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Comment by bravo22 | Hacker News Reader

Right, I agree. That is what I gathered before but the article and their new splash page makes it seem like they want to supply this to large device makers (i.e. anyone not building things out of their basement) and I don't see how this could work.

They can't make money on the hardware, because TI makes the chip and provides the reference design and drivers for free. Spark boards are all OSHW anyways. You'd spend the extra week and integrate the TI part into your device anyways.

Their cloud stack is open source, and is basically a transport. As the device maker you'd still have to write the cloud app that gathers data from different points and sends commands to the end unit.

Beyond the dev kits I'm having a hard time seeing the revenue stream and/or value proposition.

What am I missing? Maybe guys from Spark want to chime in?

If I use Spark to prototype, is there a product they are offering me that I would need to pay for at scale?

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Hi bravo22,

  I'm from Spark, and I can try to answer! :)

With more than 20,000 units in the field, the Spark community is the largest consumer of the CC3000 module, so you get the benefits of driver testing and patches, and great community support. Large businesses could certainly use the open source modules and run with them, but if you're a large business you generally want to pay for support and licensing. Next for us is building a suite of fleet management tools and controls that larger companies want that also benefit hobbyists.

If you're a business or a maker, using the Spark Cloud saves you from having to worry about building your own protocol, dealing with socket programming, spinning up servers, as well as worrying about encryption on microcontrollers, or wearing a pager. Having the source code available means you can keep your private things private by not going over the internet, as well as building things we haven't thought of yet.

Thanks!

David

Thank David. Thanks so much for answering!

Couple of questions: - Are you always sticking w/ CC3000 or are there other WiFi modules you intend to support?

My main question, might have gone unnoticed in my long post... Is there a service of yours that I need to pay for to get these features, or do I get the benefits you outlined above by running your firmware and deploying your open source cloud code on my system?

Do you have plans to go closed source in the future?

Zach here, also from Spark. We're definitely working on next-gen hardware now, haven't selected a final chipset yet.

Our hosted cloud is somewhat different from the open source version, and the differences will grow over time. As an open source company, the question always comes to "how do we make money?" Our open source thesis is to give away basic technology and sell advanced technology. Right now the biggest differences between our hosted cloud and the open source version is scalability; our system is designed to scale horizontally whereas the open source one is a single instance (although it could, of course, be modified). We are still deciding which features that are still in development will be open sourced, and which won't. We've learned from other for-profit open source companies (like MongoDB, for instance), that even after being on the market for years they're still trying to figure out which features to give away and which to sell.

Thanks for answering Zach! Your answer certainly helps make it more clear.

To use your feature rich cloud, would one have to use your spark core board or one can roll own CC3000 based board + your open source firmware but pay you and have it talk to your closed cloud for scale? When is your plan to announce pricing for this feature rich cloud?

You've got it- you can build your own board using our reference design and pay us a minor fee to use our lovely cloud. Pricing isn't public yet, but we can discuss it privately if you have a need. Thanks!

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