
"Just open-source it" is not realistic - ericedge
http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/07/06/fred/
======
swanson
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.

[1]:
[https://github.com/swanson/stringer](https://github.com/swanson/stringer)

~~~
iuguy
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.

------
nhangen
If you really want to keep building Fred, you could use something like
IgnitionDeck ([http://ignitiondeck.com](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.

~~~
sillysaurus
Well, I'm happy you self-promoted. Ignition Deck looks really awesome, and I
wouldn't have heard about it otherwise.

For example, [http://ignitiondeck.com/id/crowdfunding-a-video-
game/](http://ignitiondeck.com/id/crowdfunding-a-video-game/) is the most
valuable crowdfunding breakdown I've ever seen.

~~~
nhangen
Thanks a lot. My partner Shawn worked very hard on that one, and we put a lot
of time/effort into it. Glad you found it useful.

------
kaoD
Summary: "I might want to make money out of this, so... nope."

~~~
snuxoll
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.

~~~
RyanZAG
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.

[1] [http://opensource.com/life/13/3/eight-open-source-rss-
feed-r...](http://opensource.com/life/13/3/eight-open-source-rss-feed-readers)

~~~
commandar
I mean, looking at the Kickstarter, I'm having a hard time understanding
exactly what Fred _is_.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000892040/fred-feed-reader-extraordinaire

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.

------
andrewvc
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.

------
aggronn
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?

~~~
StavrosK
Because, well, making it available for free means that fewer people will be
compelled to buy it?

~~~
aggronn
and if no one is compelled to buy it to begin with? that's what I'm asking. I
don't think we can just assume that someone would buy it.

~~~
StavrosK
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.

~~~
daleharvey
> 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.

~~~
davidw
And statistically, they're absolutely _dwarfed_ by the money flowing to
proprietary applications.

It's possible to sell open source software, but it is very, very tricky to get
right.

------
gaze
"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."

~~~
pnathan
> 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.

Better to wait and not waste other people's time.

~~~
daleharvey
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.

~~~
pnathan
Baloney! Releasing dysfunctional crap is giving your users crap that they have
to do the grunt work to maintain.

It's entirely one thing to release functional and ugly code, it's entirely
another to simply code dump broken crap and think that's a good thing.

~~~
daleharvey
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.

------
jongold
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?

------
AdrianRossouw
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.

------
edderly
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.

~~~
wes-exp
I feel like the OSS consulting model benefits from releasing buggy, hard to
use software that requires the developer's assistance to get working.

It sounds like she wants to release software that works well without needing
any maintenance, which would tend toward a payment up-front model.

~~~
edderly
I don't think you get any guarantee that just because you pay for software
that it works well and is not buggy.

------
tillk
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.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
I was wondering too so I found the kickstarter. It's some kind of personal
feed reader server: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000892040/fred-feed-
rea...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000892040/fred-feed-reader-
extraordinaire)

~~~
tillk
Thanks!

I am surprised by this trend — put a project on kickstarter and promise to
open source it. Build it on tech that's been open sourced for free.

Trying to stay positive here. But haven't they heard of the millions of people
who contribute to (quality) open source software every day?

~~~
svaksha
... and dont forget the few thousand FOSS projects already freely available on
Gitorious, Github, Bitbucket, Google-Code, Launchpad, Sourceforge and ... so
many more !

------
clark-kent
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.

------
fein
Tell that to Acquia.

------
mempko
In other words, capitalism ruins it for the rest of us....

~~~
mwfunk
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.

~~~
calibraxis
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.

I recall this has been advocated by Lessig and Stallman. Go far enough in this
direction, you end up with ideas like Participatory Economics.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics))

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.

~~~
dnautics
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. "_

~~~
calibraxis
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.

~~~
dnautics
'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...](http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/330/330435954/330435954_201109_990.pdf)

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.

~~~
calibraxis
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.)

~~~
dnautics
you are free to leave your boss. Your country is liable to extort money from
you at the end of a gunbarrel if you try to leave it.

~~~
casiotone
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.

~~~
dnautics
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.

~~~
pdonis
_even if you aren 't there are social services_

Where do you think those social services come from?

------
cheery
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.

