

Ask HN: To go open source or not? I can't make up my mind - kiriappeee

I'm currently working on my Final Year Project for my university degree. Submission is in 14 days and after that I'm done with my degree. When I spoke to my lecturer about future improvements and open sourcing the project he asked me if I was mad and said that I could make big bucks if I went about improving it by myself with funding from investors.<p>This confuses me. I asked a few more people and they said things along the same lines as well. Don't go open source. I confronted my lecturer and asked him why not?. All he said was, look at Google. All they talk about is being open right? But look at where they make money. Have they open sourced their search engine? Have they truly open sourced Android (even if the OS isn't a true source of income for them). Android still runs in closed development cycles. We get only the final releases.<p>But things is after all of that, I still have this urge to go open source. But I don't know what's in it for me anymore. Apart from the experience of course. But what about making my living? What's the real appeal of Open source? I'm confused.<p>Help me out here please.
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jdietrich
Unless you solve a specific problem that is worth a lot of money to
businesses, the intrinsic value of your software is probably much smaller than
you think. Most of the value in most software businesses comes from
development, design, optimisation, sales, marketing and so on. In particular,
selling software to large companies is a slow, expensive process that has
little if anything to do with the quality of your software. You mention AI and
NLP in the comments, which makes me slightly nauseous as regards the actual
commercial prospects of your software - such projects tend to be academically
impressive but monstrously expensive and near-impossible to market. Obviously
I'm purely speculating, but I'd suggest getting your product out of academia
as quickly as you can and talk to your potential customers. It's very easy to
waste years of your life and a pile of VC money on a brilliant product that
nobody wants. If you haven't read Steve Blank's "Four Steps to the Epiphany",
stop reading this and go buy a copy now.

Open sourcing a project has many potential benefits. It looks excellent on
your CV and is usually the best way of getting hired by someone you'd actually
want to work for, as it proves that you can actually program. If your software
becomes widely used, there are excellent opportunities for consulting, writing
proprietary add-ons, books, speaking engagements and so on.

You say "i don't want some big company coming and taking my source and putting
it into their product even if they do credit me". In fact, that's exactly what
you want, because overnight you become the world's leading expert on a product
by a big company, with everything that entails. GPL it and they can't
distribute the software without also distributing the source. They can use the
software internally of course, but guess who they're going to want to hire if
it becomes mission-critical? That's the basic reason to open source a piece of
software - it opens the possibility for other people to develop, market and
become reliant upon software you wrote.

If you're willing to bet every penny you have and every minute of your life
for the next ten years, then make a business of it as a proprietary product.
You've got a great deal to lose, but you could end up richer than Croesus. If
you open source it, all sorts of opportunities may open up for you with very
little effort on your part.

~~~
kiriappeee
That bit.. But dammit I sure as hell appreciated it. You brought me one step
closer to getting to open source. I just posted a description of the software
I'm going to build in the comments section so if you could give further
advice. Thanks again.

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daleharvey
Professors of computer science arent always the best people to take business
advice from.

First question to ask is do you want to make a business from your project? if
so, then you really need to worry about IP rights, which are commonly given to
the university if I am not mistaken.

Assuming you do want to make a business and IP issues can be worked around,
then you can begin to question whether open source is best or not. Without
knowing more about the project its impossible to give any suggestion either
way, all I can say is being open source does not mean you cannot build a
business by any means, a lot of people conflate open source = no money but
that is not at all true.

~~~
kiriappeee
As far as IP rights go a lot of the project will be what I do after I leave
university. But I've already spoken to heads and have worked around that
issue. In fact they'd be my first investors, but advised against open source.
So IP is workable.

As for what the project is it's pretty hush hush right now before I decide
anything but to give an idea of size it would include AI and an NLP engine
built into it. It's got a lot of business potential as well. If that would
help with an idea of where I should go?

And again. Question is. How do open source teams actually make money out of
projects like this?

~~~
smoody
technical support packages sold to enterprise customers.

~~~
michaelchisari
And customization services.

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michaelchisari
You can make a lot of money on open source (Red Hat, Wordpress.com, etc), but
you have to approach it from a whole different perspective and business model.

What is definitely a lot more difficult, even impossible, is the insane level
of valuation that closed/proprietary companies have (ie, facebook, twitter,
etc). Which means that your valuation will have to more accurately reflect
your revenues and profits.

Which may not be a bad thing. It definitely makes it harder starting out, VC's
are still very wary of open source, but it keeps you more honest in the long
run.

If you're looking to get big fast, and cash out early, go proprietary, and
ride the wave. If you want to build a solid company, you can definitely do
that with open source.

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YuriNiyazov
It would really help if you described the idea here. If you are considering
open sourcing the project itself, then I am sure you can describe what it is
without being afraid that someone can run off and copy the idea.

~~~
kiriappeee
I just posted a description in the comments above. Thanks :)

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tgflynn
Without knowing more about what you're doing I'm hesitant to give advice.

However what I would say is if you think the work is something that can be
applied more or less directly to real world problems, represents a significant
improvement on the current state of the art and you have potential investors,
well personally I wouldn't open source it.

If that's not the case open sourcing the implementation might make sense. One
advantage to you is that it might help you get a good job, if that is your
goal.

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kingsidharth
If you want to go Open Source, go by all means. You can still make money by
selling enterprise solutions to big names out there.

Think about it this way, if this project of yours becomes a big name, then you
will be a respectable figure. And then it will be easier for you to raise
funding or whatever for any of your project.

But you won't need that really, open source can support the founders - it
almost always does.

~~~
kiriappeee
ok. any advice on licenses? i don't want some big company coming and taking my
source and putting it into their product even if they do credit me.

~~~
tgflynn
In theory using the GPL should prevent that. It might be difficult to enforce
though if the code is something that could be used internally or otherwise
effectively hidden.

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psawaya
Is this an ethical or pragmatic dilemma? If it's the latter, going open source
could be a great or not-so-great business decision, depending on your business
model. So you should tell us more about your project.

If it's the former, you can find plenty of debates on the ethics of free
software online.

------
mrpixel
Hmm... I suggest you keep it closed and try to make some money out of it
(don't look at me like that, Mr. Stallman) and if doesn't work out just make
it open - and should it become sort of a success make some green with it
indirectly (e.g. get nicer jobs).

What is it anyway?

~~~
kiriappeee
I can't say just yet what it is just yet. Not until I've made the first
release. Yes. I'm paranoid after hearing the stuff that can happen :P. I sort
of put this question up looking for some therapy as well :)

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Mithrandir
My personal opinion is to "open-source" (or, more technically correct, free)
it.

If I say anymore, I'll get DNed. :)

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krung
"I still have this urge to go open source" -- perhaps you try the Freemium
Model ?

------
kiriappeee
Ok it would clearly help to tell what the idea is. So what I am building
currently is an engine and a commercial level software on top of it to
automate the checking of stylistic consistency in a document. The application
of it is pretty broad but to sum it up into a few points

1) Plagiarism detection in education. It can be used as a means to detect
plagiarism of individuals outsourcing their documents (thesis) through
identification of differences in style (inconsistency).

2) Forensic studies. Letters submitted to court have often been suspected of
being doctored by others determined to put a suspect behind bars at any cost.
Can help there by identifying inconsistencies in style.

3) Literature studies. Educational tool to help professional creative writers
improve their consistency in style

This can be expanded in many other ways, such as history where the software
could aid in solving mysteries of disputed authorship of texts. The
possibilities grow even more if you think of it merging with other types of
bio metric studies.

Right now what I am building the software under is the 1st point and it is
titled Multiple Authorship Detection Automation. Hence the interest from the
academic field :). Ok. Hit me now.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
It sounds like a great product, but the two potential fields that you just
identified are 1) Education/Academia and 2) Government.

There are people on HN that are more qualified to talk about this than I am
because they have more experience with selling in those markets, but this is
what I understand:

You can't sell to either without a strong salesforce. These are not the sort
of environments where you get paid a lot for technology just because someone
discovered it while browsing the web - sure there might be one-two professors,
and one-two judges, but most will expect their departmental machinery to take
care of this stuff for them. The essence of the problem is that the people who
are interested in using the product are different from the people who hold the
purse strings, and both of those are different from the people who actually
oversee the cycle of purchasing and procurement.

So, in a certain sense, your advisor is completely correct. You could really
make big bucks selling this. However, in order to get there, you would either
have to learn the microstructure of sales cycles and handle that all by
yourself, or you'd have to partner up with someone who understands that and
knows how to operate in it. Whether you want to give that a shot is completely
up to you. It could be a very valuable experience.

Remember, there are a lot of problems with going open-source as well. First of
all, you think "wow, I released this piece of software, awesome, now people
around the world are going to gather together, hack on it and send me
patches". That rarely happens. What often happens is, you end up getting
requests for free tech support and bug fixes, and the usual comment of "well,
it's open source, you could help me hack it" is met with a dismissive comment.
In other words, once you go open-source, there's still a lot of management
that you have to do in order to steer the product in the right direction,
except now you aren't getting paid for it. Open-source really is a labor of
love - and I don't mean loving your beautiful, smart and gifted children - I
mean loving your developmentally disabled, Down-syndrome, wheelchair-bound
children.

So, my advice would be, don't go open source in the beginning, and try the
"build a company out of this" a shot for six months or something. Expect that
in six months it will go nowhere and you can open-source it then, and see
whether once you open-source it, it gets a different kind of pickup, and maybe
you can still build a different company out of it then.

~~~
kiriappeee
hey just wanted to say thanks and that i had a final chat with people around
the project. Their advice was not to go open source but with a completely
rational reason. If this was open to all then students whose projects are to
be checked by the system, those same students could download the source or the
binaries and then try and game the system to accept plagiarized documents.

Thanks again all the same and I will use your suggestion for a bunch of other
ideas and projects that I will be starting work on very soon

~~~
YuriNiyazov
I am sorry, but that's an absolutely ridiculous, irrational reason. Your
system is, presumably, a large piece of complex technology. In order to
understand how to circumvent it, a significant amount of time must be spent
understanding what it does. Students that want to submit plagiarized documents
are lazy, and if they would stoop so low as to plagiarize, they would never in
a million years spend the time figuring out how to circumvent your system.

~~~
kiriappeee
haha fair enough. maybe im just paranoid about how the minds of people work as
ive seen it. We use turitin at our university to check originality of work of
students. That takes a document and matches it against a huge database of
their own that they maintain. Students can't use that service (unless they pay
the fee which they mostly don't although I know a few who have done so)
because they would look at the areas that have been marked as unoriginal and
would make a few changes to make it go undetected.

at least that's how it goes. The system I have right now so far also
highlights which areas specifically does the style change and in what way and
by what percentage. It's being built keeping in mind a user base that should
be able to get information with just two clicks . So it shouldn't be too hard
to change the style here and there to game the system.

But I do raise hands in acceptance of your viewpoint here and call a truce
(yes drama much) until I actually build a product before really making a
decision on everything. But I do honestly value your input a LOT. thanks again
:)

