Why I Didn't Open-Source My Second SaaS(panelbear.com)
panelbear.com
Why I Didn't Open-Source My Second SaaS
https://panelbear.com/blog/why-not-open-source/
98 comments
This is what happens with my open source Chrome extension's reviews on the Chrome Web Store. Not that you can really make money off of extensions even if I wanted to, but such is life.
Heh, it is totally possible to make money off extensions. You just need to provide value. Here are some examples:
- $100k with a browser extension: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/css-scan-made-over-100k-d6...
- $38k/month with a browser extension: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/187-jordan-oconnor-of-c...
- $3.1k/month with a browser extension: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/night-eye
- $2.5k/month with a browser extension: https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/weather-extension-ad9...
- $100k with a browser extension: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/css-scan-made-over-100k-d6...
- $38k/month with a browser extension: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/187-jordan-oconnor-of-c...
- $3.1k/month with a browser extension: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/night-eye
- $2.5k/month with a browser extension: https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/weather-extension-ad9...
Not to mention Honey, which sold to PayPal for $4 billion.
> Not that you can really make money off of extensions even if I wanted to, but such is life.
Why not? There's successful projects selling or based around extensions.
Why not? There's successful projects selling or based around extensions.
> who demand premium service when encountering a bug
In the same vein, I have a bully, he both writes me on my professional email (to ask me for reparations), AND writes me on public forums 12hrs later asking why I didn’t answer him yet. So it is not only free users who expect premium service, nowadays even bullies expect 12-hrs response ;)
(For all I’m concerned, he can go to court if he really believes I owe him something, I give it 0% chance, but he’s clinging to his illusions).
In the same vein, I have a bully, he both writes me on my professional email (to ask me for reparations), AND writes me on public forums 12hrs later asking why I didn’t answer him yet. So it is not only free users who expect premium service, nowadays even bullies expect 12-hrs response ;)
(For all I’m concerned, he can go to court if he really believes I owe him something, I give it 0% chance, but he’s clinging to his illusions).
I’m curious, what’s his claim? Used your software, something happened making lose data or anything like that?
Sorry for the off-topic, it is a very lowerclass problem: We did Youtube episodes at 4 people and we noticed he had a private life that we didn’t want to be associated with, so we removed him from the next episodes (under a false pretense to avoid saying in public what we had discovered). So he wants 15k because we’ve kept the previous episodes online (to which he was interviewed knowingly, didn’t say anything abnormal either, there’s only his first name, and only the voice no video, it’s ~8k views, not monetized), and he said even if we removed them he’d keep on taking revenge for the next 30 years. So we estimated it wasn’t worth removing the other episodes, given the debate was still interesting, and given he would move on to whatever the next step of his plan his, and I’m not the one with control over the videos anyway. It’s very he-said-she-said/low-IQ/honor-system-with-angry-people, I’m ashamed of myself for having been involved in this dispute, I hadn’t recognized the bad side of his character earlier. In the end I think he’s just afraid that we tell his private thing in public, but the more he angers us, the more he risks one of us to leak it out of annoyance. That was 2 years ago, I would just like him to stop trying to find my address, but I’m not going to give him 15k€ either.
Just lowerclass problems.
Just lowerclass problems.
On the other hand, if he does take you to court, you'll basically be forced to reveal publicly, on permanent record, the thing that you discovered about him. You really won't have a choice because they are going to ask you why you removed him, and you won't be able to lie.
> you won't be able to lie
Hmm. What percentage of claims in sworn testimony are intentional lies?
Hmm. What percentage of claims in sworn testimony are intentional lies?
The problem is that 95% of users are awesome but 5% are VERY aggressive and angry.
The amount of people that personally attack you and accuse you of horrible things should be zero.
I've also seen users personally using our forums to try to get the software for free and complaining it costs too much money.
As soon as it's clear that one of the developers is listening they go quiet but it's super disheartening when your community, which should be supporting you, feels so entitled.
The amount of people that personally attack you and accuse you of horrible things should be zero.
I've also seen users personally using our forums to try to get the software for free and complaining it costs too much money.
As soon as it's clear that one of the developers is listening they go quiet but it's super disheartening when your community, which should be supporting you, feels so entitled.
> The problem is that 95% of users are awesome but 5% are VERY aggressive and angry.
Interestingly enough I used to have a customer facing job in a completely different industry and it was exactly the same situation there. 90-95% of customers were great; they were pleasant and easy to deal with. But man, the bad ones took up sooo much time and energy, it was ridiculous.
Interestingly enough I used to have a customer facing job in a completely different industry and it was exactly the same situation there. 90-95% of customers were great; they were pleasant and easy to deal with. But man, the bad ones took up sooo much time and energy, it was ridiculous.
Everyone should work a retail or hospitality role for a bit. I’ve never been rude to serving staff, but after I did a stint. God damn. There are some entitled assholes out there.
"I'm sorry let me refund the money you paid for this" must be the all time favorite answer for stubborn or impolite users of software that has been provided for free and with no strings attached.
My second favorite (would be first if not for the slightly snarky style) is "Please, go read the License". This is to say that the License typically states that "this software is provided AS-IS with no guarantees at all", but in a very indirect way that most people won't understand when told to them... but I still like that answer, FWIW :-)
My second favorite (would be first if not for the slightly snarky style) is "Please, go read the License". This is to say that the License typically states that "this software is provided AS-IS with no guarantees at all", but in a very indirect way that most people won't understand when told to them... but I still like that answer, FWIW :-)
Lol what the heck, the first one is WAY more snarky than the second! Unless you meant that the second is just not dripping in enough snark.
The one I typically use with rude, demanding users is:
"Pull requests are always welcome :)"
"Pull requests are always welcome :)"
[deleted]
Very common to see on the Chrome store and WordPress.org plugins repo.
I don't think the author made a compelling argument as to why open-sourcing his code led to the problems he describes. It sounds like having the code open sourced took too much of his time away since it allowed people to make requests for things. But I don't see why that means he necessarily has to take time to fulfill the requests.
Sounds like he was too focused in one area of his project, and needed to take a step back to get a broader view of the state of things. I'm not convinced the closed/open source nature of his code is responsible for that.
Sounds like he was too focused in one area of his project, and needed to take a step back to get a broader view of the state of things. I'm not convinced the closed/open source nature of his code is responsible for that.
I think his point was that folks who participate in open source have higher demands for changes and support. If a business is pure SaaS only with no open source code behind it, there is less interaction in general. I'm sure there's still support tickets and whatnot, but there's not the same level of "please fix this" requests. People just move on from commercial packages if they don't do what they need, in my experience.
From the post:
> In the past, when it came to running a business as a solo-founder, having it open source created too much maintenance burden for very specific feature requests. In particular from non-paying users, who sometimes sent me emails directly, demanding I look at their issue, or help them fix things “as soon as possible”.
This lack of interaction is both a feature (lets you focus, you have time to take care of paying users) and a bug (less interaction means you could build the wrong thing, the source is no longer a marketing mechanism for you).
From the post:
> In the past, when it came to running a business as a solo-founder, having it open source created too much maintenance burden for very specific feature requests. In particular from non-paying users, who sometimes sent me emails directly, demanding I look at their issue, or help them fix things “as soon as possible”.
This lack of interaction is both a feature (lets you focus, you have time to take care of paying users) and a bug (less interaction means you could build the wrong thing, the source is no longer a marketing mechanism for you).
Right, I agree with you, but as I said
> It sounds like having the code open sourced took too much of his time away since it allowed people to make requests for things. But I don't see why that means he necessarily has to take time to fulfill the requests.
The existence of the interactions doesn't necessitate engaging with them. If engaging with interactions is taking too much time away, one could simply, not engage with them.
> It sounds like having the code open sourced took too much of his time away since it allowed people to make requests for things. But I don't see why that means he necessarily has to take time to fulfill the requests.
The existence of the interactions doesn't necessitate engaging with them. If engaging with interactions is taking too much time away, one could simply, not engage with them.
> The existence of the interactions doesn't necessitate engaging with them. If engaging with interactions is taking too much time away, one could simply, not engage with them.
Sure, I get it, everyone needs to prioritize. But if you are ignoring interactions on your OSS project, you can expect more, oh, I'll call it 'heat'. I have seen those github issue threads, where people get frustrated because someone hasn't engaged.
So if you aren't going to engage, why open source it? Sure, there are other reasons, but the community feedback loop is a crucial part of the value of OSS for building a business.
Also, I get there's nuance and you can choose to engage when there's been a certain level of commitment from the community (a number of upvotes is what my current company uses to help prioritize efforts), but for a solo founder it can be really hard to prioritize, and the author apparently found all the requests a distraction. His choice, but I sympathize.
Sure, I get it, everyone needs to prioritize. But if you are ignoring interactions on your OSS project, you can expect more, oh, I'll call it 'heat'. I have seen those github issue threads, where people get frustrated because someone hasn't engaged.
So if you aren't going to engage, why open source it? Sure, there are other reasons, but the community feedback loop is a crucial part of the value of OSS for building a business.
Also, I get there's nuance and you can choose to engage when there's been a certain level of commitment from the community (a number of upvotes is what my current company uses to help prioritize efforts), but for a solo founder it can be really hard to prioritize, and the author apparently found all the requests a distraction. His choice, but I sympathize.
You're conflating open source software, which is any software published under an OSS license, with an open development model. (Not to mention the assumption that "open source" automatically means publishing to GitHub—it doesn't.)
Apple, for example, publishes a ton of stuff over at opensource.apple.com. But the majority of it is stuff thrown over the wall, and not attached to a community that has to be actively managed.
The insistence on confusing these things for other people is perhaps one of the biggest threats to open source.
Apple, for example, publishes a ton of stuff over at opensource.apple.com. But the majority of it is stuff thrown over the wall, and not attached to a community that has to be actively managed.
The insistence on confusing these things for other people is perhaps one of the biggest threats to open source.
Fair. Would you say that the author of the post was speaking about the issues with an open development model?
That's a great distinction as there are companies out there doing open development who may have a closed source product.
That's a great distinction as there are companies out there doing open development who may have a closed source product.
Yes; but you have to remember that git forges like GitHub and Gitlab push you towards that the open development model with their defaults.
There's certainly value in engaging with the community through the open sourced code. In the end its all a balancing act and getting it right is the hard part. I'm not trying to claim to know how much effort should be going in each aspect. If I did, I'd be running a successful business right about now.
>So if you aren't going to engage, why open source it?
I'd argue engagement is only a medium part of open source: plenty of projects publish code and never accept requests/issues, and are very popular. It is always nice to open source even if you don't accept PR's/review issues, because it gives me more trust.
I'd argue engagement is only a medium part of open source: plenty of projects publish code and never accept requests/issues, and are very popular. It is always nice to open source even if you don't accept PR's/review issues, because it gives me more trust.
So the main benefit of OSS you see is promoting trust in the company building the open source software?
I'm sure there are plenty of blog posts out there, but I can see the following benefits:
I'm sure there are plenty of blog posts out there, but I can see the following benefits:
* marketing halo ("we do open source")
* community feedback, both bugs and features
* community contributions
* trust in the company
* trust in continuity of the product (even if the company fails, I can continue to run this product)
* cost
> Sure, I get it, everyone needs to prioritize. But if you are ignoring interactions on your OSS project, you can expect more, oh, I'll call it 'heat'. I have seen those github issue threads, where people get frustrated because someone hasn't engaged.
Companies selling non-OSS products get slammed with requests on a large scale and they have to deal with them somehow. Todoist immediately comes to mind. I mean, sure, it's possible that some users of a paid product will conclude you don't know what you're doing and take their business elsewhere, but that's kind of like boasting about fixing your broken finger by cutting off your arm.
Companies selling non-OSS products get slammed with requests on a large scale and they have to deal with them somehow. Todoist immediately comes to mind. I mean, sure, it's possible that some users of a paid product will conclude you don't know what you're doing and take their business elsewhere, but that's kind of like boasting about fixing your broken finger by cutting off your arm.
I think the key thing is whether the people making the feature requests are paying you. We get feature requests all the time, but they are the people paying us thousands of dollars, so those take priority. If they aren't, or it doesn't appear that anyone else paying us will use it, then they shouldn't take priority. This is a way of whittling down what is really valuable to people, rather than just they took long enough to write an email about a cool thing they really think you should do.
> If engaging with interactions is taking too much time away, one could simply, not engage with them.
This choice isn't always as simple as it sounds. There is, strange as it is, a real reputational risk to be known as a disengaged open source maintainer.
It's a real PR risk to have a demanding open source user who personally emails you then takes to Twitter to denounce the project if you don't engage. It's also definitely a risk for a paid, proprietary project too, but for some reason it doesn't seem to happen as often.
This choice isn't always as simple as it sounds. There is, strange as it is, a real reputational risk to be known as a disengaged open source maintainer.
It's a real PR risk to have a demanding open source user who personally emails you then takes to Twitter to denounce the project if you don't engage. It's also definitely a risk for a paid, proprietary project too, but for some reason it doesn't seem to happen as often.
>> If engaging with interactions is taking too much time away, one could simply, not engage with them.
>This choice isn't always as simple as it sounds. There is, strange as it is, a real reputational risk to be known as a disengaged open source maintainer.
IMO there is middle ground. One can engage with a canned response stating support for non paying customers is provided on a "Best effort" basis and current high commercial demand doesn't allow the maintainer to offer as much time as she/he would like to for free...
Reasonable people will understand, perhaps some of them will even convert to paying customers. Bad PR from unreasonable people will happen regardless.
>This choice isn't always as simple as it sounds. There is, strange as it is, a real reputational risk to be known as a disengaged open source maintainer.
IMO there is middle ground. One can engage with a canned response stating support for non paying customers is provided on a "Best effort" basis and current high commercial demand doesn't allow the maintainer to offer as much time as she/he would like to for free...
Reasonable people will understand, perhaps some of them will even convert to paying customers. Bad PR from unreasonable people will happen regardless.
I agree, I just phrased it as a black and white thing as a way of trying to make the point I was making more clear. There's nuance in all things.
Sure, but then I think mooreds comment is a convincing rebuttal of
> Sounds like he was too focused in one area of his project, and needed to take a step back to get a broader view of the state of things. I'm not convinced the closed/open source nature of his code is responsible for that.
It's not that the author was overly focused on one thing. It was just that he didn't want to pay the cost.
> Sounds like he was too focused in one area of his project, and needed to take a step back to get a broader view of the state of things. I'm not convinced the closed/open source nature of his code is responsible for that.
It's not that the author was overly focused on one thing. It was just that he didn't want to pay the cost.
That's fair, I was making some assumptions when making that statement. Maybe a better point to make would be that he was overly prioritizing one aspect over others.
> overly
Again I think this is an unfair characterization of the author's point.
All that being said, I think your original point, that you can have open source without engagement and minimal PR risk, is doable on reflection, you just need to break away from the usual open source mould. So e.g. that means not using GitHub, GitLab, Sourcehut, etc. to host your code. Instead just provide a contact method that customers can use to request code on demand such as an email address or mailing address.
Minimize any other contact surface area and enforce trademark heavily so that any users re-uploading the code to other sites must change the name.
Basically make sure to hide the official open source channel away from non-paying users.
At that point it's another interesting question whether it's still worth it to the author to go open source (since you're giving up most of the stated commercial benefits of open source, especially those surrounding reputation), but it's a way of minimizing the reputational risk of non-engagement.
And of course sometimes you may judge the reputational risk to be acceptable.
Again I think this is an unfair characterization of the author's point.
All that being said, I think your original point, that you can have open source without engagement and minimal PR risk, is doable on reflection, you just need to break away from the usual open source mould. So e.g. that means not using GitHub, GitLab, Sourcehut, etc. to host your code. Instead just provide a contact method that customers can use to request code on demand such as an email address or mailing address.
Minimize any other contact surface area and enforce trademark heavily so that any users re-uploading the code to other sites must change the name.
Basically make sure to hide the official open source channel away from non-paying users.
At that point it's another interesting question whether it's still worth it to the author to go open source (since you're giving up most of the stated commercial benefits of open source, especially those surrounding reputation), but it's a way of minimizing the reputational risk of non-engagement.
And of course sometimes you may judge the reputational risk to be acceptable.
Well, in the author's own words...
> I was too focused on developing every feature, trying to give support to every single ticket, and I completely ignored the marketing aspects of it as I had no time for it.
Saying the author was overly prioritizing responding to the communications that open sourcing the code allowed to come through shouldn't be controversial. He himself is admitting to it.
My main point is that the author hasn't convinced me that blame should be placed on open sourcing the code. To me that's akin to blaming the messenger. He should instead be looking to why he felt obligated to spend the time supporting "every single ticket", when he himself knew that he was neglecting other aspects of the business side of things.
> I was too focused on developing every feature, trying to give support to every single ticket, and I completely ignored the marketing aspects of it as I had no time for it.
Saying the author was overly prioritizing responding to the communications that open sourcing the code allowed to come through shouldn't be controversial. He himself is admitting to it.
My main point is that the author hasn't convinced me that blame should be placed on open sourcing the code. To me that's akin to blaming the messenger. He should instead be looking to why he felt obligated to spend the time supporting "every single ticket", when he himself knew that he was neglecting other aspects of the business side of things.
I don't think the author is using "too focused" in the way you're saying that "he was overly prioritizing one aspect over others."
Your contention as I understand it is that this was effectively the author's choice and that he conflating two concerns. There is the choice of whether to open source code and whether to support the code. Nobody was holding a gun to his head and forcing him to support code. Hence his misprioritization is of his own doing.
The author's implied contention is that the two concerns are not independent. That while it may not have been a gun to his head, there are a variety of factors that link the two together.
I'm expanding on that contention and saying that there is valid reason, if you have code on GitHub, to feel a need to support it. It's a trade-off. You can decide the risk is small enough to ignore which is fine, but it's still there.
Your contention as I understand it is that this was effectively the author's choice and that he conflating two concerns. There is the choice of whether to open source code and whether to support the code. Nobody was holding a gun to his head and forcing him to support code. Hence his misprioritization is of his own doing.
The author's implied contention is that the two concerns are not independent. That while it may not have been a gun to his head, there are a variety of factors that link the two together.
I'm expanding on that contention and saying that there is valid reason, if you have code on GitHub, to feel a need to support it. It's a trade-off. You can decide the risk is small enough to ignore which is fine, but it's still there.
This makes sense for feature requests, but not always for other types of support.
When a user opens an issue, sometimes it can be very time-consuming just to determine whether the user is encountering a legitimate edge-case bug, vs the user doing something wrong and not reporting it accurately. This type of issue can't be ignored entirely, because if it's a legit bug, then it's present in the paid SaaS product as well.
Also consider that many GitHub accounts don't mention real names or company affiliations. It can be hard to tell whether an issue submitter is some rando or a loyal paying customer. Even if you have a separate bug tracker or support system for paying customers, some of them will submit issues to the open source project by mistake.
When a user opens an issue, sometimes it can be very time-consuming just to determine whether the user is encountering a legitimate edge-case bug, vs the user doing something wrong and not reporting it accurately. This type of issue can't be ignored entirely, because if it's a legit bug, then it's present in the paid SaaS product as well.
Also consider that many GitHub accounts don't mention real names or company affiliations. It can be hard to tell whether an issue submitter is some rando or a loyal paying customer. Even if you have a separate bug tracker or support system for paying customers, some of them will submit issues to the open source project by mistake.
Given the response times to bugs by paid teams compelled on threat of terminated employment to implement fixes for things...an open source maintainer absolutely could ignore even critical bugs.
I've seen many maintainers whinging about the demands of communities on their time. But it's all 'choose-your-level-of-involvement'. Those people clamoring for attention may be annoyed and frustrated with you, but that doesn't answer the question as to why that's a problem unless you choose for it to be.
I've seen many maintainers whinging about the demands of communities on their time. But it's all 'choose-your-level-of-involvement'. Those people clamoring for attention may be annoyed and frustrated with you, but that doesn't answer the question as to why that's a problem unless you choose for it to be.
> an open source maintainer absolutely could ignore even critical bugs
If the maintainer is a solopreneur, whose source of income is a paid SaaS version of the open source project, then no they typically cannot ignore critical bugs.
> Those people clamoring for attention may be annoyed and frustrated with you, but that doesn't answer the question as to why that's a problem unless you choose for it to be.
Out of curiosity have you ever maintained a decently popular single-primary-maintainer open source project? How about one with a SaaS or commercial version?
Frequent frustrating interactions with users isn't exactly beneficial to one's sense of motivation, at least in my experience (which mirrors the original article quite closely).
If the maintainer is a solopreneur, whose source of income is a paid SaaS version of the open source project, then no they typically cannot ignore critical bugs.
> Those people clamoring for attention may be annoyed and frustrated with you, but that doesn't answer the question as to why that's a problem unless you choose for it to be.
Out of curiosity have you ever maintained a decently popular single-primary-maintainer open source project? How about one with a SaaS or commercial version?
Frequent frustrating interactions with users isn't exactly beneficial to one's sense of motivation, at least in my experience (which mirrors the original article quite closely).
Commercial products ignore critical bugs all the time. A bug being an impact to income is a relative thing for everyone, corporations to sole proprietors. As is response to your customers/community. Not everyone needs or at all provides stellar customer service.
Maintainers may have a degree of involvement necessitated by their business needs. However, the loudest people screaming for support are very rarely even the same niche as those funding a project. So ignore the whining; listen to the constructive bits if they're there. Delete messages en masse and move on with your life.
Maintainers may have a degree of involvement necessitated by their business needs. However, the loudest people screaming for support are very rarely even the same niche as those funding a project. So ignore the whining; listen to the constructive bits if they're there. Delete messages en masse and move on with your life.
In my field (database automation) I do not ignore bug reports, ever. Critical bugs can mean data loss and severe reputational harm.
YMMV. We can agree to disagree.
YMMV. We can agree to disagree.
Because in your specific niche of software you can't imagine letting a bug report hang for a day...you're incapable of understanding that that is not the case for 99% of software? You're unaware of bug tickets wallowing in backlogs for days to years?
I have said nothing about what I can or cannot imagine or understand. I specifically said YMMV to indicate that I acknowledge experiences will differ across fields.
I find your tone to be uncivil and I do not wish to continue this discussion with you.
I find your tone to be uncivil and I do not wish to continue this discussion with you.
While it's technically not open-sourcing code itself it's human nature in my opinion. As a founder you want to support and don't upset your customers, even if they are using the free version of your product.
Yes, you could simply not fulfill these requests or not help these customers, but I think for most people it will still introduce stress. There may be people who can deal easily with this, but I think it's natural to be stressed by this and run after things that you shouldn't.
Still I agree that it's probably possible to open-source without these problems and that this is not a complete compelling argument for every case. For me personally at least not open-sourcing at the beginning (like the author did) would probably be preferred as well for a solo-founded project.
Still I agree that it's probably possible to open-source without these problems and that this is not a complete compelling argument for every case. For me personally at least not open-sourcing at the beginning (like the author did) would probably be preferred as well for a solo-founded project.
> I think for most people it will still introduce stress [... ] run after things that you shouldn't.
I think so too. There's personality trait that I wonder if it is related to this: Agreeable vs Assertive, in the Big 5 personality traits,
(Actually I wrote a sibling reply (sibling to yours) and mentioned this, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26433328 hmm maybe it'd been better if I had replied to you instead :- ) didn't see your reply until now though.)
I think so too. There's personality trait that I wonder if it is related to this: Agreeable vs Assertive, in the Big 5 personality traits,
(Actually I wrote a sibling reply (sibling to yours) and mentioned this, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26433328 hmm maybe it'd been better if I had replied to you instead :- ) didn't see your reply until now though.)
My experience is strongly aligned with the author's. There is a substantial real-world overhead associated with open sourcing code, all other things being equal. This overhead is imposed on you whether you want it or not. If you are operating in a resource constrained environment, like the author, then not open sourcing is a sensible cost containment measure. Open sourcing code is a luxury for those with ample time or money.
I have code I could open source (e.g. some very useful Postgres extensions created for a company) but I value my time more, and I know many others that view the calculus similarly. There is value in open sourcing code but we should be honest about the associated costs and not pretend they don't exist.
I have code I could open source (e.g. some very useful Postgres extensions created for a company) but I value my time more, and I know many others that view the calculus similarly. There is value in open sourcing code but we should be honest about the associated costs and not pretend they don't exist.
I'd tend to agree for a small package. But, this was a company with a community (according to author). Pointing requests to the paid support page would turn lemons into lemonade. We can only speculate why this didn't happen.
Shat kind of overhead do you mean, exactly? You could just push it to a public repo on GH/GL/whatever, and then choose your own level of involvement? You don’t have to engage or even provide a means of contact.
Exactly, I think people misunderstand what open source means.
Open source doesn't mean that you need to provide hours of free support to someone who couldn't even bother to write a proper issue description. For a matter of fact, you don't even need to provide free support to anyone, no matter how nice they are and no matter how well they written the issue You can help them, but you don't have to.
You also don't need to accept pull requests: if you think that the feature doesn't make sense or the code quality is terrible, or it's just not important to you, you don't need to accept pull requests.
You also don't need to bend over backwards to maintain a stabile API.
It makes your life easier if you communicate this in the README of the package, tell people that it's the early days of the product, you develop in the open, but you aren't going to abide by other people's unrealistic expectations about your open source work.
Open source doesn't mean that you need to provide hours of free support to someone who couldn't even bother to write a proper issue description. For a matter of fact, you don't even need to provide free support to anyone, no matter how nice they are and no matter how well they written the issue You can help them, but you don't have to.
You also don't need to accept pull requests: if you think that the feature doesn't make sense or the code quality is terrible, or it's just not important to you, you don't need to accept pull requests.
You also don't need to bend over backwards to maintain a stabile API.
It makes your life easier if you communicate this in the README of the package, tell people that it's the early days of the product, you develop in the open, but you aren't going to abide by other people's unrealistic expectations about your open source work.
I find just throwing code into github is my perfect level of open sourcing. It's public and I can pull the code into any project.
No pesky user requests or stars.
Accepting pull requests on smaller projects seems strange. If I wrote this why do I want someone else sharing credit.
No pesky user requests or stars.
Accepting pull requests on smaller projects seems strange. If I wrote this why do I want someone else sharing credit.
>Exactly, I think people misunderstand what open source means.
"Misunderstand" implies there's some authoritative definition on "open source" means here. I remember people considering Dasura "not open source" even though it was GPLv2, simply because they didn't accept patches and only threw code over the wall.
To a lot of people, open source means engaging on Github. You can say "they're wrong", but that's just disagreement.
"Misunderstand" implies there's some authoritative definition on "open source" means here. I remember people considering Dasura "not open source" even though it was GPLv2, simply because they didn't accept patches and only threw code over the wall.
To a lot of people, open source means engaging on Github. You can say "they're wrong", but that's just disagreement.
> I'm not convinced the closed/open source nature of his code is responsible for that
Could that depend on the personality traits of the solo founder? What if it's in some people's nature, to feel bad about rejecting make-sense feature request and bug fixes, in order to instead focus on money making things? (Even if logically it'd be the long term good thing to do.) Whilst someone else might have felt just fine, doing that?
If you know about the Big 5 personality traits, maybe this is related to where you are, in the Agreeable vs Assertive dimension.
For someone who is more Agreeable, then, keeping the SaaS closed source, might be the way to go — so there simply won't be any unsupported platform installation problems to ignore but feel bad about.
Could that depend on the personality traits of the solo founder? What if it's in some people's nature, to feel bad about rejecting make-sense feature request and bug fixes, in order to instead focus on money making things? (Even if logically it'd be the long term good thing to do.) Whilst someone else might have felt just fine, doing that?
If you know about the Big 5 personality traits, maybe this is related to where you are, in the Agreeable vs Assertive dimension.
For someone who is more Agreeable, then, keeping the SaaS closed source, might be the way to go — so there simply won't be any unsupported platform installation problems to ignore but feel bad about.
> nothing makes people disappear faster from a GitHub thread than asking them if they want to contribute the code changes themselves.
Sad, but true. Everyone wants good software but very few users are willing to contribute anything. Even if it's just to test an unreleased version.
I think open source projects need to think more about their "funnel" that turns users into contributors. Even if it's just for minor tasks, like docs, translation or testing.
Sad, but true. Everyone wants good software but very few users are willing to contribute anything. Even if it's just to test an unreleased version.
I think open source projects need to think more about their "funnel" that turns users into contributors. Even if it's just for minor tasks, like docs, translation or testing.
I have to ask, why did you create a website analytics company?
It seems extremely commoditized at this point with multiple competitors who have strong positioning (I.e. privacy focused, open source, etc).
It seems extremely commoditized at this point with multiple competitors who have strong positioning (I.e. privacy focused, open source, etc).
I used to swear by Open Source try to build an uptime monitoring but failed https://github.com/yeo/notyim and a few other thing.
Eventually one day I want to do email forwarding, I was thinking open source or not and pretty much chooese to go with close-source for now.
I can see myself open source in the future when I get enough customers and I have more time to cleanup the private stuff in our mono repository right now.
But for an early self-bootstrap self-funded I feel like focus too much on Open Source and I don't have time to focus on the growth or marketing.
I finally release my first SaaS this year, make $78/month right now(don't laugh at me). https://hanami.run
I would say I'm not against opensource and it definetely work for others, but for me, by not going open source I can focus on the business itself. With that being, I contributed back such as a mail parser https://github.com/yeo/parsemail https://github.com/yeo/pix
I can imagine myself release a lite-version(our early prototype) where we can forward email using a config file, instead of a database with all the user, membership stuff that no one care about if you want to self-hosted my SaaS.
Eventually one day I want to do email forwarding, I was thinking open source or not and pretty much chooese to go with close-source for now.
I can see myself open source in the future when I get enough customers and I have more time to cleanup the private stuff in our mono repository right now.
But for an early self-bootstrap self-funded I feel like focus too much on Open Source and I don't have time to focus on the growth or marketing.
I finally release my first SaaS this year, make $78/month right now(don't laugh at me). https://hanami.run
I would say I'm not against opensource and it definetely work for others, but for me, by not going open source I can focus on the business itself. With that being, I contributed back such as a mail parser https://github.com/yeo/parsemail https://github.com/yeo/pix
I can imagine myself release a lite-version(our early prototype) where we can forward email using a config file, instead of a database with all the user, membership stuff that no one care about if you want to self-hosted my SaaS.
This is semi off topic, but the sentence "housing in Munich has gone insane" struck me. Housing in my city in Greece has gone crazy too, a two-bedroom apartment costs significantly more than minimum wage, and I don't know who can afford to stay there.
Does anyone why housing everywhere seems to be going nuts? This can't be a good sign.
Does anyone why housing everywhere seems to be going nuts? This can't be a good sign.
There has been a growing trend in the last ~10 years for large international REITs (Real Estate Income Trusts - basically corporations purpose-built to own rental housing) to buy up housing in cities where they see an opportunity for arbitrage.
These are billion-dollar companies that can buy dozens of buildings at a time.
So while before the rental housing busioness was much more decentralized and more locally owned (with exceptions obviously), now we're seeing big organized international corporate operations coming in and buying up stock and optimizing operations to maximize profits to the maximum extent of local laws, and running things arm's length and without any real thought to the fact that these are people's homes, and probably shouldn't be treated with "maximum efficiency".
Popular tactics such as "renovictions" are used to get rid of rent-protected legacy tenants, and a (literal) fresh coat of paint is applied to old buildings to then rent at "market rates" which just means the maximum the market can bear.
These are billion-dollar companies that can buy dozens of buildings at a time.
So while before the rental housing busioness was much more decentralized and more locally owned (with exceptions obviously), now we're seeing big organized international corporate operations coming in and buying up stock and optimizing operations to maximize profits to the maximum extent of local laws, and running things arm's length and without any real thought to the fact that these are people's homes, and probably shouldn't be treated with "maximum efficiency".
Popular tactics such as "renovictions" are used to get rid of rent-protected legacy tenants, and a (literal) fresh coat of paint is applied to old buildings to then rent at "market rates" which just means the maximum the market can bear.
House prices in Europe are generally incredibly overrated (especially if you compare value/rent ratio with property in the USAs), I think it's partially explained by some cultural reasons, by the economic crisis of 2008 (for a long time buying a house has consistently been a great move) and lack of real estate housing (which is half lack of space, half government manipulating the market through various initiatives and regulations).
More recently, pent-up demands after a covid induced slow down, temporary government incentives, increased risk of currency devaluation, markets, gold (heck, even cryptocurrencies) at all time highs.
Once the economic damage of the pandemic is factored in, small businesses die and the middle class start being taxed even more, I'd expect the market to react negatively as people with money flee.
Probably at some point after lockdowns are over (if they will be over at some point) and governments start taxing real estate purchases again (some countries reduced taxation to push the housing market up).
More recently, pent-up demands after a covid induced slow down, temporary government incentives, increased risk of currency devaluation, markets, gold (heck, even cryptocurrencies) at all time highs.
Once the economic damage of the pandemic is factored in, small businesses die and the middle class start being taxed even more, I'd expect the market to react negatively as people with money flee.
Probably at some point after lockdowns are over (if they will be over at some point) and governments start taxing real estate purchases again (some countries reduced taxation to push the housing market up).
> Does anyone why housing everywhere seems to be going nuts? This can't be a good sign.
It will depend on the location, but usually a mix of more people in the big cities, inflation, low interest rates ( so low mortgage rates), physical constraints ( most cities can't sprawl forever), sometimes regulations ( like zoning).
It's mostly in big cities though, go to a small one without any obvious geographic advantage ( like being on the seaside), and prices are usually much lower and stagnating.
Also depending on location, IMHO the pandemic has shown to a lot of people that remote work is possible and can be productive, so there will be some moves towards smaller cities and villages + remote working for big city businesses.
It will depend on the location, but usually a mix of more people in the big cities, inflation, low interest rates ( so low mortgage rates), physical constraints ( most cities can't sprawl forever), sometimes regulations ( like zoning).
It's mostly in big cities though, go to a small one without any obvious geographic advantage ( like being on the seaside), and prices are usually much lower and stagnating.
Also depending on location, IMHO the pandemic has shown to a lot of people that remote work is possible and can be productive, so there will be some moves towards smaller cities and villages + remote working for big city businesses.
That makes sense, thanks. I expected prices in the big city to drop too in the pandemic (at least because of a drop in tourism), but, if anything, they've gone up...
Probably many reasons but my understanding is economies globally becoming more mature/competitive -> loans are issued at lower interest bc things are more stable and also businesses require more capital to reach profitability -> near-zero interest increases purchasing power + more money flow into assets bc saving cash is now viewed as bad -> housing, shitcoins andstonks are going up and to the right
This is how it happens in California, do many of these happen in Europe?
- Populations are growing.
- Younger folks would rather live in the city.
- Sets of homeowners and voters heavily overlap.
- Government supports homeowners via tax policy, all housing is already taken.
- Existing homeowners prevent new construction.
- Some portion of renters enjoying rent control also support NIMBY policies.
A perfect recipe for housing scarcity and therefore high prices.
- Populations are growing.
- Younger folks would rather live in the city.
- Sets of homeowners and voters heavily overlap.
- Government supports homeowners via tax policy, all housing is already taken.
- Existing homeowners prevent new construction.
- Some portion of renters enjoying rent control also support NIMBY policies.
A perfect recipe for housing scarcity and therefore high prices.
If anything, populations here are declining, the set of voters is basically "everyone", or near enough, owning a home isn't particularly supported? Though not discouraged either, there is quite a bit of new construction, but on the outskirts of the city (as happens usually), and there are no rent-control policies.
This is why I'm mystified as to what's driving prices up, I've heard things like increasing tourism making owning a home a good investment, foreigners buying homes to get citizenship (a "golden passport"), and foreigners trying to spend their unlaundered fortunes abroad.
This is why I'm mystified as to what's driving prices up, I've heard things like increasing tourism making owning a home a good investment, foreigners buying homes to get citizenship (a "golden passport"), and foreigners trying to spend their unlaundered fortunes abroad.
Yes, that’s one I forgot, domestic and foreign money laundering.
From what I can see businesses either need OSS to attract / retain developers and put someone to maintain their OSS projects or they just equate OSS with abandonware that has a chance to make us look cool.
Don't get me wrong, having companies do OSS is much better than having unpaid developers ruining their sleep and coding 4 more hours after their daily shift.
Still, I don't think it's a great reason to not do OSS. I can name soo many projects open sourced by companies where nobody bothered to merge my PRs or answer issues.
The reason I wouldn't open source my business is for a later stage, when I actually have a profitable business and AWS/other giants will clone it and sell it instead of me.
Don't get me wrong, having companies do OSS is much better than having unpaid developers ruining their sleep and coding 4 more hours after their daily shift.
Still, I don't think it's a great reason to not do OSS. I can name soo many projects open sourced by companies where nobody bothered to merge my PRs or answer issues.
The reason I wouldn't open source my business is for a later stage, when I actually have a profitable business and AWS/other giants will clone it and sell it instead of me.
Why not use some sort of fauxopen license?
Let anyone read the code and run it but only for testing and hobby purposes.
This would be like offering a trial version with the advantage that people can easily offer tiny fixes and letting people make changes for their particular use cases.
Let anyone read the code and run it but only for testing and hobby purposes.
This would be like offering a trial version with the advantage that people can easily offer tiny fixes and letting people make changes for their particular use cases.
Check out the Business Source License: https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting/,
and maybe: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/oss-relicensing-cockroach... "Why We're Relicensing CockroachDB [under the Business Source License]"
Also, the Fair Source license: https://fair.io
and maybe: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/oss-relicensing-cockroach... "Why We're Relicensing CockroachDB [under the Business Source License]"
Also, the Fair Source license: https://fair.io
Good stuff! A software business is a business first. But for engineers, it's easy to think software is the most important part.
A few months ago, I've started a similar analytics project [0], which I have now turned into a product [1] together with my co-founder. The difference to Panelbear is, that I've started this to be used on my personal website, so it was open-source right from the beginning and without the intention to make money. In fact, you can still use our core library for free (AGPL licensed).
When we looked at the other solutions out there, we saw that a lot of them offer a self-hosted version for free. Giving away whole products for free has become a trend I don't anticipate. You can be sure there is an open-source, free as in free beer replacement for almost anything, which makes it really hard to build a sustainable business. While you can generate some traction off of it, you also have to deal with people asking for free support, new features, bug fixes, and so on. I have quite a lot of open-source projects, one of them is a game server management web UI [2]. It breaks my heard every time I have to tell someone that I can't support their request. There are cases where it makes sense to have the product fully open-source of course, like an operating system, or anything that can be considered "infrastructure".
Writing software is difficult and it takes countless hours to build something useful that is non-trivial. If it's something a lot of people rely on, think about charging for it, instead of giving it away for free. But in the end it's your time after all.
[0] https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch
[1] https://pirsch.io/
[2] https://github.com/assetto-corsa-web/accweb
When we looked at the other solutions out there, we saw that a lot of them offer a self-hosted version for free. Giving away whole products for free has become a trend I don't anticipate. You can be sure there is an open-source, free as in free beer replacement for almost anything, which makes it really hard to build a sustainable business. While you can generate some traction off of it, you also have to deal with people asking for free support, new features, bug fixes, and so on. I have quite a lot of open-source projects, one of them is a game server management web UI [2]. It breaks my heard every time I have to tell someone that I can't support their request. There are cases where it makes sense to have the product fully open-source of course, like an operating system, or anything that can be considered "infrastructure".
Writing software is difficult and it takes countless hours to build something useful that is non-trivial. If it's something a lot of people rely on, think about charging for it, instead of giving it away for free. But in the end it's your time after all.
[0] https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch
[1] https://pirsch.io/
[2] https://github.com/assetto-corsa-web/accweb
Free offerings are a great way to stifle competition.
When it's coming from OSS developers who are not making money themselves, it's indeed head scratching.
When it's coming from OSS developers who are not making money themselves, it's indeed head scratching.
How about: business logic is and remains private, but support libraries, boilerplate, etc is offered as discrete OSS repositories.
This isn't too fancy - quite commonly corps and startups alike offer some generic libraries. One can take that pattern to greater degrees.
This allows to scratch the itch of sharing something with the community, while still guaranteeing a livelihood.
Of course, it's mostly an incompatible approach for those favoring a strict monorepo- and microservice-based architecture.
This isn't too fancy - quite commonly corps and startups alike offer some generic libraries. One can take that pattern to greater degrees.
This allows to scratch the itch of sharing something with the community, while still guaranteeing a livelihood.
Of course, it's mostly an incompatible approach for those favoring a strict monorepo- and microservice-based architecture.
I have a similar plan with my current project [0] of interactive coding docs. The library to build the docs would be OSS. So anyone could build it and use it in their projects, But the business of hosting courses, payment, an advanced UI for building the docs would all be a SaaS. I think it's a nice balance that gives you the best of both worlds.
[0] https://devbyexample.com
[0] https://devbyexample.com
We do this with a lot of our stuff at my current employer. It's a good compromise in my experience.
Agreed. If it's something that has no business value in itself and can be adopted by others (which might contribute in return), open-source it. There are also half-open/open-core models, see my comment below.
git submodules, despite their warts, do help incorporate a bunch of distinct code bases into a monorepo.
Very good read, Thanks!
I came to a similar junction with my app. It's B2C SaaS, and I bluntly want to earn money for all the years I put into it. I chose to add a free tier and self hosting as a compromise.
In the future, I would love to open source it. But for now, all I see in other B2C/consumer OSS projects is a lot of complaining, frustration, and extra work without a benefit to my paying customers.
In the future, I would love to open source it. But for now, all I see in other B2C/consumer OSS projects is a lot of complaining, frustration, and extra work without a benefit to my paying customers.
I built an open-source B2B SaaS that recently raised its Series A. While I'm not a solo founder, we were a team of 3 up until we raised our seed.
The difference I see is traduora looks like a project, not a company. Sell support! Don't give it away for free. If someone asks me for a bugfix, I show them the ticket in our open backlog & tell them if they want it done faster, they have to pay. Seeing their concern turned in to a ticket shows them that I care, but telling them I prioritize paid fixes tells them it's not a charity. Don't let them feel entitled.
The difference I see is traduora looks like a project, not a company. Sell support! Don't give it away for free. If someone asks me for a bugfix, I show them the ticket in our open backlog & tell them if they want it done faster, they have to pay. Seeing their concern turned in to a ticket shows them that I care, but telling them I prioritize paid fixes tells them it's not a charity. Don't let them feel entitled.
If they opt to not pay do you leave the bug in your system forever?
I've always been a little annoyed at this model, because with so many companies it comes down to "I paid you $120,000/year for this support contract and you're telling me you've been able to track down this bug I reported, but you're not going to fix it because it's not on the project your developers are currently working on." And then they get really miffed if you drop the support contract next year, telling us how we'll be locked out of security and feature updates, even though there were zero releases in the past calendar year. If I'm playing for the equivalent of a full time junior developer I expect at least some action on my bug reports.
I've always been a little annoyed at this model, because with so many companies it comes down to "I paid you $120,000/year for this support contract and you're telling me you've been able to track down this bug I reported, but you're not going to fix it because it's not on the project your developers are currently working on." And then they get really miffed if you drop the support contract next year, telling us how we'll be locked out of security and feature updates, even though there were zero releases in the past calendar year. If I'm playing for the equivalent of a full time junior developer I expect at least some action on my bug reports.
If they opt not to pay then the bug gets fixed according to severity and priority in the regular development cycles. It's possible it will never get fixed. I see your point with paid support contracts that don't give you anything, and you would be justified to cut your losses, but I think this was more specific to individual bugs that a company wants to up the priority for.
> I paid you $120,000/year for this support contract...
> If I'm playing [sic] for the equivalent of a full time junior developer ...
Equating $120,000/year with a junior developer salary is exactly the kind of tone deaf I see too much of on here[0], but in this instance it plays in favour of your argument.
Depending on exactly where you are in the world - even within the US - $120k might be a much more senior salary, or several developers worth of salaries. It then becomes perhaps even more galling that you're seeing zero service for that outlay.
[0] Yes: I know junior devs in SV might get this but SV is not the world.
> If I'm playing [sic] for the equivalent of a full time junior developer ...
Equating $120,000/year with a junior developer salary is exactly the kind of tone deaf I see too much of on here[0], but in this instance it plays in favour of your argument.
Depending on exactly where you are in the world - even within the US - $120k might be a much more senior salary, or several developers worth of salaries. It then becomes perhaps even more galling that you're seeing zero service for that outlay.
[0] Yes: I know junior devs in SV might get this but SV is not the world.
By the time you add overheads to the cost of that developer it is much closer to a junior than a senior in most of the developed world.
If by "most of the world" you mean "some of the united states" then I would agree with you. HN gives folks a rose colored view of the tech job market.
In the US overhead can effectively double the salary. It includes taxes, retirement, healthcare (huge), dental, HR overhead, etc... It adds up.
$60k base salary is definitely junior developer territory.
$60k base salary is definitely junior developer territory.
Again, this isn't really true although of course there are significant overheads beyond salary. Here are some somewhat UK-centric examples: pension, employer NI, other benefits such as healthcare, office space, equipment, heating and lighting (by which I mean all business utility bills), licenses and subscriptions. Still, the total cost of a junior, even taking all of these into account, is nowhere near $120k anywhere I've worked.
They way I wish it worked, although I haven't seen it really successfully implemtented is that instead of paying for a support contract, you could pay for support in a more a la carte manner. Such as say, pledging money to a bug or feature, and the dev team prioritizes based on how much money is pledged for different features and bugs, perhaps with some expiration so customers don't end up paying for a bug that isn't fixed until years later when it no longer matters.
I think those economics don't stack up against a monthly subscription on an annual contract, unfortunately.
I think you're right. And that it'd take rather much time & inconvenience, for the customers, to in effect "micro manage" payments for individual features, and agree internally about if to spend money on this feature or that feature
At the same time, maybe for some rare & "really big" features, it could be worth the extra administrative work, to pay for that particular feature
At the same time, maybe for some rare & "really big" features, it could be worth the extra administrative work, to pay for that particular feature
The two don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Support subscriptions might still make more sense for enterprises. But an a la carte system allows individuals and small companies to influence prioritization and "vote with their wallets" without having to be able to afford a pricy enterprise support contract.
Support subscriptions could even include an annual/monthly/whatever number of credits to vote for issues, possibly at a discount compared to a la carte.
Support subscriptions could even include an annual/monthly/whatever number of credits to vote for issues, possibly at a discount compared to a la carte.
Sounds like crowdfunding of new features / bugs, repeatedly, in the same software project — instead of crowdfunding a new project just once?
I wonder if there's any SaaS that specializes in this. Like, Kickstarter but for new features, preferably on the company's own sub domain? So as not to distract people with unrelated projects, when they visit the "features crowdfunding" page. And the audience would come from the company's website (but not from the "Kickstarter for features" company's website).
Or I wonder if Gumroad would think this sounded interesting.
> with some expiration so customers don't end up paying for a bug that isn't fixed until years later
Good point
I wonder if there's any SaaS that specializes in this. Like, Kickstarter but for new features, preferably on the company's own sub domain? So as not to distract people with unrelated projects, when they visit the "features crowdfunding" page. And the audience would come from the company's website (but not from the "Kickstarter for features" company's website).
Or I wonder if Gumroad would think this sounded interesting.
> with some expiration so customers don't end up paying for a bug that isn't fixed until years later
Good point
I give you 1/5 because the app doesn't do what I want and you don't kiss my ass nice enough. You don't know how to treat your customers right, how childish of you to ask money to fix my particular problem!!
For some reason a lot of people believe that leaving a review with bad rating for a free and opensource app will motivate the developers fix the issue asap, in hope that the user will change the rating to 2/5.