in those terms.

hudon 3y ago

The way I would play this is use my potential skills in open source to boost my reputation, experience, and credibility, and then be able to charge more for consulting gigs after the fact. Not profit from the OSS directly, but build up my image and business from it indirectly. I’m assuming Rui could get some sweet contracts now that his skills are plain for all to see, that would afford him the lifestyle he may be looking for that a salaried job couldn’t offer.

latchkey 3y ago

I read the comments and I think that people are missing the crux of the issue: mold is a product, not a business. In the end, it doesn't matter if it is open source or not. As an engineer, you're stuck trying to sell the product, which isn't a service. The service would be support and that's what he was rather successful with, given it was only one single niche product. If he had taken mold and built it into some sort of larger service (maybe a CI/CD system? or something that did analytics on how mold improved developer happiness), I think he might have seen something closer to the 'big profits' because then it would be easier to justify paying for.

BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago

IMO this problem is bigger that software, their licenses, and the users the underlying problem is digital assets, their lack of natural exclusivity, and the users and makers of the digital assets in a capitalist market environment. i.e. this is not about 'the business of open source software'. the real problem is about 'digital assets in a (capitalist) marketplace' meaning this won't get fixed by considering how to do open source software into a business. we must consider a much larger perspective: "how to have digital assets in a marketplace?" and a preceding hopefully obvious "but why do that in the first place?" some possible 'viable' options that I've seen that explore this question in a more full sense: - NFTs ( but I have a weird taste in my mouth 'saying' this) - API economy (redefining 21st century api-culture? ahhaah get it? it's bee joke) neither is overwhelmingly convincing... however I do know what I want: megaupload of all culture. we have the technology, but not the social-political capacity

nevertoolate 3y ago

ChatGPT: I know link-fu! The really sad part is that LLMs are eating up the knowledge and give nothing back.

sublimefire 3y ago

Let's be clear that it is a successful model that generates an amount of revenue ~78k per year. It definitely works but the yield is a bit low it seems. It is hard to definitely nail down the amount to hours worked but the money is there. A couple of more similar products would be the way to increase the profits. The issue seems to be with the approach taken to have a single AGPL license. I've heard of other similar businesses that would just use double licensing and would sell copyrighted "parallel copy" of the product to the blue chip customers. This way the company gets a proper license but publicly you still maintain AGPL for the masses.

musicale 3y ago

The pivot to macOS/iOS was interesting, but then he got semi-Sherlocked (technically not since Apple had already been trying to solve the same issues) which is a huge risk for any Apple developer tool - if not any app on Apple platforms.

singpolyma3 3y ago

This reads like they're maybe just not ready to be an entrepreneur, unrelated to open source or not. Single, small, niche product with no investors to pay back and no employees pulling in $78k/year after only a few years is a pretty good result and the reaction should be to try to grow it (second contract, more sponsors, second product, etc) not write it off as a failure.