Comment by Jupe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jupe | Hacker News Reader

I don't know... I just don't see how OSS will ever be a real, sustainable business. The moment it does, someone else will simply subvert the paid-for software with a look-alike that does 90% of what the original does, but for free. In my view, this is the birth story of OSS. And I don't see any real market there. Even if you manage to find a "niche", like some sustainable software-as-a-service with subscription, there's nothing stopping someone else from undercutting you... all the way to "completely free".

Moreover, isn't this what's happening to most software, everywhere? Cases-in-point:

Compilers - when's the last time you actually paid for a programming language? I know for me: SAS C in the mid 1990's

Databases - any new solution would likely use a free DB.. and why not?

Digital audio workstations - "free" ones seem to come out monthly

Graphic editors - 2D and 3D alike - the free varieties are getting better every year

Developer IDEs - From console editors to full GUIs to online offerings; all free

Even the business model of "hoping to make server software so good that everyone wants it" fails when hosting services just grab it, re-package with their own branding and profit.

Successful pure play open source businesses are rare. As in RedHat; most others I can think of were successful in the sense they had good exits.

On the other hand if you look at companies that build value-adds on top of open source, then the number is huge. It starts Facebook and includes a wide number of enterprise software companies like VMware, companies like Cloudflare, etc. They owe a lot of their success to open source and are major contributors in the aggregate.

It's therefore really limiting to assume that open source necessarily has to be maintained by for profit, enterprise software companies. Most successful companies build SaaS or other value adds over their open source projects that actually solve business problems. The reason: that's what enterprise customers want to buy. I've run two companies in the database space that take this approach. We're not very worried about competition from Amazon.

Databases aren't a great example. There's a rich landscape of non open-source databases that provide features not available in open-source DBs. Cockroach DB, Spanner, SingleStore, Vertica, Snowflake.

To be fair here, there’s still a thriving market of for-pay DAWs (digital audio workstations) out there: Reaper, Ableton, Cubase, Studio One, Logic, even Pro Tools. Indeed, most musicians I interact with use proprietary software to make music, and I am a proud customer of all of ValhallaDSP’s reverbs.

>Developer IDEs - From console editors to full GUIs to online offerings; all free

JetBrain's IDEs are considered as the "best ones" and they're indeed paid.

Visual Studio which is great for C# development is free too, but not for business.

Yep. Open Source developers who give away their work for $0 are undermining their own value and the value of other peoples skills. Open Source should always come with a commercial license for companies.

Hey @mbrodersen, this is really not appreciated here on HN. This pasting of what is essentially the same reply on every top-level comment is borderline spam.

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