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raddevus wrote: Has any solo developer released Open Source Software (OSS) and then been better off for it?
Where 'better' is defined how?
I suspect Larry Wall enjoys being the creator of Perl. And some other tools.
raddevus wrote: People don't donate actual $$.
Oh, you mean money.
If you want money for something then you should start with a company.
Not sure where ActiveState and Larry Wall are now but at least at one time several people that were actively involved with Perl worked for that company.
raddevus wrote: When you release your software as OSS you can't actually profit from others using it.
You can only profit by charging for documentation or support or other on-the-side things.
Except
1. Some people are hired by companies because those companies want the expert in that product working for them. (ActiveState is an example.)
2. Some people are paid significant sums to speak at various functions (public and private) because they are the author of some highly used software.
raddevus wrote: I'm pretty sure OSS is now just a way for large companies to use developer's solutions without ever having to pay them
I am rather certain that developers that contribute to Open Source do it for some of the following reasons.
- They like working on code.
- They like becoming known.
- They think they have a better solution.
- They do not want the commitment of a full time job/company.
- Companies fail. Often with a cost (money) to the original person. The cost for open source is very low and it only fails if the original person gives up on it.
- They have ideological viewpoints that support it.
- Looks good on the resume.
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I think you make a lot of great points in your post.
I definitely feel that this is one of the things that gets me:
jschell wrote: They do not want the commitment of a full time job/company.
That's why I was (probably wrongly) hoping that
1. I could release as Open Source
2. Lots of people could use it and many of them (also sole devs & smaller companies) could use it for free or very cheap ($12 per year)
2. Add licensing that says, "Hey, if this thing takes off and BigCorp starts using it, then you will pay me well for all my hard work."
That's the Real Dream. 
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raddevus wrote: That's why I was (probably wrongly) hoping that
1. I could release as Open Source
2. Lots of people could use it and many of them (also sole devs & smaller companies) could use it for free or very cheap ($12 per year)
2. Add licensing that says, "Hey, if this thing takes off and BigCorp starts using it, then you will pay me well for all my hard work."
github -free level
papertrail - low cost initial level
mixpanel - free level
AWS S3 - low cost initial level. Many (all?) AWS services have something like this.
Textpad - low unlimited single use license.
google maps - limited monthly limit for no charge. (I suspect you need to insure the limit yourself.)
I am certain there are many others.
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Despite another's claim that no one else gives away services for free there are of course a number of problems with that assertion.
Open Source Software is just time. I doubt any developer goes out to buy a new computer just so they can create a open source project. The vast majority by far already have everything they need. So there is no cost. Some might choose to spend extra (a domain name) but that is a choice.
Almost everything else requires spending money.
Consider a car mechanic. They might work for free on the local church van or youth center. But car parts are something they need to actually buy. They need to do this for every fix.
What about Habitat for Humanity?
During Covid there was a loose organization set up of individuals who built desks for kids that had none.
What about trades (plumbing, electrician, etc) workers who donate time and money (equipment/supplies) to help out neighbors and even strangers who are having problems. Having done some work recently I can state that having just the equipment for this sort of thing is a substantial cost for even small projects. And those people probably also have a computer.
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I actually agree with your examples...except...
Those things don't scale like Software.
A plumber can never fix 100 million pipes himself.
A mechanic can never fix 100 million cars himself.
The point is that if you create a software solution it may be used by 100 million people.
Ah, and the mechanic may create an add-on that he sells that allows consumers to up their gas mileage.
Then, 100 million people could buy it. He may even tell people how it works -- and be protected by patent protection.
However, if I tell you how the software works and then you take the source and build it and use it for 100 million users there is no patent protection (and I'm glad you can't patent software).
So, again, I'm just talking about protecting OSS creators so that if their package or solution does get used by 100s of millions of people by BigCorp and BigCorp didn't have to pay for any dev then somehow the original OSS dev should get her "fair share".
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You can copyright source and you can patent algorithms/processes.
In the US, they allow you to make ridiculous software patents, never use them, and then sue people for infringement.
Patent trolls!
I remember researching an algorithm I wrote to ensure that there were no patent infringements.
We did not patent ourself, but keep it as a trade secret.
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englebart said: In the US, they allow you to make ridiculous software patents, never use them, and then sue people for infringement.
It’s a terrible thing. To me, that part is worse than the worst parts of the open source challenges. Can’t stand the trolls. It’s a crazy system bec it rewards people who can think of ideas but who cannot actually carry them out. They cannot even produce the thing but are somehow entitled to the rewards. So terrible!!
The patent system should take into account if the patent holder has never produced the thing they’ve patented.
Trolls!!!
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raddevus wrote: Those things don't scale like Software.
Exactly - because of the cost. And because it cannot be copied.
Certainly those that were building desks wanted to do exactly that.
raddevus wrote: So, again, I'm just talking about protecting OSS creators so that if their package or solution does get used by 100s of millions of people by BigCorp and BigCorp didn't have to pay for any dev then somehow the original OSS dev should get her "fair share".
And as I mentioned several times - then start a company. That is how people do that that want to get paid.
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Why would any solo dev release software at all?
If you release it for free, no one will buy it. Obviously. Because it's free.
If you release it for not-free, no one will buy it. Obviously. Because it isn't free.
The only winning move is not to play.
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harold aptroot wrote: The only winning move is not to play.
I've already won then!
Inaction rules the day!!! 
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Open Source has been a great time and effort saver for a lot of technical architects like us. We benefit by having teams incorporate work that we don't trust our devs to accomplish in the required measure of quality and comprehensiveness.
The recurring issue is always how to ensure that there are no litigatory blowbacks. The problem is that when an OSS component is incorporated there is no easy way to ensure that the transaction completes likes the one for a loaf of bread rather than the one for a hotel room where the cost escalates per person, per day and per usage.
Today the market is so fragmented that individual OSS devs have no pricing power and have no consistentcy of monetization.
If OSS were consolidated into something like an App Store that allowed us to use the components like you would use a packet of Lego blocks and pay legally binding fees enumerated fairly only for that slab of usage without creating legal baggage for our customers, our corporate culture would happily jump at it.
PS: I'm specifically looking at Cloud Marketplaces where people pay per hour for OSS images that get deployed to infrastructure and are charged consistently, fairly and legally.
Paras Parmar, Tech Architecture and Services.
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What bugs me is that "Open Source communities" believe that they (/Stallman) invented open source, and there is a heavy price tag on anything that comes from another source (lacking a 'copyleft' or a page of legalese reducing your freedom not only with respect to not only the 'free' code, but to your own code as well).
This is utter bullshit. The two first OSes I used seriously, one for a mainframe, the second for a mini (PDP-11 class) was distributed in source form in the late 1970s. In 1979, my second year at the U, I was learning how a compiler worked by studying the source code of the standard Pascal compiler freely available form ETH Zürich. Our university subscribed to the ACM numerical algorithms library (sorry, I have forgotten the formal name of it!), distributed as Fortran IV source code. By 1980, it filled an entire shelf of heavy ring binders - a couple thousand functions, I believe (maybe it was even more than that). Internet was beginning to arrive, although slowly both in the coming and in line speeds, so tech universities started offering thousands by thousands of open source programs, available for ftp download. I guess a few CP members remember ftp.funet.fi, probably the largest open source ftp site of the day.
From their very first appearance "the OSS community" has tried to take the honor for something that was decades old when they presented their manifests. They try to take it over, take control, dictate their own rights to obtain everything for free, and declaring their own virtuous idealism as the justification for their demands of control, even over your source code.
Before the OSS manifests, the respect for the work of other developers were much higher. You just didn't rip off other people's code, even if it was available. OSS spread the idea that you indeed have the right to use any source code you can lay your hand on. If it carries an OSS license demanding that you make you own work available at no charge, then fine. If it does not, then there are no restrictions.
OSS is similar to so many congregations: The ideals and scriptures may be fine, but the priesthood (and to some degree the congregation) can give you the creeps.
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I cannot really say for others but I don't really expect or care if anyone will contribute with my projects. Whatever I do as OSS was something useful to me or some concept I made up in my mind that I want out (so I can focus on other things), I maintain it working for my own needs, and I share because I think they might be just as useful to others as they are for me. These are usually so small and quick to be done (things I can get working in a week or two) that I don't care if someone will try and monetise it for themselves thus I just share. That's my opinion.
Whenever I get to write something I think is worth charging for, sure I will.
- Leonardo
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This is a great discussion and I don't think you're wrong.
Quote: 2. Why would any solo developer ever release their software as OSS?
When it comes to a full-blown piece of software with a Git-ridden release, that one may have spent a thousand hours or more on? I'd say Jeremy Falcon came up with a good list, but do the reasons stated justify the actions? I suppose some of those started as "side projects" for those every waking moment programmers.
Maybe one's hoping that it's good enough for some company to come along and buy it. It's pretty rare, but it does happen. Though I think you'd be better off getting to the MVP point and publishing it if that is your goal.
On a more macro level, where you're not looking at major-scale programs, it can serve as a CV to get additional paid work. I work with a dev who posts many fully working functions as OSS, which is how I found them. And they are making some good money (in their home country) from me as well as others. In another case, I reached out to an OSS publisher I found, and they told me they were too busy with other contracts to take on new work. So, there is that aspect.
The bar to creating a commercially viable product remains high today, though somewhat easier than it was in the 'pioneer days'. Which reminds me to kick myself, since back in the day, a couple of buddies and I created an actual working messenger system prior to Yahoo and MSN. My view off my back deck today might be a lot different if we put it out there as OSS?
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Thanks for joining the discussion.
I believe some of my challenges are
1. Having this thing that would help a niche of users
2. Wanting to share all the details with other devs bec I believe in sharing and helping
3. Balancing that with not getting taken advantage of if the thing really does take off
I believe the naive hope of every OSS dev in the beginning is that “people and companies will do the right thing if my software helps them and it gets used in big ways”
That’s the world I want to live in.
Unfortunately the reality is something different and you have to do all of this “legal” work up front.
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I wrote and released the SETI@Home SETIDriver application. Ended up I was the only person maintaining it but there were a couple of folks who found bugs for me that I had been unable to track down. Someone in the ARS Community built my web-site for SETIDriver.
That said, I can understand how unpaid maintainers can get to a point where they just shut down. I think their decision to pull the code is wrong since they put it out as OSS, but I can definitely understand why they would pull their support.
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obermd said: but I can definitely understand why they would pull their support.
Yes at some point when the OSS dev takes a look at her real life and discovers that she is still living in a shack eating Doritos for lunch and driving a scooter to work each day all while tons of users are clamoring for changes then it all turns sour. 
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Other than altruism and advertising, I would have one very good reason to open source: not losing the source code. This happened to me once. I wrote a program called BitFont and never provided the source code. My floppies deteriorated or were thrown out and I would love to have some parts of the source code that I would have a hard time replicating, but it's gone, gone, gone! The source is not archived anywhere.
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Yes very good point
Of course now you can create private GitHub repos too and that helps.
But yes I’ve lost software source on old hard drives and CDs too.
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Wow!
Your really thinking serious about this.
I tried to develop several ECommerce platforms, was going to post it on Github to see if I could get some momentum going with it, but decided not to. What changed my mind was how many Angular plugins I was using, where the author gave up on it and abandoned the code. Then I had to abandon their plugin for it was no longer compatible with future version of Angular. Angular was changing so fast, that these authors couldn't keep up with Google and it's shear size compared to a single developer. And that's just a small plugin.
I have a friend that develops low tech construction tools, and does quite well. I choose to develop software, and my friend runs 200x circles around me money wise. I love coding, but these low tech devices are much easier to develop and bring to market than software, and are easier to sell and cash in on. So now I sell my friends low tech stuff and I do quite well, but I still write software, hoping to cash in one day.
People don't want to pay for software and think it should be free. Just like music, books, etc. But people will pay for solutions or systems based on software, if you can prove it will raise their bottom line 30% more, and increase consistency or accurately.
I'm working on a Windows app that several customers wanted, for sending freight out of the warehouse to the destination. It was suppose to be a custom solution for one customer, but I changed my mind and decided to try and make this solution an asset, something I can sell over and over again, and not limit it to a single customer. I'm going to connect the data for this project to AWS, and make it cloud compatible, suggested by my friend that works for Blizzard/Activsion, who is helping me with that part.
I'm not going to waste time setting this up on GitHub, nor make it open source. And I have changed how I think about my app, where it's the data and how it's structured on the cloud that has the value, and the app just allows one to use the data effectively. Then the app can be ported as a web based app as well for low volume users and a monthly fee of $15.
This is a good post and thought to think about. I think for software engineers who think more like an engineer, GitHub or open source licensing is the way to monetize their work, instead thinking like a capitalist, and using other methods to monetize their work.
Nice Post!
If it ain't broke don't fix it
Discover my world at jkirkerx.com
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Thanks for joining the conversation. Great post!!
jkirkerx wrote: Angular was changing so fast, that these authors couldn't keep up with Google and it's shear size compared to a single developer. And that's just a small plugin.
Yes, so true. It's crazy how much work it can be to just support one component within some ecosystem.
jkirkerx wrote: So now I sell my friends low tech stuff and I do quite well, but I still write software, hoping to cash in one day.
Very interesting and very cool that your friend creates those tools. I would love to know what the tools are and how much they sell for. If you can, provide a link. 
jkirkerx wrote: But people will pay for solutions or systems based on software, if you can prove it will raise their bottom line 30% more, and increase consistency or accurately.
You have nailed it with that statement. You are totally correct. You have to give them something that they can see themselves making $$ with. I believe my SaaS will do enable that exact thing -- help others save user's encrypted remote data data easier (and then retrieve it). That's why I'm trying to protect it but I also want to share it.
jkirkerx wrote: I'm working on a Windows app that several customers wanted, for sending freight out of the warehouse to the destination.
Sounds very interesting, good luck to you with your endeavour.
Thanks again for posting. Great stuff.
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https://troxellusa.com
He makes the trowels, knee pads, floats. He bought two urethane machines that can cast urethane floats with handles in house now. The rest of the stuff is made off shore, and offered as a one stop shopping center, like the diamond blades, but are his designs. Can't make them here at that low of cost.
I made his original website technology, and he complained that my technology wouldn't sell more than $10K a month, and I told him it wasn't my technology but his marketing strategy. So we parted ways on web technology and I started several online stores to prove me right in which I did. I sell 5x more a month online than he does now, but he banked me and got me started in which I'm thankful. Well he wanted to see who was right in this experiment.
Selling online is much harder than you think, and is not an easy task. I had to overcome 13 other sellers or competitors to get a seat at the table, and I'm number 3 now. I also sell bowling supplies because I'm a bowler and love the sport, but that market became over saturated with new sellers trying to copy what I did, and I'm watching them fail rapidly over the last 4 months. They bought too much inventory and can't sell it now, and they need the cash to pay for the inventory, so they lowered their prices to just below cost to save themselves and their credit scores. They didn't understand market dynamics and accounting in general, and didn't save their profits to build a bank to pay for higher quantities of inventory when markets are moving at higher velocities. They basically bought Barb-ques when they were hot at the end of the cycle, and the market for them cooled off and they got stuck with 100s of them like Walmart did. So all those YouTube videos showing successful people cashing in are fake, and only line the authors pocket with cash.
If it ain't broke don't fix it
Discover my world at jkirkerx.com
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The people who pushed the Open Source narrative were complete idiots who destroyed a growing cottage industry for third-party development.
Obviously, these people never had to work to support themselves and believed that giving away software was an intelligent business model.
As a result, few of us can make any monies off our endeavors leaving most such development to the hopes of many that by delivering core programming without charges will allow for the development of paid extensions.
I imagine some have been lucky with following this model but how many?
I have already produced three commercial products with none being able to attain any monetary benefit, though all of my products are unique unto themselves, with one of them competitively priced against the 2 major vendor products.
This being said, the Open Source paradigm has allowed all of us to study different types of development paradigms while also gaining access to software we would have had to originally buy.
However, the Open Source paradigm should have been thought through better with an understanding to the consequences of destroying profit-making enterprises.
But all this has now been lost with the only option being that everyone start building their products as "shareware", which was once popular in the 1990s and early 2000s, leaving Open Source to code-snippets and concept code...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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I agree with your astute assessment of the situation 100%.
It does feel as if the OSS movement was more than just about sharing but was more about disabling the ability of sole devs to earn income from those things they create.
The way they created that system was either a spectacular mistake or a genius-level subtlety for destroying ability to earn income from software. I'm not sure which.
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Considering what both the Republicans and the Democrats have done to our nation in the past 30 years, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a first step in undermining what was once the crown jewel of American industry...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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