Regarding the money thing, remember there are other currencies than dollars.
When I open sourced my own RSS reader[1] some of the "non-monetary currencies" I received:
* Several (non-robot) recruitment emails from well-known companies doing Ruby
* Additional development time from strangers to fix things I wasn't interested in
doing (i18n, performance improvements)
* Additional testing time to iron out all the bugs
* 50-100 "qualified followers" (i.e. other developers/designers) on Twitter, many
thanking me for creating the project - increasing my network reach
* Five people have sent me messages that their merged pull requests were there first
open source contributions - that feels really cool
* Links from two of my favorite blogs - OneThingWell and The Changelog
* Being referenced in a Ruby book written by a community leader
* Socially-validated (1.8k+ stars) open source project that I can forever point to
* Material for future blog posts, user group/conference talks
Not all of these have the same value to each person - but for me, they were worth the trade-off. Could I have charged for the software instead? Probably, but I have a day job that pays me well and I enjoy. I wrote the software because I wanted it to exist (one of my favorite things about being a developer) and any extra benefits are just icing on the cake.
I just took a look at stringer and having recently set up tiny tiny rss wish I knew about this at the time, as fever support was something I really wanted. I'll take a look into it when I get a moment, but your post inspired me to create a /r/repos subreddit to post open source repositories worth checking out.
If you really want to keep building Fred, you could use something like IgnitionDeck (http://ignitiondeck.com) to raise money over a longer duration.
We've had a lot of people come to us after successful and non-successful Kickstarters in order to keep the dream alive.
Edit: I get it, blatant self-promotion. Look through my history and you'll see I rarely mention my company, and when I do, it's appropriate. In this case, I'm trying to help.
I just realized something: I want a platform for gauging interest in a project. I don't really want money, I want people to commit to paying $10 for a year's subscription to my idea X (normally costing $200 a year), so I can say "if 100 people find this interesting enough to enter their credit card details, I'm going to go ahead and build it".
Is there currently something like that? A crowdfunding platform will work, I guess, but I want something with more visibility, because I'm bad at discovering and communicating with my target market.
I guess this is a rather hard problem, I might try one of Kickstarter, Indiegogo or a similar platform and see if I'm successful.
I downvoted you - it is not the self-promotion, but rather the fact that except for mentioning "Fred", this whole comment reads like an auto-generated message. For example, an ancedote about a similar open source project that failed on kickstarter and found success on IgnitionDeck would probably be better received.
I certainly can't speak for the whole crowd but I would approach it like this:
"Rachel - if you'd still like to pursue crowdfunding for open sourcing Fred, email me at nathan@ignitiondeck.com - we'd love to feature you in a new series we are doing called Kickstarter Redemptions"
Nathan's comment sounded like a genuine suggestion: the focus is on her to be able to utilize an alternative. With yours, the focus is on we'd "love to feature you." Sounds so much more self-serving, and also like impersonal marketing copy. Though, as with you, I cannot speak for the whole crowd.
I think a more relevant question is, "Do you have a realistic plan for how you're going to generate revenue from this software in the next year or two?" If the answer isn't, "yes", then your prospect of ever making money out of the software is probably just wishful thinking.
Even if the software represents a significant investment, it's frequently easier to create wealth than it is to capture the value of that wealth. One big realization of the open source movement was that even if you can't capture the value of your software by selling it under proprietary terms, you can still derive value from it via indirect reciprocity by releasing it under a FOSS license.
I don't think it is fred itself she wants to make money off of, but rather the C++ libraries she wrote that it uses, as well as an automatic build system. Other clients do pay for work based on those, hence the reluctance to give those away.
Open-source and profit aren't mutually exclusive, in this case he was unable to get enough of the latter to justify the effort of the former, perfectly reasonable.
You're both right, that's what the blog seems to be saying to me. Can't argue with either. I think this is also a not-so-hidden hint of 'if you wanted this open source, you should have paid more attention to that kickstarter!'
I can't really blame people for not backing that kickstarter either though. Why $30K for an OSS feed reader when there are so many open source ones [1] that could be easily retooled to most purposes? The market for this stuff is so incredibly over saturated as it is. Rather make something new and different if you're going to do a kickstarter.
There's a vague description of being an RSS reader that you have control over. There's all kinds of talk of the various technologies that Fred sits on top of, but very little talk about what Fred itself actually does. There's a single image on the Kickstarter page, which isn't the product itself, and looks like something whipped together in Paint in 5 minutes time. There's a link to a demo site, but, again, it's not entirely clear what's going on when you get there.
It's not that people are unwilling to pitch in or that $30k is necessarily even too much for that, but it has to be something people want and you have to give them a reason to want it. The lack of any kind of compelling pitch seems to be what killed the Kickstarter in this case.
That's the key, rule 1 for introducing a product is someone has probably already done it, so make sure you provide some value that your existing competition doesn't have. After playing with 'fred' for a few minutes, I don't see how I would care to use this over any of the alternatives.
At my company we've open sourced a ruby gem for an elastic search client but kept the rails integration closed for some of the same reasons. I just don't have time to write a version that runs with vanilla rails. Our gem relies on a bunch of conventions and libs that are not standard for a rails app. Sure we could extract it, but we would have to rewrite parts that depend on other tools. Sure they could be open sourced as well, but we've hardly got the time to do that. The reality is that most oss projects are small and are maintained by one person with occasional patches from others. Without that one person most die.
just want to point out: if the reason for holding it back is almost entirely because she wants to get paid for it, she should actually explain how open sourcing it excludes her from income. after reading it, it sounded like she was concerned about the sunk cost--which would be irrational.
so I'm curious, how is she earning income from it? it does she know she'll find people to licence it?
After reading the article, I got the impression that getting it ready for release would be a non-trivial amount of work, and it is that work she wants to be paid for, not the work done so far.
Sure, we can't, but if you open source it, you'll make strictly less money than if you hadn't (because if nobody was going to buy it, they aren't going to pay you money if you open source it anyway).
This is too simplified, as you can have other monetization models, but usually you don't open-source things if you want to charge for them.
> Sure, we can't, but if you open source it, you'll make strictly less money than if you hadn't (because if nobody was going to buy it, they aren't going to pay you money if you open source it anyway).
That isnt correct, a lot of people buy open source software specifically because it is open source.
Not entirely true. You can monetize around the open source software you built but this largely depends on what you built. In this case, she is expecting to raise 30k for a feed reader, when there are already open sourced readers with a similar functionality(?).
Sure, that's the "other monetization model" I mentioned. In general, though, if money is the only thing you went to get from something, open sourcing it isn't the best way to do it.
"I might make myself look a bit messy by releasing this. I also imagine that some other people might have to put in some amount of work (much less than the work I put into writing this in the first place) to get this to work, so I'll make them rewrite it all from scratch if they are in need of this functionality." I don't believe this person understands empathy.
I realize if you want your project to flourish as an open source project, you need to make it palatable. However, a tarball of shit is better than NOTHING. This person isn't even deluding themselves by saying they'll "get around to open sourcing it." You won't do the world a disservice by releasing working code. Seriously, just come out and be honest and say "I don't want to open source it because I don't wanna."
> However, a tarball of shit is better than NOTHING.
bzzzt! Wrong!
Releasing stuff that is "close enough" as a product and have it succeed is wasting other people's lives as they struggle to fix your ball of mud and make it work better over time.
Just in case anyone who is thinking about releasing open source softare reads this, it is entirely wrong.
Software (open or otherwise) is never done, its always too ugly, missing some features, slow and / or buggy.
If you are thinking about releasing your stuff as open source, do it now, it probably is too early and nobody will use it, someone may pick up it or your next library, share some knowledge report some bugs or evern fix stuff.
It is very easy for software developers to verify the stability of the libraries they are using, you have absolutely no responsibility to them by releasing software that has bugs, it all does.
People spending all their time fixing broken libraries that they would have been quicker writing themselves is a problem that pretty much never happens, there are multiple ways in which to determine if a library is likely stable or mature enough to be used, and testing whether it works or not is usually a fraction of the time that it would take to write the thing from scratch.
If you open source some code without making any grandiose promises and someone somehow ends up in the position where they are wasting their time fixing it, its entirely their own decision / fault.
Not necessarily. A tarball of shit can become the de facto standard for some utility, and end up haunting us for ages after it gains critical mass, even long after a superior replacement arrives. See, e.g., rvm.
I have to disagree here unfortunately. Like rachel, I've developed my own methods and approaches and toolchains for projects. The upside is that it all works exactly the way I like it to; the downside is that nobody else wants to touch any of it, and anytime somebody else gets a whiff of it, I expect a lot of "why aren't you just using X, Y, or Z?", "this is really shit", "you're a terrible programmer", "lol can you even code?", "look at this dude suffering NIH", and so on.
And ... I've got a pretty thick skin after years and years of net time, but I already struggle with staying motivated on projects, and that kind of feedback really doesn't help.
So, for the most part, the whole "social programming" thing is just not for me.
I think reality is somewhere in between. Spend some time browsing the issue tracker on a good OSS project. Then, if you're feeling brave, head over to a bad one.
I don't think any of this negates your argument, but I understand the apprehension involved in open sourcing a project one feels is sub-par.
Not wanting to proselytize on a failure but presumably 15 minutes of graphic design input on the video thumbnail would have helped the Kickstarter pitch?
I just don't think that there are enough developers yearning for yet-another-feed-reader, and one written in C++ of all things, to really support an open source project for it.
Much less one that is being held hostage by it's author.
I can't just help thinking that if this software was truly both non-trivial and useful that it would be relatively easy to pick up $30k "after" open sourcing it via consulting or customization work.
Can anyone explain/summarize what this is? I gather it was/is feed reader, but I can't find much more and she (?) is very vague. Or I don't know how to navigate her blog.
... and dont forget the few thousand FOSS projects already freely available on Gitorious, Github, Bitbucket, Google-Code, Launchpad, Sourceforge and ... so many more !
Your project doesn't have to be perfect or complete when you open source it. You just have to set your version number correctly somewhere between v0.0.0 - v1.0. Developers will still find it useful while they know it's not yet 1.0.
The complete opposite. We don't live in a centrally planned economy (thankfully). Instead multiple developers have released multiple feed readers with multiple licensing, pricing and freedom schemes. Everyone gets to choose what they want. There is absolutely nothing "ruined" about that.
What's the alternative? Do you want your tax money to go towards supporting this particular developer so that she can open source this particular project? Because that's the alternative. Or are you saying that she shouldn't have the right to determine what to do with her code? Because that world sounds pretty awful too.
Sure, funding free software democratically as a public good is rational. There's no law of physics which makes you choose between directly compensating people, and their work being open. Books, music and movies could then also be open.
Unfortunately, to people in non-democratic countries (who, for example, can't choose to stop allocating their taxes to prisons, drones, armies and surveillance), taxes are some awful thing. But in a saner culture, people would rather enjoy deciding on collective purchases.
I wasn't arguing against the government ever funding open source. That's happened plenty of times in the past to good effect and I hope it continues, whenever it makes sense. I was arguing against the comment that I was replying to, which implied that the government should pay for Rachel's Kickstarter so that her project could be open sourced.
Do you want to be put in the situation where you are contributing to Rachel's Kickstarter, whether you want to or not? What if you didn't like her project and wanted to fund some competing project instead? Where are these countries where you get to choose exactly where your tax money goes to, anyway?
Like, do these magical countries with ultrafine granularity for choosing public funding let you make choices like: do you want your tax money to go towards Rachel's Kickstarter? Because if that's the granularity that you want, then why involve government and taxation at all? You keep your money, and you contribute it where you want to. Or not.
What if this enlightened government you speak of decides that the books, music, and movies that it wants to spend your money on for you are things which you hate? Presumably, if that government was responsive to what its citizens were asking for, it would produce stuff along the lines of what currently gets the best ratings/sales/etc. in these "non-democratic" countries that you look down on so much. Although, I'm sure the people in your country are much more enlightened than the people in my country, and all they want is more philosophy and history and intellectually honest and well-researched analysis of current events, because you live in a magical place where the bulk of humanity is good and nice and curious about the world.
Basically, do you want the government to spend your money making the next Jersey Shore? Why not just eliminate the middleman and vote with your own money, instead of thrusting the government into the position of deciding what sort of entertainment everyone wants?
where and when do collective purchases go to anything besides enriching the wealthy or politically connected?
"[The socialists declare] that the State owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens; that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody; ...that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth.
Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? ... But is it possible? ... Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary?
...Finally...we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the State. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: "Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs." Everyone's effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success."
Without democratic collective purchases, it's precisely the wealthy elites who are most able to afford things. (Virtually by definition.)
What did this 19th century fellow know of efficient public healthcare, roads, the publicly funded research which led to things like computers and the internet? What about cooperatives, a natural way to purchase things which none of the participants could afford individually?
Part of the right wing likes to frame itself as anti-statist. (And are trotted out when anyone proposes funding anything decent, rather than ways to kill and control.) But of course, the "socialists" are the most serious about transcending these violent nation-states. Take the Occupy movements, influenced by "anarchists" (and think what you will about them, but these socialists aren't exactly the biggest supporters of nation-states).
As mentioned, it's hard for people in non-democratic societies to imagine how to rationally team together to allocate funds. In such hierarchical societies, wealthy/powerful elites make such decisions; the rest are supposed to obey their bosses every working day, in their corporate communes. Like indoctrinated cult members, we often have a difficult time imagining how to rationally function and accomplish simple goals as a horizontal team.
'Without democratic collective purchases, it's precisely the wealthy elites who are most able to afford things. (Virtually by definition.)' What? By what logic are you operating?
This is utterly rediculous, and quite frankly bordering on racist. it's often in the poor areas of the 'non-democratic' societies where people learn how to co-operate, and exchange without the state, and rationally function and accomplish goals as teams.
The socialists are about forcibly redistributing property: allocating the fruits of labor as either the electorate or an elected elite sees fit. In the first case, it will be the marginalized minority that gets punished, in the second case, it will be the unconnected poor that get punished.
Nobody is saying don't help out the poor, but the idea that the state is a qualified agent to help out the poor is laughable and there is plenty of evidence spanning milennia that it is a bad idea.
As for public healthcare. Healthcare in the US sucks, but would I rather be part of the private healthcare system or the VA (public healthcare)? Did you not see? As part of the 'healthcare reform bill' all legislators and their staff were required to join the public option. They are busy carving out an exemption to this as we speak.
As for publically funded research, it's horrifyingly wasteful, and all, I mean ALL of it goes to the "1%". Realistically there is no professor that is not a part of the 1%, and their work is built on the backs of a very very exploitative system of labor where grad students and postdocs' most productive years are sucked dry. Much of that essentially becomes subsidies for the military-industrial complex or the pharmaceutical-medical complex (allowing them to shove off some of what should be R&D money off onto the backs of the public).
Don't beleive me? Here is a 501(c)(3) - and four-stars on charity navigator, no less - organization that operates 90% on NIH money (and negotiates a sweet 85% 'overhead' deal) its president makes 1.3 million dollars. http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/330/3304359...
The hilarious thing is this: i'm now working at a different nonprofit science research institute. About 10 years ago, it was almost entirely run on the endowment - salaries given to postdocs and professors were generous, and the president was paid about 1/1000th of the net worth of the company. Since then, the net worth of the nonprofit has decreased by two orders of magnitude, and it is almost completely run off of public funds, in fact private granting organizations are turned down because they bring in no overhead. Now, the president gets paid three times what he did back then. Moreover, his son is about to be employed with us (uh, that's a no-no), as is the grandson of a board member.
There is something about accepting 'public monies' that is almost magically a corrupting factor.
I take seriously any claims that I've done something racist, as racism is commonplace. However, it seems your claim is based on the misunderstanding that I'm referring to non-elite nations as non-democratic.
But I think anyone can see that I consider my country, the US, to not be a democracy; and it's hard to imagine we're a free people when most of us obey commands from a "boss" all day. (The US has a top-down form of government with some barely-functioning democratic forms; our corporations are akin to dictatorships, where power is strictly top-down.)
This may come as a shock to you, but the majority of Americans depend on their employment to obtain little things like food, roofs over heads, medicine, heating, etc. It is not so simple to 'leave your boss' unless you consider dying of starvation to be a good choice. And where do you go after you leave your boss? Oh... another boss.
so you don't think there's a categorical difference here? This may come as a shock to you, but being unemployed is not exactly the end of the world. If you're a good person, there are usually people who will step up to help you out in a time of need, and even if you aren't there are social services.
" Do you want your tax money to go towards supporting this particular developer so that she can open source this particular project?"
How exactly do you think the Internet, most of computer hardware and software was researched and developed before the GREAT PRIVATIZATION in the late 1970s.
I've found open source so liberating that I couldn't even consider closing down my source ever! For a while, for me, it's been morally wrong to close source code or rely on sources that's not within your reach.
"why should I compromise my own ability to license this and make some money from it?"
It's the same reasons you don't do slaves anymore. This guy needs to figure out better business models because the ones she's trying to do are obsoleted.
Also it's not wonder that her Kickstarter failed, it sucked very hard. Big TL;DR with no marketting material that would motivate people to pick on it. Most of people who saw that thing probably had no idea what they could do with her project.
When I open sourced my own RSS reader[1] some of the "non-monetary currencies" I received:
Not all of these have the same value to each person - but for me, they were worth the trade-off. Could I have charged for the software instead? Probably, but I have a day job that pays me well and I enjoy. I wrote the software because I wanted it to exist (one of my favorite things about being a developer) and any extra benefits are just icing on the cake.[1]: https://github.com/swanson/stringer